Turn off the Lights:The Debt Instalment Two - Phillip Gwynne

The Debt – Instalment Two raises more questions than answers. Dom’s next task is to turn off all of the Gold Coast’s lights during Earth Hour. How can a fifteen-year-old boy manage that? He has ClamTop – the mysterious laptop computer supplied to him by The Debt, that opens on voice-command – but he’s going to need a heck of a lot of resourcefulness to pull this one off. And it’s complicated. Not only does Dom have to race against the clock to put a strategy in place, he has to beat Fiends of the Earth at their own game, to stop someone being maimed, or worse.

And how is Dom going to prevent Tristan from taking advantage of Imogen – when he’s discovered they plan to meet when the lights go off? Then there’s Dad acting weirdly. What did he mean when he said The Debt didn’t necessarily impose an imposition and ‘to turn adversity into advantage’? Why has he lied all these years saying he doesn’t ‘speakka the wog’ when Dom overhears him having a conversation in perfect Calabrian? And what of that comment, ‘my hands are bloody but unbowed’?

If all this is not baffling enough, why is taxi driver Luiz Antonio following Dom? And why did Seb, Dom’s running mate, set him up to run through Preacher’s Forest – which the kids at school say is littered with mutilated and mouldering bodies – and where Dom is shot with a tranquiliser dart that knocks him out cold? What of the kidnapping incident with Zoe – the Zolt’s sister? And the men in the balaclavas with baseball bats so desperate to retrieve the Double Eagle coin? And for that matter, the Zolt. Where is he?

This next instalment in The Debt series is peppered with intrigue as the plot becomes more and more clue-laden, making it impossible to stop at book two.

Allen & Unwin 3013


(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 28, Issue 1, March 2013)

Catch the Zolt: The Debt Instalment One - Phillip Gwynne

All up, Dom Silvagni doesn’t have much to complain about. If you took out of the equation Tristan Jazzy’s annoying habit of leaving his sister’s bike lying about for Dom to almost trip over on his early morning run – made all the more annoying when it happens right in front of Imogen Havilland’s bedroom window – then life is pretty good. Dom lives in luxury with his parents and younger brother and sister, and one-legged grandfather, Gus, in Halcyon Grove on the Gold Coast. Gus is also Dom’s coach and there is not much that takes priority over running in Dom’s world.

However, on Dom’s fifteenth birthday everything changes. First he is stalked by a mysterious white van on his morning run, and after hearing a whooshing sound, wakes up on the pavement, unable to account for four minutes of his life, with only a mosquito-bite-like mark on his hand to show for it. Then, after discussing secret men’s business with his father and Gus, Dom finds out that he is responsible for clearing an ancient family debt by performing six formidably difficult tasks. The first instalment is to catch the Zolt, a seventeen-year-old who has stolen cars, boats and even light planes from nearby Reverie Island. If he fails to deliver, The Debt will take their pound of flesh. As they did with Gus.

This leads Dom on a thrilling adventure, where he must befriend his arch-enemy, the self-centred Tristan, and watch him try to seduce Imogen, Dom’s friend since childhood. As the race to find the Zolt moves to Reverie Island, it is impossible to discern the difference between allies and enemies; Dom must use every ounce of courage and resourcefulness he can muster, not only to preserve his family’s honour, but to preserve his life.

This adventure series, targeted unashamedly at upper primary school (and I would say teenage) boys, is Phillip Gwynne’s first foray into writing for this demographic. It is a ripper of a yarn – suspenseful, cleverly plotted, well-crafted and funny. The text works hand-in-glove with the reader’s intelligence and assumed general knowledge which creates both the effect of rounding out the central character, Dom, through whose voice we hear the events of the story unfold, and aligning the reader to empathise with him in his quest. The target audience will identify with Dom’s strength of character as he negotiates his various predicaments, and be drawn into the story not only because of its page-turning quality but by the authenticity of the characterisation – well supported by voice, setting and subtext.

Some adroit foreshadowing in the first book sets down clues and sets the reader up to unravel the larger mystery as the series progresses.

Allen & Unwin 2013

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 28, Issue 1, March 2013)

The Windy Farm - Doug McLeod and Craig Smith

When your family lives on the windiest farm on Windy Hill, because it’s all they can afford, life can be tricky. Everyone except Grandpa is in constant danger of blowing away. Even the pigs. But inventor Mum comes up with a solution that sees everybody– chooks and all – fitted out with heavy metal shoes. But on the day that half the house blows away – even though Grandpa says, ‘Never mind’ – something must be done. When rich Uncle Jeff, who has an oil well in his back yard next to the clothes line, says, ‘it’s your silly fault for buying such a windy farm’ and refuses to help, a bit of ingenuity and Grandpa’s power tools save the day. Until the power bill arrives. It’s a sad day when the family must sell off Big Betty, Grandpa’s favourite pig. But Mum has an environmentally inspired idea that turns the tide on the family’s fortunes – by turning plenty of windmill blades. Big Betty comes home and everyone lives happily ever after. Except for Uncle Jeff, who gets blown away. ‘Never mind,’ says Grandpa.

It is always a thrill to open a new Doug MacLeod and Craig Smith collaboration and The Windy Farm provides no exception. Let’s hope they keep them coming. The text and spirited illustrations are immediately appealing; the simple storyline, infused with whimsy and humour, effectively sets the stage for Smith’s illustrations, which – as always – breathe vitality, pith and energy into the story. The title is clever and the story about how a family harnesses the power of the wind employs a gentle subtextual teaching element for its young audience without being prescriptive. There is plenty of detail in the illustrations – crafted in gouache and acrylic, and gloriously waggish – to provide a child new discoveries on subsequent returns. They will love, for instance, the page where the house nearly blows away: a bra and underpants go sailing past; the photos fly off the fridge; the moon shines from inside the window while bats are shaken from their sleep in the roof; then Grandpa’s look of surprise as the door swings open to reveal him sitting on the dunny. A delightfully playful book with an environmental edge.
Penguin 2013

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 28, Issue 1, March 2013)

My Superhero - Chris Owen and Moira Court

This first picture book from Chris Owen and Moira Court has all the right ingredients to make it irresistible to its young target audience: it’s visually striking with bold, colourful and endearing illustrations; the rhymed text is perfect for reading aloud; it’s about animals with human qualities; it features repetition that invites the reader join in (KABOOM! KAPOW! KABAM! KASPLAT! My superhero’s not like that.); and it has suspense – the storyline is a riddle, keeping the reader guessing who the superhero might be. The book is a series of lush double-page spreads, each featuring one of a variety of mask-clad animals enacting their superhero role with the accompanying text in four lines of rhyming verse. Every so often the mysterious narrator reminds the reader with a reprise of KABOOM etc to keep guessing. This page then opens out to a majestic quadruple spread with more visual and textual clues supplied to egg the reader on. At the end of the book is an information page detailing facts about each of the animals featured in the story.

My Superhero is an adorable book that small children will be drawn to because of its simplicity, clean design, vibrancy of colour and warmth of characterisation – which comes through in both text and illustrations. Adding to the impact of the book as a whole is the clever use of point of view. The narrator is not seen until the last page, and the superhero animals are presented from a variety of angles: the bear from close-up and front-on; the armadillo, cheetah and chameleon from the side; the goat and the eagle from underneath and so on. On the quadruple-page spreads we see the scene – and clues – through the eyes of the narrator.

Asking to be read aloud, this is a book that will provide many pleasurable reading experiences for child and adult alike. There are opportunities, too, for discussion about the interesting range of animals presented in the story. Most engaging and entertaining.

Freemantle Press 2013

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 28, Issue 1, March 2013)

Black Spring - Alison Croggon

Lina’s life was always going to be difficult – through no fault of her own. She was born a woman and she was born a witch …

 The village of Elbasa is situated on the Northern Plateau at the foot of the Black Mountains in a locale known as the Land of Death. Here, wizards, assisted by their mutes – young boys with their tongues cut out – enforce the Lore with fearsome rigor, and kings amass riches from the collection of the Blood Tax. The threat of vendetta hangs over the inhabitants like a pall of obliteration; it may strike at any time and worm its slow, deadly way through a whole village, leaving a trail of tombstones and poverty in its wake. It is into this harshest of landscapes and community that the pretentious poet Hammel wends his way to be rid of ‘the endless jostling for status among the petty literati’ of the southern city and to recover his health after an affair. On the first day he blunders into the domicile of Damek, one of the hapless inhabitants of Elbasa. When he is forced to spend the night there and sees an apparition of Lina – the deceased love of the crazed and broken-hearted Damek, it is Anna, Hammel’s housekeeper and Lina’s childhood milk-sister, who narrates to him the tragic story of their lives.

 Justice is the leitmotif that sits at the heart of Alison Croggon’s new gothic fantasy novel, heavily inspired by Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (closely paralleling it’s plot). Set in a barbarous patriarchal society where women are regarded as little more than possessions, and witches are murdered at birth, the reader is positioned to be continually affronted by the oppression, violation and dismissal of the womenfolk in the story. In a poignant moment of self-reflection, Anna, the narrator, acknowledges her anger about the injustices meted out to Lina because of her sex: ‘Lina’s only crime was to be born a woman, with powers and instincts that were thought proper to belong only to a man … [w]hy should any of us be deemed monstrous for heeding the simple bidding of our hearts?’

 

Croggon’s adroit slant on psychology is one of the story’s strengths. Lina, confiding to Anna, laments the way the two men in her life have manifested their love for her: ‘…both of them betray me … [they] destroy me …Do you think they just love a phantom, whatever they saw when they looked at me, and forgot to love me? I wonder that, Anna, and it makes me feel so lonely …’

 The characters in Black Spring are predominantly brought to the page by Anna in her journal-like narration to Hammel. The book includes one small section devoted to Lina’s diary. Damek’s character, constructed largely by Anna and Lina, with dialogue scattered sparely throughout the text, comes across in the book as mysterious and ghosted.

 Black Spring is a compelling read, dark, tragic and embedded with ideology that will provoke a response in its target audience. Haunting, arresting and well-crafted; it is easy to see Croggon is a poet.

 

Walker books 2012

 

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 27, Issue 5, November 2012)

Tree - Danny Parker and Matt Ottley

 

A seed sprouts between the great exposed roots of another much larger tree, and over time, grows into a sapling. Under the expansive canopy of the older tree, the little tree is protected from the elements until one fateful night when ‘the sky battered the earth’. In aftermath and the light of day, ‘Tree was dazzled. And drenched. And shaken to his roots.’ Tree’s protection has disappeared: the storm has decimated the forest and the big tree has fallen victim to the ferocity of the tempest. So from now on tree must stand alone … Until years later a seed sprouts at tree’s side and a tiny sapling begins to grow as the cycle begins again.

 

Inspired by the death of Parker’s father just before his son was born, Tree is the story of the cycle of life. On one level the story is achingly simple: birth, growth and death. At another level the text and illustrations work together to create a deeper subtext that delves into existence, loss, seasonal change, protection, journey, generation and the many other related themes depicted in rings of word clusters on the back cover of the book. Parker’s use of personification, highlighting the notion of tree as a character in the story, increases the accessibility of the text to the young child.

 

Matt Ottley’s illustrations bring yet another level of meaning to the story. His use of perspective and focalisation situates the young reader to see the world from the small tree’s vantage point – sometimes in the form of a close up of the small creatures that inhabit the tree and its mountainous exposed roots, or a wide shot looking up from the base into the expansive, protective canopy overhead. Ottley’s use of colour works with the text to foreshadow events and to add depth to the mood and tone of the book as it moves through the storyline. The symbolism of the family who visit the tree at different times in their lives and in different configurations adds poignancy to the story, as does the depiction of the graveyard at the foot of the tree towards the end of the book.

 

Tree is a gentle book that could work on a number of levels with a young child. The reading experience would certainly be enhanced by discussion with an adult about the story’s subtextual significances.

 

Little Hare 2012

 

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 27, Issue 5, November 2012)

White Ninja - Tiffany Hall

 

 

School isn’t the easiest of places for thirteen-year-old Roxy Ran; regarded as a social misfit by her peers, she and her only friend, Cinnamon, are sneered and laughed at and constantly bullied – especially by Heroshi (Hero), national martial arts champion and captain of the school team. It’s not much better at home, where Elecktra, Roxy’s sixteen-year-old sister, bullies her as well. It’s no surprise that Elecktra – so stunningly beautiful that the traffic stops for her if she walks out in front of it – ignores Roxy at school and pretends she’s not related. Roxy has never met her father and doesn’t know anything about him. Her Japanese mum is a martial artist – a great shadow warrior – who can ‘slice the wings off a mosquito with a ninja star’. Art, Mum’s partner is an artist.

 

It is not until Hero’s bullying tips Roxy over the edge when he tries to drown Cinnamon’s kitten that Roxy’s ninja powers are unleashed and she displays some disconcerting and mysterious fighting abilities. But new boy, Jackson Axe, recognises Roxy’s powers and teaches her about the world of martial arts, and the White Warrior and legendary Tiger Scrolls which they must find before the samurai do. Roxy ends up in the fight of her life – everything hinges on the courage to believe in herself enough to release her inner ninja in order to defeat her mortal enemy.

 

This is a book I found warmed up as it went along. Once the story enters the magical realms of samurai and ninja and the reader is positioned to see Roxy come into her own as she comes to terms with her role in the search for the Tiger Scrolls and White Warrior, the book comes alive. As a Taekwondo aficionado and aesthete, Hall’s depictions of martial art conflict is more than convincing and helps to move the story along at a cracking pace. The text invites the reader to enter into the struggle as the ‘new Roxy’ tries to believe in herself and her ninja powers while battling with the ‘old Roxy’s’ destabilising and impeding tactics.

 

White Ninja delves into the themes of identity, bullying, self-image, loyalty and transformation. The first in a series, its ending leaves the reader hankering to know what happens next.

 

Angus & Robertson 2012

 

(A version of this review appears in Magpies Vol 27, Issue 5, November 2012)