Anh Do (text), Jules Faber (illus), Super Weird (WeirDo #4), Scholastic Australia, 1 June 2015, 151pp., $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781743629314 Is there anything Anh Do can’t do? He’s an utterly charming Australian personality, and in his written work for children his beautifully sunny personality shines through. This is a graphic novel aimed presumably at middle primary school readers, but there is enough fun for older readers to enjoy and for younger ones to listen and look. The fourth in the series, the action centres around ‘Weir’ Do and his zany extended family, including his pet dog Fido and bird…
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Mem Fox (text) Judy Horacek (illus), This & That, Scholastic Australia, 1 October 2015, 32pp., $19.99 (hbk) ISBN 9781743622537 This & That is the third book created by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek. It is another wonderful bedtime story for kids under 4 years old. It will no doubt follow on from the success of Where is the Green Sheep and Good Night Sleep Tight. Mem Fox’s rhymed rhythmic text teams brilliantly with Judy’s bright quirky cartoon illustrations. Readers will delight in a series of adventurous tales involving cavernous caves, a chimp with a magic hat, crazy giraffes, kings and…
Rino Alaimo, The Boy Who Loved the Moon, Exisle Publishing, 28 September 2015, 32pp., $26.99 (hbk), ISBN 978 1 939629 76 0 This picture book is an adaptation of the author’s short award winning film of the same name, in which a young boy’s heart is captured by the moon. He offers her gifts, each one becoming more precious. She refuses and the boy is warned by the man in the tower not to try as many have failed. But the boy does not give up and eventually wins the moon’s heart. The double page glossy illustrations are in a rich yellowy-gold…
Kathryn Lomer, Talk Under Water, Penguin, 29 July 2015, 322 pp., $19.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780702253690 Sixteen-year-old Summer lives in Kettering, on the south-east coast of Tasmania. She meets Will online through Jessica Watson’s Facebook page. They have a lot in common. They are both fans of Jessica’s book True Spirit and they both love sailing. Will is a proficient sailor while Summer dreams of one day sailing. Will lives in Eden with his father on their yacht. He is from Kettering and misses his home. Will’s father is not coping with his recent marriage break up and Will…
Kathryn Barker, In the Skin of a Monster, Allen & Unwin, January 2015, 304pp., $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 978 1 76011 171 7 It is three years since her identical twin sister took their father’s gun to school and shot dead seven students, yet Alice and the outback town of Collector have not begun to recover. The people of the town, past friends and schoolmates, see only her sister’s monstrous deed when they see Alice, and punish her for it. Alice spends much of her time walking along the highway without water in what she calls her “punishment walks”, enduring headaches as…
Susan Green, Verity Sparks and the Scarlet Hand (Verity Sparks #3), Walker Books, 1 July 2015, 336pp., $16.95 (pbk), ISBN: 9781922244895 Veroschka Sparks has an extraordinary talent – she can find lost things just by thinking about them. An amazing gift to have when your friend is abducted! Verity Sparks and the Scarlet Hand begins as the family wait for Saddington Plush to arrive to celebrate Papa Savinov’s 65th birthday. After an hilarious round of 1800s style parlour games SP proposes to Verity’s former governess in front of everyone and in a fluster Drucilla packs her bags to stay with the Leviny…
Rainbow Rowell, Carry On, Pan Macmillan, 13 October 2015, 352pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781447299318 Warning: This review is just as much an exploration of the type of book Carry On is, as it is about the book itself. Some people can only take so much meta. Maybe because we are exposed to it in almost all of our cultural references and our social networks these days. Carry On might be the most meta thing ever. Once upon a time, Rainbow Rowell wrote a book Fangirl, with the fictional protagonist, Cath. In that book, Cath is obsessed with the fictional characters, wizard and Chosen…
Tiffiny Hall, Maxi and the Magical Money Tree, HarperCollins, 1 July 2015, 272pp., $14.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9 780732 29927 What would you do if you found a money tree? What would you buy? Would you tell anyone or could you keep it a secret? Naturally it would involve lying, well quite a bit of lying actually, so who could you trust? This is eleven year old Maxi’s dilemma when she finds a money tree growing in her family’s new house. Hall explores a number of themes in this narrative: what makes a person rich; dealing with shyness; the difficulties in…
Vikki Wakefield’s third book has just been released. We asked her to tell us about writing it. Here is a lovely insight into her writing process, and the way she addressed the themes. Meet Vikki Wakefield. Recently I ran a workshop for emerging writers that focused on how to expand simple ideas into a more complex short story or novel. We worked through some exercises and I showed them the notebook I kept while I was writing Inbetween Days, my new novel, out in October. All of my notebooks are filled with drawings and vague notes, snippets of song lyrics, random scientific facts, pictures…
Vikki Wakefield, Inbetween Days, Text Publishing, 23 September 2015, 352pp., $19.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781922182364 Vikki Wakefield’s third novel is just as intense and engaging as her previous two. Seventeen-year-old Jacklin Bates lives with her sister Trudy on the outskirts of their small country town, Mobius. She’s dropped out of high school, thinks she’s in love with a boy who is clearly using her, and is caught in between teen age and adulthood. Jack’s voice oscillates between bored, selfish teenager and vulnerable, directionless woman. The landscape, as with all Wakefield’s books, features strongly. The small community, isolated and seemingly surrounded by wilderness,…