Reviews

Trouble and the missing cat by Cate Whittle

Ill. by Stephen Michael King. Omnibus Books, 2016. ISBN 9781742990774
(Age: 7+) Recommended. A further adventure with Trouble the dragon and feisty friend Georgia will delight readers and has universal appeal. Trouble has been banned from landing on the school's playground because he broke the asphalt, and can't land on the oval because he is burning the grass. But riding to school and elsewhere on Trouble's back is the only way that the family can get around. And then there is the mystery of Mrs Jones' cat Tibbles, who has gone missing.
This is a charming story and the reader quickly becomes involves in the lives of Trouble and Georgia. Whittle's narrative makes it very easy for the reader to suspend belief about having a dragon for a friend and the adventures of the two make for an engrossing read. Georgia is a very clever girl who really enjoys solving mysteries and puts all her ingenuity and intelligence in solving the mystery of what has happened to Tibbles, especially as Mrs Jones is missing him so much. Her compassion is evident as she gives Trouble a helping hand to overcome his loneliness and her problem solving skills are phenomenal.
Stephen Michael King's quirky illustrations add an extra dimension and humour to the beautifully written text.
Readers who enjoy some well written magic realism with their mystery stories will not be disappointed.
Pat Pledger

One more friend by Bill Condon

Lily the Elf: The jumble sale by Anna Branford

Saving Jazz by Kate McCaffrey

Fremantle Press, 2016. ISBN 9781925163582
(Age: 14+) Recommended. Sexual assault, Crime, Social media, Cyberbullying. At a Friday night party in their small country town south of Perth, some of the year ten friends get horribly drunk and one girl, Annie has pictures of her naked body shared on snapchat. Her best friend, Jazz is appalled and thinks back wondering why she had not protected her friend. Two boys have written inflammatory things over her body and admit to having a bit of fun but when a video emerges showing that the boys have digitally raped her and Jazz is complicit in this, actually sexually assaulting her friend, then the police are involved.
Rejected by her parents she goes to stay with her aunt in Perth to await the court case, but Annie's pictures go viral within the community and beyond, eliciting appalling comments from those who see them. Annie distraught about her betrayal and not able to cope with the cyberbullying, tries to kill herself, and during the court case her life support is turned off.
This is a cautionary tale like no other. The shock of what happened at the party will jolt the hardiest of readers, and force them to think about how they would have behaved in similar circumstances. Despite Jazz's years of medical appointments and efforts to reform her life, the impact of her dealings with Annie is never far from her thoughts.
McCaffrey details the effects on everyone's life: Jazz's parents, aunt and uncle, the two boys, Annie's family and the community. The story forces the reader to think about some of the more unsavoury aspects of our society: domestic violence, the impact of video games, sexual assault, women's refuges, attitudes to women and cyberbullying. Each plays a part in this tale and information is infused within the story.
The last part of the book concerns Jazz's first year at uni where she is harassed by one of her lecturers, a man she finds out later, who is well known for his sexualised behaviour towards first year female students. Although I felt this was an unnecessary addition it does give a neat contrast to what has gone on before and again the reader is put into the position of asking themselves what they would have done.
McCaffrey has written a book that will be hugely popular, gaining an audience through word of mouth, readers taking to heart this cautionary tale comparing it with the 'what might have been' in their own lives and questioning the role of social media in their lives.
Fran Knight

The big flood by Rebecca Johnson

Ill. by Kyla May. Juliet nearly a vet series, bk. 11. Penguin Australia, 2016. ISBN 9780143507031
(Age: 8+) Recommended. Adventure. Floods. Humour. Animals. Veterinarians. Another in this appealing series finds Juliet and her family facing a flood. Juliet's mother, a veterinarian, is called out to help move some alpacas to higher ground and Juliet, her friend Chelsea and her brother Max, go along to help. When the alpacas are rescued Juliet notices lots of other small animals and insects marooned on an island and persuades her father to go in a canoe to help bring them to the mainland.
Two things stand out in this junior novel - intriguing information about animals and a clever cast of children. Juliet keeps a vet diary which describes the behaviour of the animals. Readers find out that alpacas make different sounds depending on their circumstances, the names of different members of the alpaca family and that they spit when they want to frighten predators away. The spitting episode is illustrated in a very humorous drawing by Kyla May that will have the readers laughing out loud.
Readers will also be alerted to what happens to small creatures when there is a flood. Juliet and her friend Chelsea are very enterprising about working out how to rescue the animals and how to keep them safe. In addition to the information about alpacas, there is also information about other animals, stick insects in particular, that makes an interesting adjunct to the adventure of actually rescuing the animals and insects. A multiple choice quiz at the back of the book will also entertain animal lovers.
A great series to hand to the newly emerging reader or lovers of animals.
Pat Pledger

The pain, my mother, cyber boy, Sir Tiffy and me by Michael Gerard Bauer

Scholastic, 2016. ISBN 9781742991504
(Age: 12+) Highly recommended. Humour, School, Cats, Nursing home. When The Pain comes into Maggie's life she does all she can to avoid him. Danny is mum's new boyfriend, and loves to sing at inappropriate moments, and makes the most outrageous jokes. He was also the nurse on duty in the local emergency department when she was brought in drunk following a sleepover, so her embarrassment compounds itself. But nearing the end of year ten, Maggie has several aims: getting a partner for the end of year dance, making a good friend at her school and achieving an A for English. Seems simple enough but her attempts to achieve these goals will have readers laughing uproariously as she staggers from one disaster to another.
Bauer uses a diary like format to achieve his aim. The text is full of sentences in capital letters, an army of apostrophes and so much hyperbole that each page sings with irony and sarcasm.
He makes no pretense of showing the reader what these grammatical conventions mean and they will love him for it, learning about them with a great dose of humour.
Maggie is an outsider at her school, and so thinks that achieving her aim of a good A for English will be simple, but she has not accounted for the replacement nun, Sister Evangelista, who tries to curb Maggie's exuberance in writing while developing her editing skills. Her Macbeth essay forms a link through the novel. But Maggie needs to get a male person to be her partner at the dance, and asking Jeremy Tyler-Roy elicits the most extraordinary response. When she finds out why this happened she wreaks revenge upon some of the girls in her year group with unsurprising results. While school grinds on at home she must still put up with Danny and with the cat he brings her to babysit until he finds it a permanent home. On the night of the school dance they eventually find some shared sympathy and almost all of her aims are achieved. This is a wonderful read, full of humour and laughs, with some gems of observation. A stint at the local nursing home reveals that Sister Evangelista's wry comment about judging books by their covers has some resonance and this spills over into many aspects of Maggie's life.
I loved reading this book and was very sad to leave these characters behind. All of them are multi layered, with depths revealed as the story unfolds. Bauer is an acute spectator of these people's behaviors and it wonderful to see an author leave elements for the reader to work out for themselves.
Fran Knight

This girl, that girl by Charlotte Lance

Allen and Unwin, 2016. ISBN 9781760291709
(Ages: 5-8) Difference, Personalities. This is a unique story inspired by the author's two children, one who is messy and the other who is neat. Two girls live side by side; one is messy and unorganised and does wild things like walking along a wall while blindfolded. The other is neat and somewhat obsessive about order, doing crazy things like vacuuming the lawn. Their respective fathers are the exact opposite of them (the disorganised girl has an organised father and the organised girl has a disorganised father). Therefore, when each couple set out to build a tree house, their respective approaches to the task see them finish up with nearly identical products (showing elements of both order and chaos). As the author says of the book, it shows that 'whoever we are, we usually get to where we're going in our very own ways'. It highlights differing personalities and emphasises that it is ok to be unique and individual, even if it means we are different to our own family. The repetitiveness and the use of 'this' and 'that' adds a nice flow to the story when read aloud and the illustrations are wonderfully detailed and intricate, perfectly portraying the personalities of the characters. It is more suited to older children, as younger children may not fully understand the concept or the point of the story. They also may not understand the outlandishness of the things the characters are doing or the nuances of their extreme personalities, which require close analysis of the intricate illustrations.
Nicole Nelson

Mrs Whitlam by Bruce Pascoe

Magabala Books, 2016. ISBN 9781925360240
(Age: 8+) Highly recommended. Horses. Rescue work. A wonderful heart-warming short novel, Mrs Whitlam has great appeal because of its description of a bond between a girl and a horse, the closeness of family and the courage that one girl can show. Marnie has been given the part Clydesdale horse named Mrs Whitlam, and Marnie's mum has told her she should be proud to have a horse named after 'a wonderful woman'. Mrs Whitlam had belong to a girl who was killed in a car accident and her mother couldn't bear to be reminded so she gave the horse to Marnie.
The story is told in the first person by Marnie in her own entertaining way. She develops a deep bond with the horse, looking after her and using her as a sounding board for her life. When the two are at the beach, Marnie spots a child on the verge of being drowned, and together the pair manage to rescue the baby. When they get him back on the beach a boy from her school, George Costa, helps with the resuscitation and a friendship develops from there.
In Marnie, Pascoe has developed a great heroine and even though she faces teasing about her Aboriginal background, she learns to stand up for herself and continues to look after Mrs Whitlam. The loving bonds found within her family are equally as appealing as the friendship between Marnie and Mrs Whitlam, her mother standing out as a loving and wise woman who is compassionate and helpful.
This is an uplifting short novel that ticked all the boxes for me. Horse lovers are in for a treat and it would be an excellent read aloud in the classroom or a literature circle book.
Pat Pledger

The other Christy by Oliver Phommavanh

Puffin, 2016. ISBN 9780143505723
(Age: 9+) Highly recommended. Humour, Refugees, Immigration, Cambodia. Comedian and author Phommavanh has written several books for young readers, including the popular Thai-rrific (2010) and Punchlines (2012) as well as short stories included in anthologies such as Rich and Rare (2016) and Things that a Map Won't Show You (2012). His books add to the increasing number of books for children that show the lives of a range of cultures represented in Australia today.
Christy has come to Australia from Cambodia with her grandfather, after her mother died. They move into a small flat around the corner from her aunt, Mayly and her Australian husband.
But Christy has no friends and turns to Mayly for help. Another girl in her class has the same name but is rude and dismissive of Christy encouraging others to follow her lead. When Mayly suggests that food is a good way to make friends they spend the weekend baking a cake to take to school, which proves proves to be a great success. Again she approaches Christie with friendship and is rejected but undaunted she continues to bake for her class. She invites Christie to her house but this has the opposite effect as the girl takes stories back to the school about her grandfather. She finally opens up to her grandfather about how unhappy she is, and he tells her a little of his background in Cambodia, under the Kmer Rouge. This explains why her grandfather is so obsessive about dirt and tidiness. Both learn to be more accepting, and eventually Christy's cooking skills win her friends at school.
The common ground they find is wonderful in letting readers know that they too can find common ground between themselves and their friends and caregivers, and this lovely story will help them to be more accepting of older relatives.
This story of a Cambodian family in Australia, gives our safe children an eye into a world north of our country where horrific acts occurred only forty years ago, rivaling any barbarity of the twentieth century. The story allows our children to view the horrors that occurred in Cambodia through grandfather's story, gently told, of his survival when a quarter of the population of seven million people were slaughtered. The loving relationship between the two will melt hearts as they find common ground.
Fran Knight

Zelda's big adventure by Marie Alafaci

Ill. by Shane McG (McGowan). Allen and Unwin, 2016. ISBN 9781925266382
(Age: 4+) Highly recommended. Hens, Space, Achievement, Read a loud. Zelda is sure of one thing; she wants to travel in space. And not only to get there amongst the stars, but to be the first chook to achieve this.
She asks the other chooks if they can help. But each she asks in turn is unable to help. One is too busy, while several cannot do the things she asks, so she does the work herself. Sawing the wood for the spaceship, making plans for her journey and exercising to get herself ready for the event.
Shane McG's illustrative technique will entrance the readers, with his chooks reflecting so much character in their faces and body language. The view from space of the farm and all of its out houses intrigued me as did the wonderful suitcase and little green aliens, adding subtle touches of retro. The readers will laugh uproariously at the thought of this diminutive chook hurtling off into space with a wooden spaceship (take note of its beginnings!) and cosy nesting box. But she succeeds, circling the skies, and conducting her experiments. When she arrives home, all the other chooks want to be part of her success, and tell people that they had a hand in her preparations. But the readers and Xelda know better. Everyone agrees however that this was the most exciting thing ever to happen in their chook yard, and Zelda imagines that if she goes again she will take her friends.
This is a layered read aloud with possibilities for classes when talking about space and space travel, but also about friendship and what constitutes a friend. Zelda is most accommodating with her friends and even though they declined to help her she includes them in her big adventure when she returns, even thinking about taking them on her next trip. She is a lovely character and I wonder where she will go next.
Fran Knight

Ella Diaries: Friends not Forever by Meredith Costain

Ill. by Danielle McDonald. Scholastic Australia, 2016. ISBN 9781760157173
(Age: 6-9) Recommended. Friendship. School plays. This is the first in the series that I have read and I really enjoyed reading about the trials that Ella faced, not only in performing in the school play but in keeping a best friend. Two exciting thing happened at Ella's school - there was a new girl named Amethyst and there was going to be a school play about pirates. Ella and her best friend Zoe are determined to be in the cast for the play and spend a lot of time practising their lines.
Ella writes down the details of her life in her diary in a most entertaining and interesting way. The reader will have lots of fun following what is happening as she tries out for the school play, is side tracked by Peach's bad behaviour and comes to grips with the fact that Zoe is becoming friends with Amethyst. Her humorous and sometimes touching entries are accompanied by fabulous little illustrations that are sure to bring a smile to the reader's face.
The diary format will be very appealing and the themes of joining in a school play, getting along with siblings and working out the dynamics of friendship will be ones that young readers will find easy to relate to and enjoy reading about.
Pat Pledger

When Michael met Mina by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Pan Macmillan, 2016. ISBN 9781743534977
(Age: Secondary students) Highly recommended. This is superb and should be recommended reading to all high school students! Randa Abdel-Fattah is able to uncover the essence of high Sshool life and relationships, at the same time as revealing the dilemmas of the feisty Mina, the young Afghani refugee and the unsettling bigotry that exists and grows within Australian society. Abdel-Fattah does this gently, and with understanding, revealing the struggles of the very intelligent Mina as she tries to fit into a North Shore School as a scholarship holder. Her background is so foreign to the students that she shares class with that the discovery of friendship is very powerful, and her presence also changes those around her, giving them insight into their own attitudes. Mina's friendship with Michael changes his life in ground-shattering ways, and her rapport with her friend Paula is delightfully 'decorated' with Oscar Wilde quotes. Every young person should read this engaging narrative, not least because it esteems Poetry Slam events, standing up for others, academic achievement, and gives voice to the experience of those who are happy to call Australia 'home', and yet are not given the chance to understand its rules, or are criticised when they seek to hold onto a small taste of what is familiar to them.
This was a book that I could not put down. I loved the voice and concerns of the main characters and the understanding that young people are multi-faceted. I was also impressed in the way the conflict between opposing viewpoints was introduced with sensitivity, examining principles rather than descending into a distasteful brawl, and also giving insight into the way the media can also become embroiled in communicating viewpoints.
Highly Recommended.
Carolyn Hull

Ella and Olivia: Zoo rescue by Yvette Poshoglian

Ill. by Danielle Macdonald. Scholastic, 2016. ISBN 9781760157203
(Age: 5+) Recommended. Zoos. Penguins. Orangutans. Ella and Olivia are really excited because they are off to the Zoo. Olivia is particularly interested in the orangutans, and Ella can't wait to see the penguins. Ella has learnt a lot about penguins when she did a research assignment on them and she really wants to see them. However when they finally get to the penguin enclosure, it is closed because the penguins are being moved to a larger site. Ella spots a penguin who has been left behind and she and Olivia go its rescue.
With large print and lots of black and white illustrations this is a perfect book for the young reader who is just leaving picture books and wants something a bit more demanding. The story is divided into five short chapters that will enable the reader to break up the plot. There are also lots of details about penguins and orangutans that will fascinate young children learning about animals and will really appeal to children who like to discover more about animal life.
Pat Pledger

When Luke Skywalker became an X-wing pilot by Trey King

Star Wars. Story-time saga. Hardie Grant Egmont, 2016. ISBN 9781760128401
(Age: 6+) Recommended. Young fans of the Star Wars saga will be delighted with this picture book that shows Luke Skywalker when he has joined the rebels in their fight against the Empire. They want to destroy the deadly battle station, the Death Star, and Luke is on a mission as an X-wing pilot to attack it.
Readers familiar with the film Star Wars: A new hope, will recognise the episode and those new to the Star Wars story will be thrilled with the action of the X-wing fighters as they zoom against the Death Star. When Luke gets into trouble his friend Han Solo swoops down in the Millennium Falcon to help out. Luke has to become confident and use the Force to win the battle, remembering the advice of Obi-Wan.
Large print and words in bold will be a boon for beginning readers, and younger children will enjoy having this story read to them. The bright illustrations complement the story and give a vivid impression of the tense action in the battles. This is sure to become a favourite of children who love the movies and the Lego figures associated with Star Wars.
Pat Pledger

Penelope Perfect: The truly terrible mistake by Chrissie Perry

Hardie Grant Egmont, 2016. ISBN 9781760120276
Penelope Kingston (aka Penelope Perfect) has made a terrible mistake. When she answered the questions on the maths test, she missed five of them on the back of the page!! Not only does that mean she might not get an A on her report card (and thus the admiration and another $20 from her absent father) but she has also received the same mark as Joanna, the 'naughty girl' in the class who is much more adept at blowing spitballs than academics. Penelope is devastated, especially when Ms Pike refuses to let her take the test again!
But she sees a way to redeem her grades (which seem to be her motivation and on which her entire self-worth is based) through excelling in the drama competition instead. In fact she has already written a play that will put them ahead of the other groups, but then her drama teacher Mr Salmon mixes up the groups and instead of her usual crew, Penelope now has Joanna in her group - and Joanna most definitely has her own ideas!
Penelope turns to her beloved grandfather for advice - as she often does, particularly when she feels the loud, bossy, angry twin of her Gemini personality rising - and he gives her the cryptic message to 'colour outside the lines'. So will she be able to work as a team member and shine in the play or will her wilfulness and need to be perfect (in her eyes) destroy all her relationships? Is even her new best friend Bob deserting her?
Barbara Braxton