This novel can often be a painful and heart-wrenching read.  The final scenes are not for the faint hearted, so don’t choose this book if you want a nice read in front of the fire with a box of chocolates! 
Marty’s Shadow is the story of two brothers, Marty and Jack, who mostly fend for themselves [...]

I always approach a new novel by Sonya Hartnett with a combination of excitement and apprehension.  Every novel by her is different and you know you are in for an intense experience.  The same is true for ‘The Ghost’s Child’, however, this time it is a more mellow novel with less disturbing overtones. ‘The Ghost’s [...]

‘Leaving Barrumbi’ is the third in a series about the Barrumbi kids set in an Aboriginal community in north Australia. In this book, Dale and Tomias have to leave their community and go to boarding school in town. 
The boys are sent off with much advice in order to cope with their new lives.  Dale [...]

‘Love like Water’ has created much controversy from being chosen as one of the Young Adult award winners, not because it isn’t a marvellous book, but because it seems to be in the wrong category.  This novel was published as an adult novel and some booksellers and reviewers, including myself, feel that it belongs in [...]

‘Pharaoh: the boy who conquered the Nile’ is a highly entertaining and well researched book about one of the first Egyptian pharaohs.  The Egypt of this book is in a time well before the familiar one of the pyramids, painted tombs and elaborate mummy cases.  It is set around 3000 B.C., a much more primitive [...]

Black Water is the story of Farren Fox, a boy who lives on the Southern Victorian coast in a fishing community called Queenscliff.  The novel is set during World War I, and as in Metzenthen’s previous book “Boys of blood and bone”, the savage effects of war on the lives of those both fighting and [...]