1854 Do You Dare? Eureka Boys - P. Matthews

It’s 1854 on the Ballarat goldfields where life is tough. Young Henry’s daily routine rarely changes. Mostly it’s working the gold-washing cradle on his father’s mining claim on the Gravel Pits Lead. It’s a boring and back-breaking grind, pouring water over the shovelfuls of sandy dirt, rocking it up and down before carefully scrutinising every square inch. Henry’s father is ever-hopeful that each new day will be the one they strike gold. Even Henry’s seven-year-old sister, Eliza, is put to work, panning for gold in a shallow tin dish. When their new-born baby brother succumbs to one of the illnesses rampant on the goldfields, then a week later, their mother, Henry can’t imagine how things could get worse. Bullying and corruption is rife amongst the trappers, the police troopers who collect the exorbitant thirty shillings a month for the miners’ licences, and who make life for the miners even harder than it already is. There seems to be little the miners can do about it without even the right to vote. Henry’s father, bound up in grief and the job of keeping his small family alive, pays him scant attention, and when he does, targets Henry with his anger. So it is not surprising that Henry finds himself enjoying the warm embrace of the family of his new Irish friend, Frank. When this extends to becoming involved with ‘Happy Jack’ and the rebel diggers responsible for burning down the Eureka Hotel, Henry is torn. Obey his father, return to the diggings and never see Frank again, or join the uprising against the traps and the rebellion?

Part of the Do You Dare series, Eureka Boys is an excellent inclusion on the history of the Eureka Stockade and Ballarat gold rush. Penny Matthews has crafted an engaging, well-researched, page-turning story the target audience will love. This period of Australian history comes alive as Henry’s story unfolds and invites the reader onto the diggings and into the harshness of life in 1854 Ballarat. Matthews does not skimp on authentic detail but the brutality of the times is mitigated by humour and the warmth of the main protagonists, Henry, Frank and Happy Jack. The prose is lively and captivating positioning the reader for an evocative response to the powerful story arc. Insightful sections at the back of the book offer a resource to the reader about Eureka, the history of the times, other events that occurred in 1854 and glossary of terms. A thoroughly enjoyable and informative read.

Puffin, 2015

(A version of this review - incorrectly attributed to Patricia Halsall -  appears in Magpies Vol 30, Issue 2, May 2015)

One Rule for Jack - Sally Morgan, Eziekiel Kwaymullina and Craig Smith

Let’s face it – no one wants to hang around doing jobs if they can be out playing with their friends. Jack certainly doesn’t – especially when he’s planned to spend the whole day enjoying some new games with his mate, Thommo. So when Jack stumbles upon a way to trick his parents into thinking he’s done the chores without actually doing them it’s a win-win situation. Or is it? When Jack puts his one rule – ‘When your parents ask you to do a job – do it badly’ – into place, are Jack’s parents on to him or not? When Jack ends up sweeping the leaves off the patio with a dustpan and brush instead of the broom – which has mysteriously snapped in half – and when he ends up with toilet water all over him after suctioning the toilet because something that looks suspiciously like bits of mop sponge are blocking it, you have to wonder.

This is another delightful book from Sally Morgan and Eziekiel Kway Mullina, who have captured the trying-to-get-out-of-a-job scenario perfectly for the young reader. The writing is lively and accessible, the characters likeable and engaging and the whole story is infused with vitality and humour. The authors cleverly position the reader to see what’s coming, when Jack doesn’t, providing plenty of room for an empowering engagement with the text. Craig Smith’s inimitable illustrations are perfect for capturing the spirit of the story; they bring the characters to life superbly.

An entertaining read.

 

Omnibus Books, 2014

 

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 29, Issue 3, July 2014)

 

Between the Lines - Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer

If you’re looking for a quirky fairy tale with appeal to the younger end of the market, this could be the book for you. Picoult fans will be pleased to hear that she and teenage daughter Samantha Van Leer have teamed up to co-write a tale with a metafictive twist. Fifteen-year-old Delilah has become obsessed with a children’s fairy tale book she discovered in the school library. She finds herself tugged back to the book time and again for subsequent readings – in fact, such is her preoccupation, she’d rather live inside the story of the book than in her real life. Delilah must hide her obsession by sequestering herself away in order to keep face with the one friend she has, and not to further alienate herself from her peers. Delilah is unhappy, a loner and struggling to make sense of her life. So it is not entirely surprising to find she has fallen in love with sixteen-year-old Oliver, protagonist of the fairy tale. Prince Oliver, in the meantime, tired of re-living the fake scripted life imposed on him by the author of the fairy tale whenever a reader opens the book, wants out. Especially now that they have discovered a way to speak to each other, and he has fallen in love with Delilah.

Essentially the reader is taken on a journey of countless attempts to extract Oliver out of the fairy tale and into Delilah’s world, where they can be together. I began to find this tiresome as it became apparent that this was to be the focus of the story arc. The novel is structured with chapters presented in turn from Oliver’s and Delilah’s perspectives, interspersed with the fairy tale itself. The fairy tale characters felt more fleshed out than the real world characters in this intrepid co-authored novel and I found it difficult to like or have empathy for Delilah, who seemed remote and two-dimensional at times. Some of her angsty responses to her mother, her peers and Oliver felt contrived and not readily believable. I would have liked to have seen more of the book devoted to developing Delilah’s backstory in order to set the reader up to care about her and to understand her motivation.

Given these limitations, the book still delivers an enjoyable read and teens will no doubt engage with the well-drawn array of fairy tale characters – often imbued with humour – and the leitmotifs of the book – loneliness, identity, loss, authenticity and strategies to cope with life, to name a few. The reader is able to read this book on several levels and one of the strengths of the writing is in the clever use of symbolism to underscore the broad themes. Does Delilah actually communicate with Oliver in the fairy tale or is the reality of her life so unbearable that it is easier to obfuscate it in the fantasy offered up by the world of the book?

An audacious teen love-story for those who love fairy tales.

Allen & Unwin, 2014

We Were Liars - E. Lockhart

The Sinclairs are ‘beautiful, privileged, damaged liars’. In the summertime they live on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. It is on this island, driven by greed and subverted by secrets, their perfect fairy tale lives collide and spin out into the gothic drama that real fairy tales are wont to do – with consequences no one could possibly have imagined. Caddy, granddaughter of the island’s patriarch, finds her broken life enmeshed with that of the Liars – her two eldest cousins, Mirren and Johnny, and Gat, who she has always loved. Together the four friends, young and galvanised by ideals, conspire to change their world. Then there is an accident.

This is a love story, a thriller, a book that will leave you reeling long after you close its covers. It is a story about fear, treachery, deceit, neediness, desperation and power in the form of three sisters who attempt to use their children to manipulate their wealthy father – and what happens when the eldest children revolt and declare enough. It is the story of a girl whose life fractures, whose heart splinters into shards of disaffection and disengagement in the face of great tragedy.

Lockhart is a master storyteller. Her prose is penetrating and fresh; it’s clever, spare, and poetic, sometimes given over to the feel of a verse novel. Her use of allegory in the various retellings of the fairy tales works exquisitely. Her characters are real and the outworking of their motivations creates entirely believable and substantial subtext.

You won’t want to put this book down once you begin. Discomforting but utterly compelling. An ending you absolutely were not expecting. Once We Were Liars gets into the hands of its YA audience, it will market itself.

Allen & Unwin, 2014

 

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 29, Issue 3, July 2014)

 

The Boy from Snowy River (Mates Series) - Edwina Howard and Joe Bond

Young George wants to go to Big Spills Water World more than anything, but he lives in Mumblegum – in the middle of nowhere. Gran has an idea. If George wins the Stockman’s Cup, the five hundred dollar prize money could make a trip to the fun park possible. But this is a horse race, George points out to Gran, in the spirit of ‘The Man from Snowy River’ – they won’t let him enter on his motorbike! Gran’s got it all worked out: George can ride Bandicoot – who these days spends his time on the veranda with his best friend, Croak, a crow that can’t fly, but can call out, ‘Haveacuppatea!’. Gran has every confidence in Bandicoot, pure mountain-bred and winner of the Cup five years straight in his younger years. George thinks about the prize money and decides to give it a go. What he doesn’t know is he’s in for the race of his life and that Croak and three naughty goats are going to make things complicated.

The Boy from Snowy River, part of the Mates series of ‘great Australian yarns’, is a delightful book for beginning readers. Its presentation makes it immediately accessible to the target audience with its short chapters, appropriate font size and Joe Bond’s colourful, humorous and animated illustrations. I did find the stratagem of highlighting random words on every page in different fonts and sizes off-putting, but perhaps this would be appealing to a young child. At first I thought this was to draw attention to unfamiliar vocabulary, but this did not seem to be consistently the case. The intertextual references to Banjo Paterson’s ‘The Man from Snowy River’ worked well, adding depth of meaning and interest to the text – which was well-plotted and held the reader’s attention throughout. The characters, especially the waggish Gran and protagonist, George, were likeable and well drawn. If the reader was not already familiar with the text to which this story alludes, the book would serve as an excellent introduction. Entertaining and enjoyable – a great Aussie yarn indeed.

 

Omnibus Books, 2014

 

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 29, Issue 3, July 2014)

 

Calypso Summer - Jared Thomas

Calypso is into the Caribbean – he’s into Rasta, reggae, Bob Marley, Usain Bolt and the West Indies cricket team. He wears his hair in dreadlocks and no one calls him Kyle, his real name. He’s even convinced his customers at the local health food shop that he’s Jamaican. It’s not surprising Calypso would want to idolise someone like Bob Marley, who, like Calypso, had a black dad and a white mum and grew up poor. (Marley’s dad took off, Calypso’s died.) Calypso reckoned that being a black kid in a white world would be easier if he was cool; being a Rasta provided him with a sense of identity. Run, Calypso’s cousin, on the other hand, hangs out in Calypso’s flat all day smoking ganja (cannabis) – when he’s not out with his mate stealing grog for drug money – as his way of dealing with the challenges of being a blackfella in a predominantly white person’s world.

This is a story about choices, about determination and hope. It is the story of what happens when a young man rediscovers his connection to country, to his mob, and unearths within himself a sense of who he is within his wider family and community. It is also the story of the harsh reality of age-old racial prejudice and the ramifications of its outworking amongst the Indigenous members of modern Australian society. When Calypso’s boss, Gary, at the Henley Beach Health Food and Products Store wants to introduce a new range of native plants for natural remedies, and enlists Calypso’s help to source some from his ‘tribe’, Calypso’s mum suggests he visit his Nukunu family in the Southern Flinders Ranges. The summer starts looking up for Calypso when he meets Clare, a Ngadjuri girl who works at the local hairdressing salon down the street; the two of them join forces to help wager a fair deal between Gary and Calypso’s elders who oversee the land where the plants grow. Festering in the background, however, like a boil about to burst, is the situation with his cousin Run’s covert criminal activities and the possible impact on Calypso’s life.

Calypso Summer is a well-crafted story populated with authentic characters – Calypso is immediately likeable, aptly flawed. The reader is drawn into the lives of each character –Calypso, Clare, Gary, Run, Calypso’s mob – into all the messiness, exuberance, optimism and ordinariness each life affords. The many references to culture add richness and verisimilitude to the text: ‘You see, the Dreaming ain’t just a lot of stories, it’s a way of living, staying connected with country, giving and taking’. Calypso Summer is also a story that dives intrepidly into the swirling waters of drug dependency and petty crime within the Indigenous community. Run’s downward spiral into hopelessness is poignantly contrasted with Calypso’s rediscovery of his roots and the way his connection with country and family help provide him with agency. Punctuated with life lessons, a story that foregrounds the power of acceptance, the potentiality of self-belief and the importance of culture.

Strong language and drug references deem this a book suitable for an older YA audience.

Magabala Books, 2014

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 29, Issue 3, July 2014)

 

Australian Federation: One People, One Destiny - Net Brennan

One of the winning aspects of this educational picture book for upper primary school students (and beyond) is its narrative flow: it reads like a story. Net Brennan has crafted her significant research into a body of work that is accessible from the outset: the historical figures that populated the era around Federation become three-dimensional characters that are weaved deftly into a compelling chronicle. The reader is introduced to names that perhaps already sound familiar to them – surnames they recognise from street signs, the names of universities, the suburbs of Canberra, their houses at school. Brennan brings such characters as Parkes, Deakin, Griffith, Barton (Tosspot Toby!), Reid, Kingston – and the women Catherine Spence and Mary Lee – to life as she relates the journey of their various roles in the move to towards Federation. The tension Brennan builds around the ever-present ‘yes or no’ question – will the colonies vote for a constitution that results in a federated Australia? – works well to keep the reader engaged.

The tone of the narrative is easy-going, the congenial voice of the narrator positioning the reader to gain insights into the ordinary lives of the men – and scattering of women – who effected change on the early political landscape of the nation. This, for instance, invites the reader to feel the frustration and disappointment around the many setbacks to the formulation of the Australian Constitution, having been made privy to the journey of those who worked towards its inception and eventual acceptance.

The visual impact of the book is immediately appealing. The text is broken up with a diverse array of illustrations into manageable chunks, a new story element introduced and featured on each double-page spread. The illustrations feature photographs of the time, paintings, political cartoons, diagrams and sketches. The book also features break-out segments that define terminology for the child reader, and includes a short glossary at the back. The background sepia tones and variation in fonts contribute to the accessibility and aesthetic of the work.

A criticism of this text is the cursory glance it gives to the original and subsequent impact of colonisation on the Indigenous population, and the dubious title of the first page opening/chapter: ‘A Name Without a Nation’, which, in this context, lends weight to an unfortunate subtextual reference to the assumption of terra nullius and its violent consequences (which the book does not address).

Apart from said criticism, the book is certainly an interesting, informative and engaging read.

Black Dog Books, 2014

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 29, Issue 2, May 2014)