Review Blog

Sep 23 2011

Poppy and the thief by Gabrielle Wang

Ill. by Lucia Masciullo. Our Australian Girl (series). Penguin, 2011. ISBN 978 0 14 330534 7.
(Ages: 9+) Australian history. Poppy hears about Jimmy Ah Kew from the owner at Summerhill Station, when he spies her letter with his seal. She leaves the place headed for Wahgunyah, the town where Jimmy lives, again alone on the road, where many adventures befall her. She shares a meal with a man she meets, and later finds he is the notorious bushranger, Harry Power, and she finds a friend in Jimmy Ah Kew, as well as a dog she calls Fisher.
The third in the quartet about Poppy, a gold rush era girl living through the mid 1860's, a time of great change for Australia. The perspective of an Aboriginal Chinese girl gives it a different point of view of many other stories set in this time, and the facts given at the end of the book will help students understand the times more readily. As with the others in the Our Australian Girl series, there is a teaser leading readers to the fourth book in this series within a series.
Fran Knight