This Season's Draft

This Season's Draft by first-time author Jason Gent is one of the last YA books from the CBCA Notables list. It's a slender book, not exactly in free verse, but what one of the characters describes as 'just thoughts,/stream of consciousness really.' The big areas of blank page make This Season's Draft easy to read, and any kid who's interested in sport (not just AFL) will find material to relate to here.

This Season's Draft follows six teenagers over a year, the final year of school for most of them, the year most of them hope to get drafted to an AFL side. Smart, level-headed Elias, already thinking about his future after football; Dane, who hasn't thought about anything past the draft; his girlfriend Beth, who has her own life to consider; Zac and Fletcher, best friends who are separated by their own success; and stoic Mason, who has already faced personal tragedy. Though their stories are told in short snippets, we see significant snapshots of a very important year in all their lives, whether that centres on AFL or not.

I really enjoyed This Season's Draft, especially as I'm also re-reading Helen Garner's The Season, and I hope more readers discover this slim but moving novel.
 

My Brother the Orangutan

Disclaimer: Heather Gallagher is an old friend of mine. We met at ante-natal classes before our first babies were born, and quickly discovered that we had a lot in common -- not just living in adjacent suburbs, but Heather and I were both aspiring children's authors. It's hard to believe that was nearly twenty five years ago.

My Brother the Orangutan is a lively, fun body swap story in the best tradition of Paul Jennings. Esther and her brother Rex have newly arrived from the country to the city, where their dad has a new job working at the nearby zoo (every kid's dream, surely). But the family are also grappling with the recent death of Esther's beloved grandfather, and moving in with their eccentric grandmother, whose cooking tends to produce dishes like salmon and lychee souffle, or tuna and pineapple muffins. But the trouble really starts when Rex swaps bodies with Harta the orangutan and Esther finds herself sharing a bedroom with an ape in a boy's body, while her little brother is stuck in the zoo.

Resourceful Esther's hero is Sherlock Holmes and it doesn't take her long to start putting the vital clues together. But there's only so much an eleven year old can do to persuade adults that something truly bizarre is going on.

My Brother the Orangutan mixes a warm family story with a twisty magical mystery and plenty of laughs. It would make a fabulous read-aloud and I can see it appealing to reluctant readers, too. Lots of fun.
 

Music Camp

I absolutely love Penny Tangey's books for middle graders; they are the perfect blend of wry humour and important questions. In Music Camp, we see events through the eyes of flautist Juliet, bookish loner, and bolshie recorder-player Miley as they negotiate making new friends, loving Miss Lin (who teaches them both) and the politics of Grade 6 music camp. Juliet's father has died; Miley and her mum have lost everything in recent floods. Neither of them wants to talk about it. Climate change gently but persistently hangs over the story, but never in an overwhelming or hopeless way.

Tangey is so good at sketching characters through young eyes. We can see for ourselves that Renee has issues with OCD and that Clara might have ADHD, without it being spelled out for us. Minor characters are beautifully outlined -- Ollie, who is a total player on the music camp scene but is apparently a bit of a dork at school; Liam the eager gossip; Mr Broadbent, who is reluctant to accept the sponsorship of the big fossil fuel company; Miss Lin, who is more focused on the benefits their money can bring the kids she teaches. There is a lot of Tangey's trademark droll humour in Music Camp.

I can't get enough of Tangey's writing and I'm so excited that she has an adult mystery out now, set in East Melbourne, What Rhymes with Murder? I can't wait.
 

Cuckoo's Flight

Cuckoo's Flight is the third and final volume in Wendy Orr's Bronze Age trilogy, and Leira from Swallow's Dance makes a reappearance as Clio's grandmother. This time the town is in danger from raiders, and it seems that one of the young girls will be chosen as a sacrifice to appease the Goddess. Clio's family are potters, but Clio's true love is her father's horses. After an accident that damaged her leg, Clio will never ride again; but her father has an idea for a chariot that might be almost as good...

Orr wrote Cuckoo's Flight during Covid lockdowns, and she says she realised while she was writing it that Clio was going to be disabled, as she herself is now. Female family relationships and friendships are strongly emphasised in this book, like the other Bronze Age stories, and it's so refreshing to read a novel set in a matriarchal society (even if the Lady and the Goddess are sometimes unreasonable in their demands). Life is harsh in these times, with orphaned Mika being beaten by her brother, ill-treated slaves in the purple dye works, and brutal battles; but there is kindness and rejoicing, too.

Cuckoo's Flight was the last book I rescued from the Allen & Unwin clearout, and I'm happy to have all three volumes of the trilogy safe on my own shelves -- it would be worth it for the covers alone, created by the brilliant Josh Durham who was also responsible for the cover design of Crow Country.
 

The Making of Martha Mayfield

Jo Dabrowski's second middle grade novel, The Making of Martha Mayfield, has done the rounds of my book group and been universally loved. Coming from a group of children's authors and librarians, this is praise worth having! I've now joined the chorus of acclaim for this lovely, funny, sweet story. As fellwo author Kirsty Murray remarked, it's not easy to write this kind of everyday, realist book for kids and make it thoroughly engaging as well as compassionate and thoughtful.

Martha is shy and introverted; she is also creative and observant. She makes paper models of people and 'sets' in shoe boxes (my daughter used to make rooms in shoe boxes, too) and practices awkward situations in her bedroom; but when it comes to real life,  the conversations rarely go as planned. Elections for school captain are coming up and Martha has a perverse desire to show everyone that school captains don't always have to be the same kind of outgoing, confident people who usually win these contests. There are setbacks and inspirations, and Martha's family are facing their own challenges.

This is a beautiful, layered book about identity and courage and creativity -- not just making things, but also thinking in original ways. I really hope The Making of Martha Mayfield gets the recognition it deserves in the CBCA awards next year.
 

A House Divided

I enjoyed Clare Hallifax's middle grade novel, A House Divided, immensely. I guess it would be classed as historical fiction, as it's set in 1975, the year of the Whitlam dismissal. My family was in PNG in the mid-70s, so I don't remember anything contemporary from this time; I didn't become aware of (and horrified by) these political events until a few years later. 

In A House Divided, grade 6 student Juliet's dad works in the heart of the Whitlam government, and journalists, public servants and politicians, even Gough himself, are familiar figures in her home. But Juliet's grandmother is much more conservative, and her new friend Robbie's parents are alos public servants, but lean more to the right. It's not all politics, though; this is also a story about tensions in a friendship, and just about growing up in the Australia of the 70's -- watching Countdown and Dr Who, the excitement of colour TV, riding bikes and swimming unsupervised, boring food, European migration, the loosening of divorce laws, no smart phones for easy contact, Norman Gunston.

A House Divided was a really fun and engaging read, and I hope that kids find it and enjoy it for its own sake, and not for the nostalgia that undoubtedly coloured my own experience. (PS What a gorgeous cover!) 

The Doll Twin

Borrowed from my book group friend, Sian, Janine Beacham's The Doll Twin is Gothic horror for middle grade readers. It begins with an orphan, Una, who seems never likely to be adopted from the chilly orphanage. When a pair of prospective parents arrive, warm and welcoming, she is overjoyed. However, her new home proves to be a spooky mansion, filled with strange mechanical contrivances left behind by the former owner, a mysterious doll maker. And then the creepiest discovery of all: a life sized doll, an Animated Curiosity, who looks exactly like Una herself.

The Doll Twin is deliciously creepy and has some important things to say about not judging by appearances, but it was sadly marred by some lapses in editing, such as when the doll, Ani, expresses her love for the Iron-Hearted Sea on one page, then a couple of pages later exclaims, 'The Iron-Hearted Sea? Is that its name?' I'm noticing more and more sloppiness creeping into recently published books like this, and I understand that publishers and editors are increasingly under-resourced and over-worked, and that mistakes are going to happen. But it really does spoil the reading experience, for me at least, and The Doll Twin deserved better, because it is a lot of fun.

 

My Brother, Finch

Continuing my exploration of CBCA Notable books, next comes My Brother, Finch by multi-award winning author Kate Gordon. Initially I was put off by this bleak brown cover; then I was put off by the peculiar formatting of the text, with line breaks between each paragraph. This is a very sad little book, focused on twelve year old Wren, whose brother Finch vanished three years ago on a family excursion, along with another young girl, Ava. Wren's family is shattered; her mother has thrown herself into investigation, her father is deeply depressed, Wren's former friends have drifted away. But when eccentric Freddie appears, it seems that she and Wren might become friends -- do they have more in common than Wren realises?

My Brother, Finch is a beautifully written, poetic book about grief and loss, and the particular pain of open-ended anguish that attaches to 'missing.' There is no happy ending here, though there is some light in the darkness. I've read reviews from adult readers who found it profoundly moving and helpful, but I suspect it might be a book that speaks to adult readers more easily than young ones. I hope that anyone who needs it, young or older, finds this book and loves it.
 

Stay Well Soon

By chance, I read Emily Gale's comments on Penny Tangey's Stay Well Soon just as I was in the middle of reading it. Gale was writing about funny books, and complained that no one would ever guess that Stay Well Soon is a funny book by looking at the 'sad girl on the cover.' She pointed out that Stay Well Soon is a sad book, too, and it is -- it's a book about sibling illness, cancer, death and dying -- but seen through the eyes of our narrator, eleven year old Stevie, it's also very droll and delightful to read.

Stevie is a great protagonist. She's having friendship problems, and all she wants from life is a pony. She fantasises about riding her dream horse, Atta Girl, along beaches and through the desert, communicating telepathically. 'She'll let me know when the campfire is going out.' But when her brother gets sick, suddenly everything revolves around Ryan and his hospital treatments. Very plausibly, Stevie tries to push away her knowledge about what this might mean, but reality intrudes.

I loved Stevie, her friendship with Lara from the hospital, her family, her harassed Mum, who we can see is barely holding on, 'Dad Ben,' new friend Morgan, teacher Mr Parks. There are lots of funny schoolyard scenes, like when the group play Kidnappers and even more when they're playing Royal Family. I absolutely loved Stay Well Soon and Tangey strikes the perfect balance between poignant and snort-giggle.
 

As Fast As I Can

Full disclosure: I made friends with Penny Tangey years ago when we both attended a literary festival at a school in Queensland. She was a baby author back then, having just published her first book, Loving Richard Feynman, which I adored. I spotted As Fast As I Can in a street library -- I've had a few good finds lately!

As Fast As I Can was published in 2020 and it won both the Readings Prize and the Queensland Literary Award, and rightly so, because it's terrific. Ten year old Vivian wants to go to the Olympics. After trying and failing at several different sports, she discovers that she is actually a talented long distance runner. But when her mum is diagnosed with a genetic heart condition, it might mean the end of Vivian's Olympic dream.

As Fast As I Can is filled with Tangey's droll humour, perfectly pitched to a young audience, but as all the best kids' books are, thoroughly engaging and funny for an adult reader, too. Vivian's story is a poignant one but it's never sentimental, and there is plenty in here about changing friendships, healthy choices and family relationships, as well as hopes and dreams. Even though I've never been a runner or indeed sporty in any way, I really loved it.
 

We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord

I enjoyed this book a lot. Garth Nix has mined his own Canberra childhood, his history as a teenage D&D Dungeonmaster and put a John Wyndham-esque sci-fi twist on it all to produce an action-packed middle grade novel.

Kim (Chimera) and his younger sister Elia (Elieithyia) live with their eccentrically hippie parents on the outskirts of 1970s Canberra, spending most of their time hanging out with their friends Bennie and Madir, but everything changes one day when they fish a mysterious golden globe out of the lake. This incident is based on a true story from Nix's childhood, when he thought he saw a severed head in the murky waters one day (I think it turned out to be a motorbike helmet). Before long, child prodigy Elia is in communication with the strange sphere, which becomes progressively more and more threatening and dangerous.

We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord reminded me of John Wyndham's classic Chocky, which scared the suitcase out of me as a child, and also fascinated me. Things never get too terrifying here, though there is certainly plenty of danger and lots of action. I raced through it and I hope plenty of young readers do the same. My only quibble is that I was never quite sure how to pronounce Elia.
 

As Happy As Here

Jane Godwin is becoming (in my mind) one of those reliable authors whose books you can relax into, knowing that you're in safe hands for the journey. As Happy As Here, like Look Me In the Eye (though it was published earlier), features a trio of girls aged around thirteen, one of whom is more troubled than the other two. In this book, Evie, Lucy and Jemma are thrust together in a hospital ward, and while there is a mystery to solve and danger to face, the real focus is on the gradual friendship that stutters between the three of them. Evie and Lucy are comfortably middle class and secure in their parents' love (though Lucy has lost her mum, and is also facing her own health battles); but Jemma is an unwanted, lonely child who displays her insecurities in undesirable behaviour -- lying, stealing, being rude. But Godwin is skilful in helping the reader to understand the challenges that Jemma faces, even though she's not easy to be around.

Godwin captures precisely the atmosphere of a busy hospital, the constant activity, the fact that even the nights are never truly dark or quiet, the close but brief relationships with nurses and physios, the boredom, the discomfort. The mystery plot is clever, too, even though it ends in a shocking way. And there are big questions sprinkled throughout -- about fate, and choices, luck and kindness.
 

Sensitive

Thirteen year old SJ (formerly Samantha) has just moved to a new town, a place where no one knows her shameful secret and she has a chance to start again. Maybe here in Kingston, she can be cool, and pretty, and carefree? Things begin well: SJ makes a new friend, Livvy, and a cute boy is paying attention to her. But her secret can't stay hidden forever...

SJ's shameful secret is her skin. Like Webster herself, SJ has terrible eczema which flares up unpredictably, and also severe allergies, not all of which have been identified. She reacts to grass, to the flowers the class dissects in science, to eggs, and who knows what else. Her worried mother puts her on an exclusion diet which eliminates almost every food, but SJ can't stop scratching, and she's tortured by the thought that people might guess that under her clothes, her skin is a red, painful, itchy mess. And what if the cute boy wants to kiss her? He'll be repulsed!

Sensitive draws heavily on Webster's own experiences; she almost died (twice) as a result of her conditions. Some of the strategies in the story seemed outdated to me, and it was hard to believe that a contemporary family (especially with a librarian for a mother) who avoid Dr Google so completely. My heart really went out to SJ and her family (and by extension, to Webster herself), and of course anything that makes you different, and especially look different, is all the more agonising at thirteen. Sensitive would be such a useful, compassionate book to give any child or adolescent suffering from skin complaints

Look Me in the Eye

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book, it seemed that it might be a vaguely dystopian story about surveillance and online data, but it isn't really about that at all. Look Me in the Eye focuses on three friends -- well, two good friends, Bella and Connie, who have just started high school, and Connie's slightly older cousin Mish, who becomes an unwilling companion to the others after changing schools under a cloud.

The plot of Look Me in the Eye might seem fairly low-stakes. Mish is up to no good, having contact with a mysterious older man. She shoplifts and tells lies, and does her best to evade her father's attempts to keep tabs on her. Bella's mum is pregnant and her new partner Pete has just moved into the family's ramshackle house. Connie has a fragile younger sister, who might be at risk from Mish, and Mish herself seems to have stopped eating. Pete's valuable swap card goes missing. Did Mish steal it? Bella doesn't know what to believe.

Low-ish stakes, perhaps, but by the end of the book I was totally caught up in the suspense of the story and desperately hoping for a good resolution. Mish's father is a domineering and controlling character who exudes a genuine sense of threat, and Connie's complicated position, torn between competing loyalties, is subtly drawn. I really enjoyed Look Me in the Eye, which also describes a world immediately post-pandemic, a world of masks and germ-phobia and general nervousness, where lockdown memories are vivid, a world which is already receding into history.

Firewatcher: Brimstone

The first in a trilogy, Kelly Gardiner's Firewatcher: Brimstone weaves together not one but two exciting historical events in a neat time slip structure. When Christopher Larkham finds a mysterious ring on the banks of the Thames in the London Blitz, it seems to give him the power to travel back three hundred years to the Great Fire of London in 1666. Kit darts back and forth between two cities in fiery extremis, using his knowledge of the past to combat the slow-moving but catastrophic seventeenth century blaze -- but he also has to contend with the sinister Brother Blowbladder and his evil plans.

There is plenty of action in this fast-paced adventure, and the other volumes in the Firewatcher series take Kit further back in time, to Saxon Lundenwic and Roman Londinium. I love the concept of getting two historical timelines in a single book, and the idea of linking fires from different eras. An engaging story for younger readers.

Clair-de-Lune

Clair-de-Lune was a fortuitous op shop find, because this is a book I've been meaning to read for a long time. I became Facebook friends with Cassandra Golds after meeting her once years ago, I adored The Museum of Mary Child, but Clair-de-Lune was written in 2004. Golds and I seem to have had quite similar tastes in childhood reading (ballet books, Narnia, the incomparable Nicholas Stuart Gray) and Clair-de-Lune combines the most magical elements of my favourite books into one irresistible package.

It's a fabulous story -- by which I mean, it's like a fable. Small, silent Clair-de-Lune lives in a tall old building filled with mysterious inhabitants in a city that seems quite like Paris. She lives with her grandmother in genteel poverty, just like Sylvia and her great-aunt in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, except that Clair-de-Lune's grandmother is mean, unlike Sylvia's gentle aunt. Two of the most mysterious inhabitants are the kind monk, Brother Inchmahone (yes, there is a whole monastery secreted in the building, behind a stone door) and the chatty, excitable mouse Bonaventure, whose dream it is to start a ballet school for mice. (Shades of Narnia's gallant Reepicheep!)

To say more would be to spoil the story, but suffice it to say that Clair-de-Lune, most unexpectedly, made me cry. I'm a jaded old reader these days and I can't remember the last time I cried at a book, but Clair-de-Lune did it. This book is a gorgeous treasure, old-fashioned in the best possible way.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and Evie and Rhino

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and Evie and Rhino: two books with more in common than meets the eye (though even the covers are quite similar, now that I look at them side by side), though the first is an adult novel and the second is middle grade. For a start, they each feature one of my daughters' names! They are both written by an Australian woman author. They both feature a selectively mute little girl who lives by the sea, has lost both parents and is in the care of a grandparent. They are both beautifully presented, with lovely illustrations, though one is filled with pictures of wildflowers and the other stars a little girl and a rhino. And they have both been very successful in their own genre: The Lost Flowers has been made into an Amazon miniseries, while Evie and Rhino has been shortlisted for the CBCA awards.

I have yet to see the Amazon version of The Lost Flowers, but I can clearly see what attracted the producers to the project. The book is filled with beautiful and striking imagery -- a house in flames, a craters filled with desert pea flowers, a rushing river, names carved in a river red gum -- and themes tailor -made for television audiences, particularly the horror of domestic violence, dark family secrets, and the phenomenal endurance of women. In Holly Ringland's debut novel, she has taken care to include First Nations lore and multi-national stories, which round out a powerful story. (The Lost Flowers also ties in beautifully with much of what I read in First Knowledges: Plants, like the use of certain plants to make adhesives, or for healing.)

Evie and Rhino is also a striking story, one based partly on a true incident in the nineteenth century where a ship carrying animals destined for the Melbourne zoo was wrecked on the Victorian coast. In real life, the rhino on board died soon after the wreck, but in Neridah McMullin's story, he survives and befriends young Evie and her household, who are soon drawn into a conspiracy to save the gentle giant.  It's a sweet tale about unlikely friendship, kindness and courage.

The Jammer

 

There was a time when I wondered if roller derby might the sport for my elder child; she already loved rollerblading, and I thought the rough and tumble and speed of derby might appeal to her. Also, there is a roller derby venue a couple of blocks from our house. Unfortunately, on her second visit, there was a horrific crash where another new recruit broke her ankle -- that was it for my girl.

Nova Weetman is one of our most reliable authors for young people; you know that you're going to get a well-crafted, relatable story with sympathetic characters and realistic problems. The Jammer centres on Fred, whose mother has just died. Her dad has brought her to Melbourne, to meet the people her mum was close to; talking about her and sharing memories is the way he deals with his own grief. But Fred just wants to shut out everything that reminds her of her mother, and that includes roller derby. 

Weetman does a fantastic job of conveying the rush and thrill of this chaotic, fast-paced sport, and the supportive, diverse community that has formed around it. There was an extra treat for me in that the book is set in my own home suburb of Preston -- because of the real roller derby venue, I wonder? I did have a little trouble mapping the geography of the book onto my own familiar streets, but hey, we have to permit some artistic licence, don't we? Weetman has experienced her own deeply personal grief recently, and I know that The Jammer will help plenty of people going through their own pain.

The Goodbye Year

 

Now this is a cover I could fall in love with -- all my favourite colours, books, cats, cups of tea, trees a dog and a ghostly soldier, as well as a touch of golden spot gloss -- yum! My only tiny niggle is that Harper isn't wearing glasses... How I longed for more protagonists with glasses when I was a glum bespectacled 12 year old.

Inside the lovely cover, there is also much to enjoy inside Emily Gale's The Goodbye Year, which is perhaps my first full pandemic novel. As 2020 begins, Harper is looking forward to her final year at Riverlark Primary School, but then she's mown down by a truckload of changes. Her parents move oeverseas, leaving her with Lolly, the grandmother she barely knows; all her friends becomes school captains of something, leaving Harper with the dreggiest job, Library Captain (ahem, the best job, I think you mean.) And then Harper starts seeing things -- could there be a ghost in the old library?

I loved the parallels that Gale draws between the Covid pandemic and the Spanish flu, and the disruptions of war and the global upheaval that gripped all of us in 2020. Harper is a lovable character, her school friends are sweet, and William's story is spooky and moving. Gale doesn't dwell too long on the lockdowns themselves, focusing more on the periods of freedom in between, but not shying away from either the difficulties or the unexpected joys of a year that none of us will ever forget.

How To Spell Catastrophe

 

I already knew that Fiona Wood was an author of superb young adult fiction (see Cloudwish, Six Impossible Things, Wildlife etc) and a really lovely human being (she once sought me out in an airport to invite me to sit with her in the Qantas lounge), but it turns out she can also write superlative novels for middle grade, too. * shakes fist at the sky* Damn you, Fiona Wood! Is there anything you can't do??

How To Spell Catastrophe is smart, warm, funny, subtle children's literature. Nell is in her final year of primary, that complicated time, half itching to move forward into the big new world of high school and the future, half clinging to the safety of the familiar, as she's torn between her old friends and the excitement of lawless new girl Plum. Nell's family is changing, too, when her mum proposes melding their cosy dyad with her boyfriend Ted and his younger daughter Amelia -- an idea which horrifies Nell. To cap it all off, Nell is a worrier, and jots down plans for dealing with any and all possible emergency situations. (I liked the way Nell's therapy sessions are discussed with a matter-of-fact lack of drama, as just another part of her life.) But climate change is such a big worry that it won't even fit into Nell's notebook --

There is so much to love about this book. Wood's writing is top notch, as you'd expect, and she is especially good on the dynamics of friendships. In a lesser novel, Plum might be a 'bad' person -- and she is problematic, encouraging Nell into reckless and irresponsible behaviour, being a bit mean sometimes -- but in Wood's hands the reader sees that Plum has her own issues to deal with, and perhaps what she really needs is a stable, cautious friend like Nell. Change is scary, and How To Spell Catastrophe handles the need to balance courage, careful planning, boldness and prudence in a really beautiful way.

(Ironically I managed to misspell 'catastrophe' twice while writing this post.)