Lorraine Marwood, Footprints on the Moon, University of Queensland Press, February 2021, 256 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780702262838 1969. While astronauts are navigating to the moon, Sharnie is navigating her way through her first year in high school (just). She wonders if the world will change when man walks on the moon. However much Sharnie wishes things would stay the same, change is coming. She feels less included in the life of her older sister, Cas, who is growing up and growing away from her. Family life gets rocky as her patriotic dad discovers Cas has met a returned…
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Heidi McKinnon, There’s No Such Thing, Allen & Unwin, March 2020, 32 pp., RRP $19.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760877279 When I first opened this book, I was sitting by myself at my desk. About halfway through I realised: I am reading this aloud… to myself… in an empty house. Somehow, I had been sucked straight into a performative read. If that’s not a sign of an engaging book, I don’t know what is. In addition to being immediately caught up in the delicious graphics, vibrant sounds, and overall design, I think I must have gone straight to reading aloud because the…
Christie Nieman, Where We Begin, Pan Macmillan Australia, August 2020, 368 pp., RRP $18.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781743535660 Where We Begin starts with a letter from Anna to her mother: As you can see, I’m not here. I hope this isn’t a big shock to you – it shouldn’t be, if you’re honest… There are a few more lines, but typical of letters between close family members, scant detail. An intriguing puzzle for the reader. The first chapter sees Anna leaving on a night bus to a faraway place; we are not sure where. There is a sense of danger and…
Libby Hathorn and Lisa Hathorn-Jarman (text) and Mel Pearce (illustrator), No! Never!, Lothian Children’s Books, April 2020, 32pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780734418906 I know some parents are apprehensive to read books that contain child characters who behave in a way parents would rather their child not replicate. Shel Silverstein’s classic The Giving Tree seems to really divide parents, some just can’t feel good about the way the boy ungraciously takes from the tree. However, I think most books contain examples of behaviour we would not want our children to replicate, whether it be from the protagonist, the antagonist or someone else.…
Barry Jonsberg, Catch Me If I Fall, Allen & Unwin, November 2020, 258 pp, RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760877613 Barry Jonsberg is a prolific author of children’s, pre-teen and teenage fiction, perhaps best known for his charming 2013 best-seller and CBCA prize-winning novel, My Life as an Alphabet. His latest book also charms and thrills its readers, while offering an alternative-world puzzle linked to the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Ash and Aiden Delatour are twelve-year-old identical twins — though paradoxically they are brother and sister. They live some decades into the future, at a time when the earth’s environment has…
Rebecca Lim, Tiger Daughter, Allen & Unwin, February 2021, 224 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760877644 What I feel most days is that nothing is ever going to change. That my life won’t even start, and that I’ll be stuck like this forever. Fourteen-year-old Wen Zhou feels trapped. The only child of Chinese immigrants and a girl, her world feels extremely small. Her father is bitter about working long hours at a restaurant even though he has a medical degree and takes his frustrations and fears out on his wife and daughter. Wen sees her Mum as dutiful, hard-working and…
Freya Blackwood, The Unwilling Twin, HarperCollins Australia, October 2020, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk) 978146075736 Young children have a natural affinity with animals and often form connections with animals that create life-long bonds. Jules and George are not your average siblings. While they do almost everything together from the moment they wake, sometimes their days together don’t always go smoothly. George is also a pig, and therein lies the makings of a most unusual and endearing kind of kinship. Freya Blackwood brings us a unique kind of sibling love in The Unwilling Twin. Exploring themes of families, conflict, individuality, and sharing, the story…
Brenda Gurr (text) and Nancy Leschnikoff (illustrator), The Tumbling Tortoises: The Fabulous Cakes of Zinnia Jakes (Book #2), New Frontier Publishing, October 2020, 106 pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781921928796 With a globe-trotting food-writer dad and a world-famous pastry-chef mum, (who has passed away) 9-year-old Zoe Jones was destined to love food and cooking. Operating under the alias of Zinnia Jakes, Zoe creates delicious cakes people love. In this second book in the series, Zoe has been selected to be the official cake maker for the zoo’s endangered animals’ campaign with her cupcake tortoise idea. She can’t wait to deliver…
Gabriel Bergmoser, The True Colour of a Little White Lie, HarperCollins Children’s Books, April 2021, 264 pp, RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781460759097 This is Gabriel Bergmoser’s second young adult novel. The first, Boone Shepard’s American Adventure (Bell Frog Books, 2017), was a fast-paced, intricately plotted time-travel thriller along the lines of Eoin Colfer’s tremendously popular Artemis Fowl books. Though this first madcap novel promised sequels and prequels galore, Bergmoser’s second stand-alone book is entirely different. It is at once a more simple book, and a more sophisticated one too. Nelson, a fourteen-year-old who is bullied at high school and has…
Nina LaCour, Watch Over Me, Text Publishing, September 2020, 272 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781922330604 Recent high school graduate Mila jumps at the chance to work and live at a remote coastal farmhouse having aged out of the foster care system and its accompanying hospitality. What could be a better deal than a simple teaching job, free food and accommodation? What Mila doesn’t know is that this Californian refuge is also home to a collection of seemingly harmless ghosts that will trigger a series of unpleasant memories she wishes would stay buried in the past. Watch Over Me is a…