TANGEY, Penny Stay Well Soon UQP, 2013 234pp $14.95 pbk ISBN 9780702249945 Stevie is about eleven. Her brother, Rhys, is ill, and Stevie and her single mother spend much of the time in the hospital with him as he to is diagnosed and treated. In the hospital she meets Lara, who is fourteen, and they become friends, despite her mother’s concern that Stevie is too young to experience Lara’s situation. Lara has cancer and expects to die. This worries Stevie, who thinks that there is little point in doing anything if we are all going to die. She struggles on…
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CURLEY, Marianne Hidden Bloomsbury, 2013 325pp $15.99 pbk +e ISBN 9781408822623 SCIS 1595150 Hidden is the first in a new Avena series of paranormal romances. Like many teenagers, Ebony feels ‘different, at odds with myself’. There is good reason for this – she is very different from anyone she knows. Home schooled and living in an isolated rural valley, she has, at sixteen, only recently begun attending high school. She soon becomes aware of some of her differences – she is faster, stronger, has better hearing and eyesight than other people and a phenomenal memory. She also has extraordinary violet eyes,…
COWLEY, Joy Dunger Gecko Press, 2013 156pp NZ$19.99 pbk ISBN 9781877579462 SCIS 1625085 When Melissa and William are not allowed to go to Queenstown with their friends at holiday time for financial reasons, they are devastated. It is even worse when the 14 and 11 year old are asked to go with grandma and grandpa to their old dunger of a bach deep in the Marlborough Sounds! They refuse, but when offered $1000 each to help their grandparents restore the bach, they reluctantly agree (with aspirations for ipads and the like). Through the use of contrasting narrative voices, we share their…
WANG, Gabrielle The Wishbird Puffin, 2013 185pp $14.99 pbk IBSN 9780143307525 SCIS 1616690 The Wishbird is a fantasy about two children: Oriole who lives contently in the Forest of Birds until she has to leave to save her friend and guardian Mellow, a hoopoe bird, and Boy who is a thief in the City of Soulless. The City of Soulless is a city where music and bright colours are banned, the townspeople speak in monotones and all the forests were cut down and any bird, which could not escape, was killed. Oriole must go there to speak to the King…
CLARK, Sheryl Dying to Tell Me Self Pub, 2014 214 pp $16.95 pbk ISBN 9780987535313 SCIS 1641858 Angry and behaving badly after Mum leaves the family, Sasha (13) and younger brother Nicky move from Melbourne to the remote rural town of Manna Creek with their policeman father during the mid-year school holidays. To break the boredom, Sasha and Nicky explore the empty streets and observe some strange local characters. Sasha experiences unexplained severe headaches, nausea and disturbing premonitions, particularly when approaching the ruins of the old police cell behind their house. Asked to provide a home for an ex-police dog,…
HARVEY, Roland The Wombats Go on Camp Allen & Unwin, 2013 unpaged $24.99 ISBN 9781743315040 SCIS 1627412 Almost every child has been on a school adventure camp – those places in a bush setting with basic barracks accommodation, a creek or beach nearby, a ropes course, a fire circle, a flying fox and a program of team-building and individually challenging activities that usually culminate in a concert in the final evening. Roland Harvey buses twelve very distinct little individuals (profiled on the endpapers), the Wombats, and two teachers to such a camp. Harvey assigns each of the characters a double-page…
BRITT, Fanny (text) Isabelle Arsenault (illus.) Christelle Morelli & Susan Ouriou (trans) Jane, the Fox and Me Walker, 2014 101pp $24.95 ISBN 9781406353044 SCIS 1627533 This unusual and moving graphic novel was first published in French in Canada in 2012, then translated into English for the USA, Canada and the UK. It honestly portrays how cruel some children can be to others, how hurtful this bullying and ostracism can be and how one young girl, Helene, copes and then dares to hope. The opening sentence, ‘There was no possibility of hiding anywhere today’, sets the tone of loneliness and…
BROCKELBANK, Nicholas Nic’s Lunchbox Scholastic, 2013 32pp NZ$19.50 pbk ISBN 9781775431909 SCIS 1632664 Here is an inspirational cookbook showing that anyone can make a difference in other people’s lives. Nic, who suffers from Muscular Dystrophy, has now published his second cookbook supported by the publisher Scholastic (NZ) Ltd who, with Nic, are donating 50% of the royalties to the MD Association. He is a lad with Attitude (a favourite TVNZ One show on Sunday mornings that gives voice to people who have overcome difficulties and achieved great personal goals). Lunchboxes for many children can be pretty boring and so Nic…
BLAKE, Stephanie A Deal’s a Deal Gecko Press, 2013 unpaged NZ$19.99 pbk ISBN 9781877579844 SCIS 1631479 Children know well that, despite all the boundaries and moral teachings of adults, life is tough and you have to be (at least mentally) tough to succeed. They also know the idea of rituals and sayings that must be observed, even with your friends let alone your enemies. But what if your ‘friend’ can also be an enemy? When Simon desires Ferdinand’s red car (having three of his own but different colours), Ferdinand plays the psychological art of persuasion. His car is ‘amazing’. It…
O’HAGAN, Jack (song lyrics) Andrew McLean (illus.) Along the Road to Gundagai Omnibus, 2014 unpaged $24.99 ISBN 9781862919792 SCIS 1641839 SCHUMANN, John (text) Craig Smith (illus.) I was Only Nineteen Allen & Unwin, 2014 unpaged $24.99 ISBN 9781743317235 Two books, two stories and two very different songs. In the first, where we meet a song very familiary to many Australians, the illustrator has been inspired by the words to tell the story of the young men who went to World War I, many of them never to return. Using many historical sources, McLean created his drawings with charcoal and watercolour…