‘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 [...]

After a lengthy judging process, the following books have been nominated this year for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards in the Older Readers category:
Source: CBCA See also Notable List for other selections for 2008.

French, Jackie – Pharaoh: the boy who conquered the Nile
Hartnett, Sonya – The ghost’s child
Heffernan, John - Marty’s shadow
Mcdonald, Meme - Love [...]

There are reviews on this blog from Mrs Crew for Australian titles (including the Children’s Book Council of Australia award nominees) which have been written with Young Adults in mind. Click on the post titles to the left to select the review. You can also see the CBCA web site for a list of notable books.
CBCA Book of the [...]

‘Don’t Call Me Ishmael!’ is the story of Ishmael Leseur, a fourteen year old boy, and his tempestuous life at St Daniel’s College. Ishmael begins the book by bemoaning his name which has caused him much suffering. He says he has Ishmael Leseur’s Syndrome for which there is no cure. His father will tell the [...]

The main character in ‘One Whole and Perfect Day’ is Lily, described as “the sensible one in the family”. You can tell she is one of a slightly dysfunctional family, when the first page tells you that by age seven she was getting her big brother up for school in the morning. Her big brother [...]

‘Foundling’ is the first book in a trilogy by D.M. Cornish called ‘Monster Blood Tattoo’. It is set firmly in the fantasy genre and has enormous originality and inventiveness. Just to handle this book before you read it, is to feel its potential to take you into another and strange world. It is beautifully bound [...]

Gemma Stone is convinced that it is a bad thing to chuck a Birkett. She describes it this way:
“In my family, when anyone rides the wave of their emotions, we say they’re chucking a birkett. When the emotion drives out all common sense, we say they’re chucking a big one. The telltale signs are: [...]

I had to read ‘The Red Shoe’ twice before I really appreciated it. At the first reading, I found it frustrating, disjointed and hard-going. However, the second time around I began to appreciate the subtleties of this novel. Unlike the others on the short list, this novel needs to be taken slowly and savoured, as [...]