Kirsty Eagar, Summer Skin, Allen & Unwin, Feb 2016, 348pp., $19.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781925266924 Remember university days? Hard drinking, fraught relationships, usually with the opposite sex, mixed with a modicum of study. You now have the template for the latest Kirsty Eagar novel Summer Skin, albeit a twenty first century take. Jess is smart and she and her Unity College friends aren’t going to tolerate the misogynist, sexist jocks from Knights College any longer. They are out for revenge after the shaming of her best friend Farren and Jess has Blondie in her sights. He appears to be a typical…
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Lian Tanner, Fetcher’s Song (Hidden #3), Allen & Unwin, Jan 2016 352pp., $18.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781743319420 This is the third and final book in the Hidden series. With a list of chapters in the front of the book, a double page map and a detailed Prologue, the story is accessible for someone who has not read the first two. The settings, the diverse characters’ dialects and creative vocabulary, the plot and sense of doom, take the reader on a seesaw ride of emotions. Gwin’s mother has died and she feels a great sense of responsibility for the safety and survival of…
Jacqueline Harvey, Clementine Rose and the Special Promise (Clementine Rose #11), Random House Australia, 4 Jan 2016, 149pp., $14.99 (pbk) ISBN 9780857987860 Clementine Rose is a lovely little girl who lives in Penberthy Floss in a large ramshackle house with her mother, Lady Clarissa Appleby, Digby Pertwhistle the butler, Aunt Violet and her teacup pig, Lavender. In this eleventh book in the series, Clementine Rose has to say goodbye to her friends, Sophie and Jules, who are moving back to France for a year or so. She is sad to see them go but Sophie has promised to write. The…
Kristjana S Williams (illus.), Jenny Broom (text), The Wonder Garden, Wide Eyed Editions/Murdoch Books, Nov 2015, 48pp., $35.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781847806475 There are some books that are made to pour over and explore, like an adventure, and The Wonder Garden is that kind of book. The reader is invited to wander through five of the world’s most interesting habitats to meet eighty intriguing and sometimes rare animals. From the zoological jewel that is the Amazon forest, to the tough, arid stretches of the Chihuahuan Desert and the diverse and vibrant Great Barrier Reef, Jenny and Kristjana have filled these pages…
C M Gray, Infected (Zombified! #2), ABC Books/Harper Collins Australia, 1 Dec 2015, 192pp., $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780733334221 Benjamin Roy has a problem, a big one. He is a zombie, or a half-zombie to be precise, and apart from trying to hide it from his teachers, friends and family, he also has to quell an insatiable desire to eat people, which can ruin your day if you’re not quite comfortable with the whole being-a-zombie thing. It does have its perks, though, like infrared vision and super-speed, but it’s not much fun when he has to hide these as well, so…
J. M. Barrie, The Complete Peter Pan, Alma Books, 18 Nov 2015, 368pp., $12.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781847495600 Peter Pan first began as a play written by J.M. Barrie in 1904. It was hugely successful and he decided to capitalise on his fame and wealth by penning the story as a book called, Peter and Wendy, in 1911. The story is well known and has had many adaptations; from musicals to Disney animations and films, but does the story still stand up? The Complete Peter Pan has the play and the book, as well as Barrie’s inspiration behind the story, biographical notes,…
Jacqueline Harvey, Alice-Miranda to the Rescue (Alice-Miranda #13), Random House Australia, 1 Feb 2016, 384pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9780857985224 Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennigton-Jones is a boarding school student at Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale Academy for Proper Young Ladies. Yes, it is all very proper and as you can imagine, a little over-wrought in Alice-Miranda’s world. Alice-Miranda to the Rescue is the 13th in Jacqualine Harvey’s romping series and the large cast of characters have already had its fair share of mishaps, mayhems and mysteries to solve. As a child, I adored Enid Blyton’s The Naughtiest Girl series and noticed many similarities between the two series. The book…
The following is a tribute to the amazing Kim Gamble, as given at his funeral by Anna Fienberg: For Kim – a tribute by Anna Fienberg As a person and as an artist, Kim had magic. You felt it in the way he painted light, taught children to see, in the shimmer of his charisma. It was present in his extraordinary generosity, his wild humour, his loyal, unwavering love for family, friends, the mud brick home he built in the bush, for rivers, gardens, books, cicadas, geckos, magpies, owls, moonlight . . . in his way of seeing. Once you…
Danny Katz (text), Mitch Vane (illus.), Triple The Treats (Little Lunch), Black Dog Books, 1 Feb 2016, 128pp., $12.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781925126907 Triple The Treats is set in the 15 minute break at school and looks at the big issues that children face in the playground. At least, they always seem like big issues to the characters in this book, Mrs Gonsha, the long suffering teacher, and six children: the creative catastrophiser Battie, the bossy tell-tale Debra Jo, the shy but stubborn Melanie, the sporty Tamara, the distractible Rory and my favourite – Atticus who is ‘sweet, nerdy and always…
Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl, Walker Books, 1 Feb 2016, 400pp., $27.99 (hbk) ISBN 0781406361407 The Hired Girl is set in 1911 in America. The heroine, 14 year old, Joan Skraggs runs away from the poverty and brutality of her family farm and, after a narrow escape, ends up as a servant to the Rosenbachs who are a well-off, Jewish family. Joan changes her name to Janet Lovelace and claims to be 18, which is accepted. Joan longs for an education and a mother figure and she records her frustrations and adventures in a diary. She finds her new…