Children’s Books: Time of Trial: Volume 4, The Laws of Magic by Michael Pryor

Time of Trial (Random House Australia) is the fourth of Michael Pryor’s delightful Laws of Magic series, set in an alternative Edwardian England.

Once again, Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his friends George and Caroline are needed to save the world, as one of the characters observes wryly in the novel. This time, after the usual opening scene of magical mayhem -- in this case, cloud ships attacking a university cricket game in which George and Aubrey are playing. It’s during a trip to Holmland (Germany in our universe) where Lady Rose, Aubrey’s mother, is speaking at a symposium.

But this is where the evil Dr Tremaine, Aubrey’s nemesis, is living. He has influence in high places. Very high places. And then there are the golems, which are far from the lumpy clay things of folklore; you can make them very lifelike, so that it’s impossible to tell them from real people till they’re deactivated. Who can be trusted? Certainly not characters who can get sucked into telephones, as in one memorable scene.

Then there’s the pearl Aubrey took from Tremaine in the last novel -- what mystery does it hide? Our heroes are about to find out -- and they won’t like it.

It’s not all bad, though. Aubrey now has a Beccaria Cage, which reunites the body and soul he tore apart in a stupid experiment before the start of the first volume. If only it hasn’t been sabotaged...

As always, the adventure tears along at a breakneck pace, and is very funny. It doesn’t let you go easily; there’s a twist near the end, just when you think the main story is over.

I found myself falling comfortably back into this universe, enjoying it as much as ever. It’s rarely that a series can continue for this many volumes without losing something, but though it will need to finish some time, at least for this story arc, The Laws Of Magic is one series that doesn’t go downhill.

I think the series will become a fantasy classic. Bring on Volume 5!

Children’s Books: Wow! Animal and Wow! Earth

Wow! Animal and Wow! Earth, like all Dorling Kindersley books, are beautifully presented and gorgeous to flip through. And, like most books in this imprint, they are full of snippets of information, just right for children like my nephew, Max, who are good readers, to browse through and call, “Hey, Dad, did you know that starfish push their stomachs out through their mouths to absorb food?”

Both books are divided into sections that enable children who need them for homework to look up what they want. Wow! Animal has a well laid-out animal classification page that explains how classification works. Wow! Earth starts with the galaxy and works downwards.The double-page spread on the solar system has a paragraph about each planet, with all the information the young researcher will need or that the browser like Max will love to know. A pity it doesn’t mention Pluto. Just because it’s no longer considered a planet doesn’t mean it’s no longer there. But there’s only so much you can fit into a book like this, I suppose.

Wow! Animals reminds me of the books I used to read when I was a child and is nicely broken down, though those ones used to begin with prehistoric animals. But children who read it for fun will enjoy it for the same reason I did: this is a fascinating world and there are some wonderful and horrible creatures in it.

Both books also have good, clear indexes at the back and have handy glossaries. I should repeat, however, that DK Books are usually for good readers. The words are long and difficult and not all of the hard words are explained in the glossary. But if you have a bright, inquisitive child in your life, or a classroom library, or run a primary school library, buy it and watch those young eyes light up.

Children’s Books: Liar by Justine Larbalestier

Micah Wilkins lies automatically. She not only lies to family, classmates and police, she lies to the reader. Over and over. Right until the last page, you don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. Not even then.

Micah was Zach’s outside-of-school girlfriend, who ran with him, but now Zach has died and everyone is a suspect: Micah, Zach’s best friend, his official girlfriend -- everyone!

Why is Micah so fast ? Where did she get that incredible sense of smell? Why is it necessary for her to take the pill, apart from the obvious? And why does Micah’s father’s family live out in the middle of nowhere, not bothering with modern technology?

After a time, we realize that Micah isn’t the only member of her family to lie. Her father is a natural liar. Her grandmother is another. She has lied to her son and to Micah. There is a network of lies in the family, centered around “the family illness.”

I can’t go into any further detail without giving too much away. You may guess it as you read -- but bear in mind that Micah is a liar and while she tells you one ending, there are hints in the book that what has happened to her at the end is something very different.

Liar bounces around, backwards, forwards, flashbacks, family history, her own history, and somehow it works and clues build up, but Justine Larbalestier is her typical nasty self and never lets you be sure. All I can say is that at the end, I was thinking “Ouch!”

This may Larbalestier’s best book yet. Highly recommended for older teens -- younger ones tend to like things predictable and may not be happy to have to decide what really happened at the end.

Children’s Books: Vulture’s Gate by Kristy Murray

Some time in the future, much of Australia is Mad Max territory. The outback is filled with folk killing each other, wiping out settlements and running freak shows. Sydney is in ruins with gangs fighting each other and the authorities, from the anti-elder Festers to the nut-case Sons of Gaia who want to wipe out everybody.

Oh, and there are very few women or girls left after a mutated form of bird flu not only killed most females but made it very difficult for the few survivors to produce anything but boys. There is still some technology in service of the Colony government, producing “drones” and “chosen” boys who get to live comfortably with two male parents.

Callum, who has been living with his two fathers in the outback, is kidnapped and sold to a circus, from which he escapes on a motorbike and meets Bo, a girl living on her own since the death of her engineer grandfather, with only the company of a pack of “roboraptors” which hunt for her. Together, Callum and Bo ride off in search of his missing fathers, accompanied by roboraptor Mr. Pinkwhistle, which is as much a computer as a robotic dinosaur.

But there are things Callum’s Colony employee fathers never told him. Like what happens to drones who aren’t useful any more -- and what happens to any girls unlucky enough to be taken.

Vulture’s Gate is an enjoyable adventure kids should like, though I’m not sure at which age group it’s aimed. It reads like YA fiction, but the characters are all very young; Bo is older than Callum, but neither of them has reached puberty. And we’re never told exactly how Australia has been left in ruins -- surely not just the bird flu? It is implied, anyway, that there may be women in other countries. And there is still enough technology to keep the race going, however nasty its use.

But it’s possible to suspend disbelief for the length of the novel, which is a nice road story. The chapters are short enough to make it work for reluctant readers and the characters are good. Who would have thought a robotic dinosaur could be as cute as R2D2?

New This Month: The Devil You Know by Leonie Norrington

cDamien’s father, 88, is coming back. Damien is not happy. 88 is violent. Like many other perpetrators of domestic violence, he is constantly apologizing and promising to reform. Damien doesn’t believe it, but his mother is prepared to take her ex back. His only comforts are a book called Dangerous Creatures and the drawing and cartooning with which he can express his inner feelings.

What Damien isn’t expecting is that his father will be considered cool by his schoolmates, because of his fabulous motorbike, to the point where it will get him an “in” with the elite crowd. What happens to his friendship with the school outcasts? Will hanging out with the school bullies make him willing to be one himself?

The Devil You Know (Allen & Unwin) depicts vividly Arnhem Land, where the author herself lives. Aboriginal culture runs through the story, though the main characters are white Australians. Damien’s drawings are woven beautifully into the tale; the novel begins and ends with pages of graphic story. Artist Michael Camilleri has worked well with the story, doing a lot more than just illustrate. His beautiful illustrations are an integral part of the tale, as they are Damien's.

Children’s Books: Robot Riot by Andy Griffiths

Robot Riot (Scholastic) is the fourth book in Andy Griffith’s Schooling Around series featuring the students of Grade 5B at Northwest Southeast Central School. But like the others in this series, the book pretty much stands alone.

The stories are all over-the-top humorous and the characters mostly have names that suit their personalities. Gretel Armstrong, for example, is strong; Jenny Friendly is the nice one; Grant Gadget is the son of an inventor and invents plenty himself.

The stories are seen from the viewpoint of Henry McThrottle. In this latest adventure, Henry is convinced that logical, unemotional new girl Roberta Flywheel is a robot from the future, planning to wipe out the population of Earth, starting with the students of 5B.

As always, it’s delightfully silly and still makes good points about friendship. And wouldn’t we all like to have been in Mr Brainfright’s class, with a teacher who loves bananas enough to dress up as one and teaches that the world would be a better place if we would all just look at it through colored cellophane once a day?

Andy Griffiths is one of the most popular children’s writers in Australia, for good reason. He knows kids love to laugh and they love over-the-top laughs.

Children’s Books: Parliament of Blood by Justin Richards

I have always wondered what would happen if vampires kept turning people into other vampires every time they bit someone. Most books suggest that it isn’t that simple, that the majority of victims simply die, or that vampires are born rather than made.

Parliament of Blood (Bloomsbury) gleefully runs with the notion that getting bitten infects your blood and turns you into a vampire almost immediately unless you can get hold of silver and holy water right away in order to clear the infection. Late in the Victorian era, the vampires have come to realize that they’re going to run out of supplies if they’re all awake at once. They operate in shifts, sleeping for decades or centuries and waking up to take their turn. Another problem: with the development of photography, they’re finding that they don’t show up. Humans are going to figure it out sooner or later.

Time to waken the Lord of the Undead, an ancient Egyptian mummy who conveniently speaks English. Luckily for the London vampire community, they have members in high places, centred around a gentleman’s club known as the Damnation Club. Unluckily for them, they have to contend with young engineer George Archer, currently working at the British Museum in a mysterious department not known to the general public, his boss Sir William, former pickpocket Eddie and their friend Liz.

The action is almost non-stop as the friends work in their various ways to stop the vampires taking over the Empire. Justin Richards has become known as the author of entertaining fantasy adventures for children and this delicious romp doesn’t disappoint. Kids will love it. Although it’s supposed to be for readers from ten to f14, I’d place it slightly higher, as the characters are nearly all adults or young adults. Still, just hand it to your kids. They will work it out.

Children’s Books: Torn Pages by Sally Grindley

Lydia and her younger siblings, Joe and Kesi, are African AIDS orphans, trying to survive alone. Lydia has had to leave school to support her brother and sister. Most of the villagers are suspicious of them. Their own grandmother, who is well-off, not only won’t take them in but is actively undermining them. She firmly believes her son married beneath him and that it was his wife’s fault he died of AIDS, even though it was the other way around.

The only comfort Lydia has is their mother’s “memory book,” written especially for her as the mother was dying. But her grandmother has plans that might take away even this comfort.

Torn Pages (Bloomsbury) is a touching story that looks at a real problem in the world and brings them down to a human dimension. The children in the story are sympathetic characters you can care about and they don’t simply accept their troubles. At the end, there is hope for the future.

Suitable for children in late primary school to early secondary.

Children’s Books: Just MacBeth by Andy Griffiths

In 2008, Australia’s Bell Shakespeare Company commissioned humorous children’s writer Andy Griffiths to write a script for the company to perform as a children’s introduction to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Just MacBeth is the resultant work, in print, illustrated by the equally funny artist Terry Denton.

Andy Griffiths is enormously popular in Australia for all his work, but especially for the “Just” series which feature characters Andy, Danny and Lisa. Andy fancies beautiful Lisa. In this story, he gets to be married to her. When the three teens have to prepare a scene from Macbeth for school, the witches’ potion whisks them into 11th century Scotland, where they find themselves playing out the roles of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and Banquo. Danny, as Banquo, finds himself with a son who’s older than he is.

Andy rather enjoys being Macbeth, because as King he will be able to eat as much Wizz Fizz as he wants, order people around and gets to be married to Lisa. The scary thing is that he and Lisa make a very good Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, who have no problem in killing people, including Banquo/Danny.

This makes an excellent introduction to Shakespeare. Some of the Bard’s lines are used in the course of the play, and the meanings are pretty much explained. Let’s face it, Macbeth may be a short play, compared with some of Shakespeare’s others, but it’s confusing.

For those of us who are reading the book instead of seeing the play, Terry Denton provides hilarious cartoon commentary on the side of each page and even the page numbers are funny, beginning with an increasingly-disgruntled head of Shakespeare who complains about being the world’s greatest playwright, reduced to supporting page numbers, is replaced by a number of other page-holders, including a haggis, devoured by a machine and returns, defeating all other page-holders.

Fans of the Just stories will enjoy this once they get over its being in script form instead of a short story. Schools can buy class sets and have fun playing it out in class.

Children’s Books: Ghost with A Message by Mary K. Pershall

Ruby Clair is a girl who sees dead people. Well, the ghost of her cousin Nicola, anyway, plus any ghosts Nicola sends her way. Because she can see ghosts, Ruby can help them adjust. Ghost With A Message (Penguin Books Australia) is the second book in the Ruby Clair series. The ghost is a small child who has a message for her family, but can’t speak any better than any other three year old.

Ruby wants to help, but it makes things awkward for her with her friends and family, to whom she can’t explain what’s going on. Somehow, she manages to work out what the ghost child is trying to tell her, help the ghost’s family and make a new friend.

This is a gentle story with both humor and serious elements. It is a book that girls in middle to late primary school should enjoy.

Children’s Books: The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

Catherine Jinks is one of the most versatile writers I know of. Historical fiction, SF, fantasy, thriller, ghost stories, children’s, YA, adult -- there are very genres she hasn’t set her pen to at one time or another.

In The Reformed Vampire Support Group, she visits the vampire story, although I suspect this is not the kind of novel that would be relished by all the girls at my school who are devouring the Twilight series. If anything, this sends up the vampire tale.

Catherine Jinks asks her readers to think -- really think -- about what being a vampire might involve, especially in modern Sydney. You can’t eat anything you used to enjoy. You’re unlikely to be able to drive, unless you got your licence before you were turned. If you were elderly, like Bridget, a former nun who was turned at the age of 80, you’ll have arthritis and other aches and pains involved with being elderly forever. You still have to make a living, but you can’t do a normal job. Not if you turned in 1908, anyway. Nina, the narrator, who died in the 1970s, writes adventure novels with a feisty vampire heroine. But Nina was turned at 15, which means she will be a teenager forever, with all the problems this involves.

These vampires don’t live in crypts, though they do have weekly group therapy sessions at the local Catholic church. This means they have to find homes with blackout facilities. And they have nothing to do all night but watch dull television shows.

Fortunately one of them has discovered a way to avoid fanging humans, which they really don’t want to do, as biting humans always turns them and the last thing they need is a planetful of vampires.

But someone has killed a vampire. They have to find out who it is and persuade them not to do it again. Trouble is, there’s more to it than vampire killers.

The Reformed Vampire Support Group has a lot of fun with the vampire genre, especially right now when everyone and his dog is publishing it. All I can say is that the authors of the Deadly Serious vampire tales deserve everything they get in this deliciously funny novel.

Catherine Jinks triumphs again!

New this Month: The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth

The Puzzle Ring (Scholastic) begins in Australia, where 13-year-old Hannah is living with her mother, Roz, a science teacher, but the action quickly moves to Scotland and stays there. Roz receives a letter from her missing husband’s grandmother, Belle, who pleads with her to return. Hannah finds out that her father was a Scottish lord, although the only money the family has now comes from tourist visitors.

Meeting some local children, Hannah is soon heavily involved in adventures involving a family curse, a puzzle ring that has to be reassembled before the curse can be lifted and a search for her lost father. The only problem is, she may just have to time-travel to solve all these problems. Right back to the time of Mary Queen of Scots, in fact.

In some ways, this is a good old-fashioned children’s book of the kind I, at least, grew up on. Apart from suggestions that some characters’ parents might not have been married and characters in the past indicating that Mary Queen of Scots is no better than she should be -- and you can’t change history -- there’s nothing in here that you wouldn’t find in one of those books, except for a detailed afterword that discusses the different theories of time travel and wormholes. There’s also an explanation of the story of Queen Mary and a recipe at the end for marmalade cake, as made by the author’s mother.

This book will be perfect for the little girl in your life who likes fairies, although be warned: the author makes it clear from early in the novel that the cute little fairies most children think of have no connection whatever to the ones in folklore. They’re more like Tolkien’s Elves but can also be thoroughly terrifying.

It won’t hurt children to find this out -- and they may even be interested enough to check out the “real” faerie for themselves.

Kate Forsyth is a well-known Australian writer of children’s fantasy. She actually managed to score five junior-section Aurealis Awards for a fantasy series one year!

Children’s Books: Auslander by Paul Dowswell

Peter had been living in Poland with his mostly-German parents before World War II, on a farm his mother had inherited from her Polish relatives. When the parents are killed, Peter goes to an orphanage, but not for long. A few weeks later, he is taken to Berlin, where he is adopted by a well-off family, the Kaltenbachs. At first, he enjoys his new lifestyle. The Kaltenbachs are kind to him and everyone admires his blonde, blue-eyed Aryan features.

But Professor Kaltenbach is involved in so-called racial science research, benefiting from experimentation on prisoners, and the eldest daughter, Elsbeth, has a dark secret of her own.

When Peter meets Anna, daughter of parents who are not enthusiastic Nazis and secretly help Jews, he has the chance to assist his new girlfriend and her family in their acts of rebellion. But there will be a terrible price to be paid if they are caught. And meanwhile, the war goes on around them.

Auslander (Bloomsbury) is a well-written novel that has interesting characters -- some based on real people -- and shows what it might have been like to live in wartime Germany, where children denounced parents, schoolmates spied on schoolmates and a word said to the wrong person could get you executed. Even Christmas carols had been altered to include Hitler, while there were swastikas on Christmas trees and dolls’ house wallpaper. The author’s notes at the end assure the reader that even the more bizarre elements of the story are true. There is also adventure near the end, as Peter and his friends flee the Gestapo.

Auslander should appeal to young adults who are interested in Holocaust-era fiction. Recommended.

New this Month: Worldshaker by Richard Harland

In an alternative universe, Worldshaker (Allen and Unwin) is one of a number of “juggernauts” which fly around the world with permanent residents. Due to something that happened in the mid-19th century, the timeline diverged from ours into a world in which the Victorian era never really ended. In the early 21st century, Queen Victoria the Third reigns aboard the flying ship Worldshaker, with her consort who changed his name to Albert when they married.

Class distinctions are strictly observed aboard Worldshaker. Col Porpentine and his family are aristocrats and hereditary Supreme Commanders of the ship. Below them are those who are merely rich from trade and below all of them are the “Filthies” who are kept in slavery below decks, doing the work that keeps the ship running. Some of them are hauled up like fish on a line to be turned into Menials, servants to the upper classes -- and as Menials are always obedient and utterly silent, there is the strong possibility that they have been modified.

One night, Col wakes up to find a Filthy in his room. Her name is Riff and she is not keen to be turned into a Menial. Somehow, Col finds himself involved in Riff’s troubles and as a result, having major troubles of his own. Nobody has ever told him or his fellow upper decks what is going on in their society or how it got started. Now he must decide what he is going to do about it -- and learn some nasty home truths about members of his own family.

I’ve always enjoyed steam punk -- science fiction centred around the Victorian era -- and this is a very good example of the genre. Despite the serious elements, it has plenty of the dark, often over-the-top humour typical of this author. The characters are also humorously over-the-top, and it works well.

I am told Worldshaker has already been bought for the North American market. If you live there, be patient. It will be well worth the wait.

Children's Books: My Extraordinary Life and Death by Doug McLeod

Although Doug McLeod is best known in Australia as a television writer -- The Comedy Company, Full Frontal and Sea Change and script-editing Kath and Kim -- when he has written books they have usually been for children or young adults. His comedy background led to his writing humorous and downright silly books. Sister Madge’s Book of Nuns, one of these, was on the Australian Children’s Book Council short list.

My Extraordinary Life and Death (Ford Street Publishing) started life as a commissioned blog. Now it’s out there as a book and very amusing it is, too. What the author has done is to “story” genuine Victorian-era illustrations with a supposed autobiography. Even the front and back cover flaps are part of the book. The front flap features “other books you may care to enjoy” -- Shakespeare the Extremely Early Years (a baby), Simple Tricks A Child Can Do (a complicated circus acrobatic performance) and Queen Victoria: Party Girl. The back flap directs you to the Web site which explains all.

The drawings are accompanied by a truly over-the-top storyline. For example, an illustration of a Victorian gentleman and a gardener with a shovel accompanies, “Father had a no-nonsense approach to education. If Denise or I were naughty he would tell the gardener to bury us for several hours.” It’s a good example of the style and humour of the book in general.

I suspect this book will be enjoyed more by adults or good readers who get the jokes than by younger, average or reluctant readers. It is still worth having, though, for its sheer, entertaining silliness.

Children’s Books: Cicada Summer by Kate Constable

Kate Constable, the Tamora Pierce of Australian YA fantasy, is back after two mainstream YA novels for Allen and Unwin’s Girlfriend Fiction imprint. The Girlfriend books were good enough, but fantasy is what this author does best, so her return to the fantastical is very welcome.

Unlike the Chanters Of Tremaris series, Cicada Summer (Allen & Unwin) is set firmly in present-day Australia, complete with drought. It has some elements of Tom’s Midnight Garden and Bid Time Return, but gives the time travel theme a twist. I won’t say more about this lest I spoil the ending.

Eloise, a gifted artist who has “gone quiet” after losing her mother in a car accident, has been taken back to her father’s home town in country Victoria, and left with her crotchety grandmother, Mo. Mo has been writing a book about sea voyages for 20 years, despite never having seen the sea, and has panic attacks on leaving the house and yard. She isn’t crazy about having her granddaughter stay, but feels Eloise is better off with her than with her father, who is throwing all his energies into building a convention center in the town.

Exploring, Eloise visits the huge house owned by her father’s family, which is falling to pieces, and finds herself travelling to a time when the house is an artist’s retreat run by a family with a daughter about her own age, Anna. To her surprise, Eloise finds herself becoming Anna’s imaginary friend, whom only Anna can see or hear. Could Anna be her mother? Eloise doesn’t know, but she does start talking again, if only with Anna. Meanwhile, can she stop her father and his latest girlfriend from tearing down the old house for a convention center?

As well as being a good story, this warm-hearted, gentle tale has plenty of meat for class discussion.

Children’s Books: The Gimlet Eye by James Roy

In this third installment of the spin-off of the popular Quentaris shared-world series, a character from the original series is actually killed off, something that doesn’t usually happen in shared universes. As it happens in the prologue, it’s no secret.

The Archon, ruler of Quentaris, is dying. His horrible nephew Florian is persuaded to finish him off rather than wait for his inevitable death. Florian’s “friend” Janus (as in the two-faced god?) reminds him of the prophecy that declares that anyone who kills the previous ruler will rule properly himself. Janus, of course, has his own agenda.

Meanwhile, the adult magicians have been banished to a very nasty part of the city (well, they can’t be exiled elsewhere, short of being thrown overboard, since Quentaris has been travelling from one vortex to another). The younger ones, such as Tab Vidler, former Dung Brigader and recently an apprentice magician, and her friend Amelia, have been spared the dungeons, but left to their own devices. Tab is back to shovelling dung, though on a farm rather than the streets, while Amelia is working at a pub. Torby, the boy rescued in the first novel, The Spell of Undoing, is lying in hospital in a catatonic state. Nobody knows how this happened, except, of course, the reader.

That conceited ac-tor, Fontagu Wizroth the Third, has been ordered to do a command performance of a play called The Gimlet Eye for the new Emperor’s birthday, and he’s thrilled. Tab, Amelia and their friend, the former pirate Verris, can’t persuade Fontagu that there’s something fishy going on...

In my opinion, this one is the best so far in the new series. We learn more about the characters and their feelings. The adventure is exciting but straightforward enough for the young readers for whom this is an introduction to fantasy. At the same time, there’s a murder in the first chapter; there’s no tiptoeing around the issue. What happens to the adult magicians is also scary. But there’s still plenty of humor, maybe more than there’s been since the original series. In the end, Fontagu is shown in a more positive light than before.

The only thing is, while you can probably get something out of this book without having read the others, you really do need to have read them to understand properly what’s going on. The series is no longer a lot of related but individual titles.

Recommended for children from mid-primary to early secondary school.

Children’s Books: How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

If you’ve only read this writer’s wonderful but grim “Magic Or Madness” trilogy, in which the heroine could choose to die young or go insane, you’re in for a surprise from the very, very funny How to Ditch Your Fairy.

Magic is here again, but there are no penalties for using it and no actual magic users anyway.

Imagine a world in which everyone is born with their own personal fairy. You don’t see or hear it, you just see its effects. It might be an always-on-time fairy or one which ensures that cats like you or that you have good hair. You don’t, unfortunately, get to choose. There are ways of exchanging fairies with a co-operative friend, but they’re not easy or pleasant.

Charlie, who attends New Avalon Sports High, is stuck with a parking fairy, which helps find the perfect parking spot. The trouble is, Charlie doesn’t even like cars and is only 14 anyway. Why, she complains, couldn’t she have been born with a shopping fairy like her friend Rochelle, who can always find wonderful clothes at great prices? Or an “every-boy-will-like-you” fairy like that awful girl Fiorenze, who has a constant train of boys following her, including the cute new boy Steffi, who looked like boyfriend material when Charlie first met him?

She just has to get rid of that fairy! Fiorenze, whose parents are fairy experts, is surprisingly willing to trade, and the girls find a way to do it quickly. But Charlie soon finds that you need to be careful what you wish for, as does Fiorenze. Time to find another way to ditch their respective fairies and hope that their places will be filled with more congenial ones. It’s a more dangerous way, but hey, they’re desperate!

This novel is hilarious. It’s a perfectly good young adult novel of the sort teen girls enjoy, but goes where the average teen girl novel doesn’t. One element makes all the difference.

Highly recommended for girls from 14 upwards.

Children’s Book: The Nest by Paul Jennings

Paul Jennings is best known as the author of quirky, over-the-top and often laugh-out-loud funny books, both short stories and very short novels for reluctant readers. As such, he never even got near the annual children’s book awards, though he kept winning prizes voted on by the children themselves. His books sold in the millions, and were adored by children but they just didn’t win prizes from adult judges. In 2006 he finally wrote a full-length semi-autobiographical novel, How Hedley Hopkins Did A Dare, and that got on the annual short list of the Children's Book Council of Australia.

In recent years, the collections of funny stories children love so much have dried up. I have had to keep telling my young library users that no, that thick book of short stories by Paul Jennings wasn’t new, it was just a collection of stories they had already read. There was one book for adults on how to get your kids reading, but that was all.

Now we find that he has, after all, been writing something, this time for young adults. And so sorry, fans of Jennings’ humor, but this book isn’t funny: not even a tiny bit. The Nest (Penguin Australia) is for those who have left the realm of over-the-top humour and want teen angst.

In some ways, even Jennings’ funny books were about angst. That’s what made them funny. They were about the awful things that you go through when you’re growing up, exaggerated and made over-the-top funny. The Nest is just about angst.

In some ways, though, it does still go over-the-top. The average teenager having troubles with family and friends doesn’t suffer vivid mental images of murdering his father and wonder if he’s going insane.

Teenager Robin lives with his father in Victoria’s snow fields. Kids ski as a part of daily life, not as a sport. When Robin was a baby, his mother left, leaving only a couple of relics, which Robin has kept hidden. There is a mystery here. He doesn’t know why she left, though his father keeps telling him it was because of Robin, and he has never found out where she went.

Robin doesn’t seem to have many friends, if any. He is attracted to the beautiful and moral Charlie, who is an environmentalist and raises money to bring refugee children to the snow for a holiday. His feelings are all over the place -- anger with his father, whom he believes has driven his mother away, horror at his own mental images, love for Charlie, confusion and hurt that his mother has never made contact. He expresses his feelings in his short stories, which alternate with chapters of the novel.

It’s a good young adult novel, in an interesting setting, with very good rite-of-passage issues. I would have liked to have seen some resolution of the problems between Robin’s father and himself. Robin does the right thing, even saves his father’s life, but...

The novel does finish with one of Robin’s stories, in which he recognizes that the “snake” he fears is a part of himself and needs to be dealt with. We can only hope that this will end with his reconciliation with his father, some time after the novel ends.

Children’s Books: A Small Free Kiss in the Dark by Glenda Millard

A Small Free Kiss In The Dark (Allen and Unwin) by Glenda Millard is a story about ordinary people in an unexpected war.

Skip, a boy who has been living in abusive foster homes, runs away. On the streets, he meets Billy, an old man who has his own painful memories and has been living rough or in refuges. Billy has learned how to survive there without losing his soul and he has begun to teach Skip how to do the same when, overnight, the city is bombed.

The old man and young boy take refuge, at first, in the State Library, where they meet Max, a little boy who was waiting for his mother to pick him up after school when the bombs started to drop. The city is becoming less and less safe and the three head along the railway tracks towards Dreamland, a now-abandoned amusement park by the sea. There, they are joined by dancer Tia and her baby, Sixpence. Skip overcomes his grief at his loss of his father with this family, something he has not known in a long time. Billy also needs to purge his own grief at having made a mistake that lost him his own son.

The city in the novel is clearly meant to be Melbourne, but is never named and there are some differences. We are never told who the invaders are, or why they have invaded, because that’s not the point. The point is, how might people treat each other when suddenly home is no more -- for anyone? In A Small Free Kiss in the Dark, people can be kind to each other -- even an invading soldier can suddenly realize that this horror isn’t what he signed up for. There is a new family made up of Skip, who can’t remember having a family apart from a soldier father suffering post-traumatic stress disorder; Billy, who lost his child; Max, who had a family and misses his mother and Tia, who has become a mother far too young and has no one to care for her and her child.

The book provides food for thought and should appeal to children of 11 or 12 and upwards.

Children’s Books: The Diary of Laura’s Twin by Kathy Kacer

In The Diary of Laura’s Twin (Allen & Unwin) we meet Laura, a middle class Canadian Jewish girl about to do her bat mitzvah, the coming-of-age ceremony Jewish girls do at the age of 12. She has already raised money for African charities and as far as she is concerned, she has done her bat mitzvah project.

The rabbi running the bar/bat mitzvah preparation class has other ideas. He asks his students to do another project, in which each of them will be “twinned” with a child who never had the chance to do their own coming of age during the Holocaust.

At first, Laura is annoyed. She has studied the Holocaust at school and right now, she has homework, sports and other activities to keep her busy. However, she agrees to pay one visit to Mrs. Mandelkorn, an elderly woman who hands her a diary, translated into English, of a girl called Sara Gittler, who was in the Warsaw Ghetto, just before the uprising. Despite herself, Laura is drawn into Sara’s story. She begins to wonder how she would feel if, like Sara, she had a lot more to worry about than her own small problems. Sara’s diary also inspires her to help a friend find the courage to do the right thing after witnessing an incident of racist vandalism. If people had had such courage during the war, she believes, perhaps the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened.

The Diary of Laura’s Twin ends with some biographies of real people involved in the Ghetto uprising, plus a man who looked after orphans, mentioned in the novel. It includes some useful Web sites for those who want to follow up the subject. The photos throughout the book are well chosen and remind you that while the characters are fictional, the background isn’t. In these days of Holocaust denial that’s important.

I declare my interest, here, as the child of Holocaust survivors, one of whom, my father, was a survivor of the Ghetto uprising. As such, I found it hard even to start this book, though I’m glad I did. To be honest, I didn’t find it quite as powerful as Once, Morris Gleitzman’s child Holocaust novel. However, it’s a good introduction to the subject for children. Apparently, “twinning” is a genuine activity, which the author had witnessed, giving her the idea for the story. I haven’t heard of it, myself, but found it interesting.

The language is simple and even reluctant readers should be able to manage it. Recommended.

Children’s Books: Everything Beautiful by Simmone Howell

Riley Rose is stuck at Spirit Ranch Holiday Camp, just when she was about to get close and personal with that hunk Ben. It’s filled with Christian teenagers and camp counsellors who blow bugles at you and make you sing around camp fires, when you’re not memorizing Bible quotes or having presentations on the domestic life of the mallee fowl.

Of course, there’s the very hunkish Craig, but he’s not all he seems. Besides, he’s with Riley’s roommate, Fleur, and Fleur is not about to share. Then there’s Dylan, who used to be Craig’s friend and is equally good-looking, before an accident left him in a wheelchair. He’s back at camp, but no one seems sure what the accident actually was, and he’s not saying.

Riley has her own issues, centered party around her mother’s death from cancer, her father’s new partner and her own overweight state.

There’s an entire genre of fiction about a wilderness camp and a troubled teenager who finds answers there, despite being originally reluctant to go. I have reviewed one, Solo by Alyssa Brugman, in the last year. Everything Beautiful isn’t quite as grim as Solo, although it’s also readable and broken into easily digestible short chapters.

Riley has issues to sort out, but she also has things to teach the other campers, even those who mock her weight and call her a slut. That is perhaps less common in summer camp fiction. Before the novel is over, she is also feeling sympathy even for the worst of them, which helps her. And the beautiful Ben, when he appears, is a comical character rather than the hunk she remembers.

I do have a nitpick or two. Dylan’s accident turns out to have been far less dramatic than was implied at the start and has no real bearing on the story. It would be OK if the issue was about how he handles his confinement to a wheelchair, but he seems to have sorted out most of that before the story begins. I can sort of see why the author plays around with the possible reasons for the accident, but for me, it didn’t quite work.

Still, Riley is a likeable, sympathetic character and the novel makes some serious points in a humorous context. Teenage girls will enjoy it, whether or not they follow it up by seeking out Thomas More’s Utopia, which is quoted throughout the book.

H.I.V.E. #3: Escape Velocity by Mark Walden

Escape Velocity is the third of Mark Walden’s H.I.V.E. novels. While a number of loose ends are tied up in this one, it produces some more, including a new antagonist to the heroes, and there will be more in the series -- perhaps a new story arc, now that this one is finished. One prediction I made in my review of the first novel turned out to be correct, if not complete, since there was more information in the second novel.

In this series, the heroes are all villains. H.I.V.E. (the Higher Institute of Villainous Education) is a sort of Hogwarts for young super-baddies, run by G.L.O.VE, an organisation of international criminals. Each of the students has a special skill of one kind or another. The hero, Otto Malpense, has three friends whose particular skills help him to save the day. Scottish Laura is a computer genius who had been caught hacking into a military communications system to find out what the other girls at school were saying about her. American girl Shelby is a former jewel thief who can open any lock. Otto’s best friend Wing is brilliant in martial arts.

Otto has discovered that he can use his mind to interface with computer systems. It’s a skill he’s going to need. After saving the school and the world from an insane artificial intelligence overlord in the previous book, the friends discover their troubles aren’t over by any means. Principal Maximilian Nero has been kidnapped by a mysterious organisation called H.O.P.E (one has to love all these acronyms). His bodyguard, the ninja Raven, appears to have been killed while attempting to rescue him. Number One, head of G.L.O.V.E., doesn’t seem to care. He has his own plans, including replacing Dr. Nero with a woman who had betrayed the school in the previous novel. She, in her turn, has her orders. One of these seems to be “extracting” Otto and his friends from the school, taking them to an unknown destination. Just as well that Raven isn’t dead after all, and that some other characters thought dead are also still alive.

The first book in this series was very funny as well as an entertaining adventure. The whole notion of a school for super-villains was delightful. The trouble is, you can only get away with the joke for one novel, as the author seems to have realized, so the next two novels have put the accent on the adventure and pretty much left out the humor. Another problem is that you forget that these characters are supposed to be in training to be the next generation of super-villains of the kind who plot to take over the world and try to kill James Bond. Dr. Nero is starting to turn into Dumbledore, if not as shrewd or witty. Otto and his friends enjoy their studies, but really, they’re just a technical version of wizards. I think, in the next book, we need to be reminded what these teenagers are actually supposed to be studying, or what’s the point? There’s a tiny bit of humor, but very little.

Still, as an adventure, it works. There’s a lot of hardware and software in this book -- ah, if we could only create invisibility suits in real life.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Graveyard Book By Neil Gaiman

Bod -- short for Nobody -- has been orphaned early, by a murderer known only as “the man Jack” who had killed his entire family and is still on the hunt for him. Not until late in the book does he learn why.

In the meantime he is rescued by a community of ghosts in the graveyard on the hill of a small but ancient town. There, he is cared for by the kindly ghosts of Mr. and Mrs. Owens, tutored by other ghosts and mentored by the only graveyard inhabitant who can leave the cemetery for food and other things a living child might need: Silas, a vampire. Between his toddler years and his late teens, Bod has many adventures.

Sound familiar? It should. In fact, in an afterword to The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins), author Neil Gaiman admits he was thinking of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, although Gaiman’s tale also has a strong flavour of Ray Bradbury, if you can imagine that most American of writers as British.

The Graveyard Book is more or less a series of connected short stories; in fact, Chapter four, “The Witch’s Headstone,” was first published as a short story.

It works, in any case. Like all of Neil Gaiman’s works, this one is very readable, with the elements of good story and good characters. Despite its gruesome background, this novel is gentle, quite suitable for children to read.

Chris Riddell’s beautiful cartoon-like illustrations go perfectly with the text.

Highly recommended.

Children’s Books: Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta

Australian, readers will certainly have heard of Looking for Alibrandi, Melina Marchetta’s wonderful first novel about the immigrant experience, seen through the eyes of a young Italian girl living in Sydney, trying to cope with various teen problems, including those headaches you have when you’re having to worry about all the old ladies of the community who mind your business for you. Even if you’re not Australian, you may well have fallen in love with Sydney through the gloriously warm, feel-good movie based on the novel.

In the last few years, Marchetta has written two other books, Saving Francesca and On the Jellicoe Road, both of which were a long way from Alibrandi.

In her fourth novel, she has returned to the migrant experience. Or, to be more accurate, the refugee experience. However, she’s done it in a way that many writers have used to make comments about our world: through the medium of speculative fiction.

In Finnikin of the Rock (Penguin Australia), the title character has been travelling the various lands to which half the population of his homeland, Lumatere, have fled since the royal family was murdered and many Lumaterans massacred by the followers of a usurper.

Ten years have gone by and Finnikin and his mentor, Sir Topher, have been visiting the various refugee camps and rulers in the kingdoms surrounding Lumatere. Nobody can get in or out of Lumatere, which is surrounded by a magical mist that was produced by a dying priestess as she was being burned at the stake. Only the rightful heir can lead the refugee Lumaterans home and dispel the mist. There is a rumour that Prince Balthazar -- one of Finnikin’s two best friends -- may still be alive, but no one has seen him since his family died. Should Finnikin and Topher try to create a new homeland for the exiles? Should they trust Evanjelin, a novice of the Lumateran Goddess, who says she can walk through the sleep of the people behind the mist and knows what is happening at home? There is, in fact, something very familiar about her.

There’s magic in this novel, as you’d expect in fantasy, but that’s all. There are no dark lords, no evil sorcerers or large-bosomed witches, no immortal Dark Riders to chase a Chosen One. And when you do finally learn about the Chosen One, you think that if you were chosen that way, you’d plead with God to choose someone else!

There are only humans, good and bad. The bad ones are ordinary people, doing what they can get away with. Even the usurper king is wisely kept offstage rather than made the novel’s villain. Not all Lumaterans are good guys. Some have lost their identity and children are growing up without their language or culture.

In some ways, I think Finnikin of the Rock might have worked better if we could see a few Lumaterans who aren’t victims and who are so comfortable they don’t want to return, despite losing their identity. But the story takes place only ten years after the exile and wounds would still be raw.

Still, it does work, at least partly because the author doesn’t beat you around the head with the message as some writers and artists have done in recent years.

Marchetta manages to explore the overall issue of the refugee experience without preaching about any individual group. The style reminds me just a little of Howard Fast, who, apart from his famous historicals such as Spartacus, managed to write a lot of thoughtful SF and fantasy.

I’m not sure how teenagers will feel about a novel which is written like fantasy but isn’t really fantasy, but it’s a good story, with enough action to hold interest, and despite the apparent male focus, it has plenty of strong female characters.

Well worth a look.

Children’s Books: The Time Paradox: Artemis Fowl Book 6 by Eoin Colfer

In Eoin Colfer’s The Time Paradox: Artemis Fowl Book 6, and only a short time after returning from Limbo, saving an entire fairy species and finding the world has moved on by three years, 14-year-old Artemis -- who should be closer to 18 by now -- has another crisis to deal with. His beloved mother is dying of a magical plague that nearly destroyed the main fairy race some time ago. The only cure for it lies in the past, in an animal the younger Artemis had helped to wipe out.

Time travel is possible with the help of demon warlock Number 1, so Artemis travels back nearly eight years with his friend, fairy police operative Captain Holly Short, in hopes of changing the past. But older Artemis has developed a set of ethics and, although he’s still a genius, he has to compete with his younger self who is a criminal genius and firmly convinced that the end justifies the means. Also, he wonders what Holly will say when he has to confess to her the lie he told to convince her to come along on the time journey.

The pair soon find themselves in the middle of a non-stop adventure involving people from their past -- friends, friends-to-be and one particularly nasty enemy. They’re also having to fight to keep their precious almost-extinct animal from the clutches of a crazy cult that hates animals so much that the members are mostly vegetarians who will happily wipe out entire species but won’t eat them!

As with all Eoin Colfer’s novels I have read, I happily sat back and let myself be swept along. The author has cleverly worked out his time paradox so that the ending explains things about the beginning of the series. Despite that, there are hints that this is not the last in the series, though he’ll have to end it some time -- I mean, how long can Artemis stay a teenager? And what about Minerva, the girl genius he met in the last novel? Will she turn up again?

As in the previous novel, there are “Gnommish” letters forming a message at the bottom of the pages, but I can’t tell you what they say because there is no key at the back of this one. I think there should have been, since it’s less bother than having to go back and haul out Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony. I simply ignored the letters and enjoyed the story.

One more little nit-pick. The novel takes place over the space of three days. During that time, almost nobody seems to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom. Not just that they don’t -- they don’t have time to do it! Well, maybe younger Artemis does, because he has his faithful bodyguard Butler to pilot the plane and make arrangements for him. But present-day Artemis and Holly don’t. Now, it may be that fairy biology allows them to stay awake for long periods (and by the way, fairies do go to the bathroom, as is mentioned in passing). But older Artemis is awake -- apart from a bit of unconsciousness -- the whole time. He gets tired now and then and finally sleeps when the main danger is over. But that’s after three days of running around from Ireland to Africa and back and travelling through time.

Still, the book is a fine addition to this delightful universe. I’ve said it before and will say it again: this series is going to be a classic.

Children’s Books: Word of Honour by Michael Pryor

Rejoice! Aubrey Fitzwilliam, that Miles Vorkosigan of alternative universe Edwardian England, is back for yet another deliciously entertaining outing, along with his friends George and Caroline.

After their excursion to Lutetia (Paris) in Heart of Gold, the trio are finally back to start their first term at university. But Aubrey is never going to be allowed to study in peace. For one thing, he’s still having trouble with his condition (being technically dead). He hasn’t told his parents, though Caroline has figured it out. Then there’s the outing on a new submersible ship for the navy, which someone is trying to sabotage. And that’s not all they’re trying to do. Someone tried to assassinate Lady Rose, Aubrey’s scientist mother, while she and Caroline were on an expedition to the Arctic. And Aubrey’s nemesis, Mordecai Tremaine, formerly Sorcerer Royal, who had killed Caroline’s father while attempting to start World War I, is back in Albion, singing in light opera. Only trouble is, Aubrey seems to be the only one who can recognize him. What can he be up to?

Aubrey, George and Caroline have to save Albion yet again, and very enjoyably they do it too, in yet another breathtaking adventure laced with plenty of humour and characters you care about.

For those who missed out on the first two books of this series, the premise is that magic not only works, but can be taught. It works like science -- hence the “laws of magic” of the series title. I laughed out loud during one scene when George suggests an outing to see a sleight-of-hand artist (this universe’s version of a stage magician) and Aubrey sneers that these so-called sleight-of-hand artists are just using magic. But because of this one difference, the world is run very differently, though it seems very similar to ours. There are medical magicians and research magicians. Even electricity is run by magic. A magical damper is used in one scene to protect a bank from robbers who might otherwise use magic.

This is a terrific series that just keeps getting better. Start with Blaze of Glory or Heart of Gold then come back to this one. You won’t regret it.

Children’s Books: Sovay by Celia Rees

Several years ago, I read this author’s first book, Witch Child, an historical adventure set in 17th century Massachusetts, in a colony started by people thrown out of Salem for being too extremist. It was an enjoyable piece of historical fiction and the author has since written three more books.

Sovay (Bloomsbury) is set in 18th century England and Revolutionary France. As in Witch Child, the story is seen through the eyes of a young woman. It appears to be inspired by a traditional ballad which was about a girl who dressed as a man and held up a coach to test her sweetheart. The boy in the ballad passed the test. The fiancé of the heroine of this novel fails spectacularly, but it turns out to be the least of her worries.

Sovay Middleton, daughter of a middleclass radical, has been left alone on the estate. Her idealistic father has gone missing, as has her student brother, who has similar opinions to their father. She knows someone is coming with papers that could destroy her family, but when she uses her highwayman disguise to get them, she finds a lot more than she was expecting. Her father has some dangerous enemies.

On her way to London, to find out what has happened, she is helped by a number of good people, including her family steward’s son, an American spy and a genuine highwayman. But she needs to escape England and her troubles spill over into France, where Robespierre rules and all English are considered spies.

Sovay is another enjoyable adventure which may appeal to girls who like a little more than the standard teen romance. The only thing is, there are a number of men who seem to be attracted to Sovay and you aren’t quite expecting the man she ends up with. It’s as if the author has decided Sovay has to have someone and added a character for that purpose. Sovay is a strong character, if a little too perfect and the novel gives a good picture of the era.

Children’s Books: Araminta Spookie #5: Ghostsitters by Angie Sag

Araminta Spookie #5: Ghostsitters (HarperCollins) is the fifth in a popular children’s series about Araminta Spookie, who lives in a sort of Addams Family mansion with her Uncle Drac, her Aunt Tabby, Brenda and Barry Wizzard and their daughter Wanda, as well as three ghosts: Sir Horace, his page Edmund and their dog Fang.

Don’t worry if your child hasn’t read the four earlier books in this series. The book stands alone quite well.

In this adventure, the adults go off for a week’s holiday in Transylvania, leaving Araminta and Wanda to be babysat. The babysitter is Minty’s cool Goth cousin, Mathilda. Unfortunately, Mathilda, whose parents are ghostbusters, is accompanied by two teenage poltergeists, Jed and Ned, who proceed to turn the house upside down and cause Sir Horace, a mild-mannered old ghost, to threaten to leave. What’s most annoying is that nobody will be making a fuss of Minty on her birthday.

Children should find Ghostsitters to be just gross enough to be amusing, but not truly disgusting. The worst you’ll find in this is grilled gummi bears on toast and inedible pizza that has been dropped in the mud. It’s likely to be enjoyed by children in the middle to late years of primary school.

Children’s Books: Naomi and Ely’s No-Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

In Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, the title characters -- two university students in New York city -- have known each other since early childhood. They live in the same huge apartment block. At one point, Naomi’s father had a brief affair with Ely’s lesbian mother and then left. Since then, Naomi has had to look after her own mother, who hasn’t stopped grieving.

Beautiful Naomi can have almost any boy she wants and has had boyfriends (Bruce 1 and 2). The trouble is, the only boy she wants is Ely, the one she can’t have, because he’s gay -- and not only gay, but promiscuous. So the two of them, to keep their friendship intact, have created a “no-kiss list” -- a list of boys neither of them will kiss. When Ely breaks the rules and starts a relationship with Naomi’s current boyfriend, Bruce 2, he risks the friendship -- and Naomi has to ask herself what she really wants and what is most important to her. Likewise, Ely has to decide whether he can keep his current lifestyle going or whether there is something more important to him now.

Cohn and Levithan wrote another book together, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, which was set in the course of one night and had a similar style, though the main characters were heterosexual. It was seen alternatively from the title characters’ viewpoints.

This one has more viewpoints, but somehow it works and the various strands pull together. The style is whimsical, the ending is positive and on the whole it’s a readable book, but heavens, how the characters swear! As in Nick and Norah, the book is filled with four-letter words. I have worked with teenagers for most of my career and, while they do use four-letter words a lot and look at you in surprise if you suggest they are swearing, they don’t do it that much. I don’t think it’s necesssary to write it into a book in the interests of “realism” and about half the swearing would have been plenty. You really can overdo it. It is, in my opinion, well and truly overdone in this novel.

Keep this one for the older teenagers in your life.

Children’s Books: The OK Team 2: Better Than OK

In The OK Team, we met Hazy Retina, a boy who discovered that his tendency to fall apart -- literally! -- when he panicked or was embarrassed made him a member of the super-hero community. Hazy formed a team of other young heroes with their own gifts. Despite their klutziness, they somehow managed to combine and use their talents to help save the world -- or anyway, to save the heroes who could save the world.

Some months later, in The OK Team 2: Better Than OK (Allen & Unwin), the team has become more comfortable with its talents, although some members have left. Liarbird, who couldn’t tell the truth, has gone overseas. Switchy, who can turn into anything from an impressive superhero-type to a helicopter, has been promoted and moved on to special training. One replacement is Logi Gal (“Logic Girl!” she keeps protesting) is the team version of Mr Spock. She knows a lot and makes the team think rationally before yielding to impulse. At one point, she doubts her usefulness in a physical fight, but proves vital in other respects. The other new team member, Gamer, lives life like a video game -- and reaps the benefits, picking up skills and rewards that help the team.

But the villains have discovered a new, performance-enhancing drug. S.T.O.M.P. (Serum That Overly Maginfies Powers), which means that even low-level villains can beat heroes who are following the rules. And in the course of an encounter, Hazy has rashly agreed to something stupid. Worse still, one of Australia’s top heroes, Southern Cross, has started to weaken. The hero community suspects why, but Hazy’s mistake means they can’t fix it- - unless Hazy gives up his hero status, or dies.

Another fun book, filled with such delicious silliness as the elephant-headed boy who keeps shooting lemons at Hazy after failing to make it into the OK Team and hero cafés on top of Melbourne landmarks. And it has its say about performance-enhancing drugs, not only through S.T.O.M.P. but through the mouth of Hazy’s father, a competitive cyclist, who points out that those who cheat will never know how good they really are, or if they could have done it without cheating.

There was a hint that there might be more, when Hazy’s parents fight offstage, but there’s no follow-up within this novel. I think one final book in this series might be enough. The first book introduced the joke and it was wonderful to see this bunch of klutzy kids somehow manage to unite and do something important. In this book, their talents are starting to improve. If it ever gets to the point where the team really is “better than okay,” it will be enough to complete the original theme. For the moment, though, it’s readable and fun and children should enjoy it.

Children’s Books: Teen, Inc. by Stefan Petrucha

If Teen, Inc. isn’t turned into a movie, I’ll be very surprised. It reads like a number of films I have seen over the years, though it doesn’t end like them.

Jaiden Beale has been brought up by a corporation. His bedroom is a converted office. He eats in the cafeteria. A committee named him. Another committee oversees everything from his education to his social life. He even has to sit through a Powerpoint presentation on his dating options! He has lived this way since just after birth because a faulty piece of equipmment produced by the corporation killed his parents and the company sees it as the best way to avoid a lawsuit.

Jaiden wants to live a normal life. He has been allowed, recently, to attend a public school, where nobody knows who he is. He’s made a friend and he’s hoping to get a girlfriend, Jenny -- not one of those on the corporation’s list of possibles. But Jenny’s environmentalist father has uncovered something nasty for which the company may be responsible. What happens when the girl Jaiden cares about is part of a movement against the only family he has ever known?

I would have expected that the kids would have made the discovery in their science project rather than just having the father do it, but never mind. Stefan Petrucha’s Teen, Inc. is funny, gentle and charming and it at least avoids the kind of clichéd ending of the movies it resembles. Recommended for mid-teens.

Children’s Books: The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend by Lili Wilkinson

The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend is the latest in Allen and Unwin’s Girlfriend Fiction series. If they were all the kind of book suggested by the hearts on the covers and the series titles throughout I would probably not be reviewing all of them. Some of the Girlfriend Fiction series are simply teen romances, if well-written ones, but others could be published as straight young adult fiction. In some ways, The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend is one of them. Yes, it’s a teen romance and yes, it sticks to the formula that the heroine, something of a Cinderella, falls for the good-looking guy, who turns out to be a pill, and then ends up with the nice boy she has considered just a friend throughout the story (or, in this story, the one she finds irritating, but has to work with). But there’s more to it and this one is very funny.

Midge (whose full, cringeworthy name, is Imogen) is “sweet sixteen and never been kissed,” unlike her best friend Tahni, who always comes back from holidays with stories about all the cute guys she has dated.

To get Tahni off her back, Midge invents a boy she supposedly met during the holidays. His name is Ben, he is British and romantic and, best of all, he went back to England, so she doesn’t have to introduce him to anyone and after a couple of weeks, she can pretend to break up with him. As she’s intelligent and good with language, she writes e-mail in his name and invents a Facebook profile for him, to fit with the romantic image she has built.

The trouble is, when a gorgeous British boy called Ben turns up at the school soon after, everyone assumes he’s the non-existent boyfriend. Ben is willing to go along with it, and for a while, Midge enjoys her new “boyfriend,” but he has a price for his co-operation. Is Midge willing to go along with this blackmail or will she decide it isn’t worth the price? (And no, it isn’t anything physical). How will Tahni feel, now that Midge has overtaken her one source of pride, her ability to get boys?

And what about George, the other new boy at the school, nowhere near as attractive, with a mysterious past and with whom Midge is stuck on an English assignment? What is he doing on those days he disappears? Why does he doodle all those dragons and medieval images on his schoolbooks? And where did that injury come from?

I must admit, I figured out the mystery about George pretty quickly, but only because I was in the Society for Creative Anachronism and have a half-finished novel on my computer that begins, “The trouble is, my mother spends her weekends hitting Vikings with broom handles.” I doubt the girls reading this novel will work it out so easily and what they will think then, I can’t be sure. But they will have had a good laugh along the way, and thought about friendship and beauty being only skin deep.

Recommended.

Children’s Books: The Detachable Boy by Scot Gardner

John Johnson keeps losing his head -- literally. And his feet and arms and legs. He is a detachable person -- and not, as he discovers, the only one. In fact, that’s the problem. When John’s friend, Crystal, is kidnapped by men in vinyl suits and taken to an underground base in America, full of detachable people being used as spare parts, he has to follow, while his parents think he’s on a school camp. He can’t afford to buy a plane ticket, but Ravi, his genius friend, designs a suitcase that will fit his bits and posts him to the U.S.

And that’s only the start of a story that becomes progressively sillier and funnier as it goes. It has the grossout factor that kids enjoy without ever becoming too disgusting. The characters are amusing (my favourite is the American pretzel-collector -- among his collection is one shaped like Elvis and another like the Eiffel Tower -- who helps John and Crystal). I did wonder how Ravi, who has a distinctly Indian accent, had a surname like Carter, but never mind. Suspend disbelief. The young readers won’t care.

Heath McKenzie’s delightful illustrations add to the story.

Scot Gardner’s The Detachable Boy (Allen & Unwin) is aimed at boys between the ages of nine and 12, but let the girls read it too -- they’re just as likely to enjoy it.

Children’s Books: Crossing the Line by Dianne Bates

Seventeen-year-old Sophie is intelligent, good at her studies and a fine poet. She also cuts herself when she’s feeling stressed. And she has plenty about which to feel stressed. She has been fostered since early childhood, after losing first her neglectful mother, then her beloved aunt and uncle when they divorced. She has been with one foster-family after another, constantly changing schools and unable to make friends because she keeps moving.

Now it seems things will improve, since she has been allowed some independence and has started sharing a house with the likeable and kind-hearted Amy and Matt. She’s made friends at her new school and is hoping to finish her last year.

Will these be enough for a girl who feels a desperate need for family -- especially a mother? A spell in a mental hospital introduces her to psychiatrist Helen Marshall, to whom she clings, mistaking treatment for affection.

Can her new friends help her? Will Matt’s affection be enough?

Sophie is a lucky girl, actually, to have friends as patient as Amy and Matt. There were times in the book when I felt like telling her to get over it. The first-person narrative worked well, however, making it easier to understand what was going on in her head.

Self-harm has become known as the new anorexia among teenage girls. It has been estimated that one in ten girls in Australia is a self-harmer. Girls who feel they have no control over their lives may cut because that’s something they can control. Sophie does it as a form of release, or even a tribute, in the form of initials cut into her arm. It’s a major issue in this day and age and veteran Australian children’s and young adult writer Dianne Bates handles it well, in a readable and gripping book. The characters and storyline are believable. I believe Crossing the Line (Ford Street Publishing) will make it into classrooms, as it includes a lot of material for discussion.

Highly recommended.

Children’s Books: The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman

If you think this is an actual alphabet book, even a quirky one, think again. It does use the letters of the alphabet, but only as an excuse for the 13 rhyming couplets that form a story. The letters aren’t even all in order and sometimes they’re rather strange. For example: “’L is, like ‘eaven, their last destination.” Indeed, there’s a warning at the start of the book: “The alphabet, as given in this publication, is not to be relied upon and has a dangerous flaw that an eagle-eyed reader may be able to discern.” And children are eagle-eyed with pictures. Just ask any child who has run an eye over Graeme Base’s Animalia or the Where’s Wally? books.

It’s a story, using the alphabet to hang on. Most of it is a “piratical ghost story,” starting with “A is for Always, that’s where we embark” in which two Victorian era children start on their adventure on a fish-shaped boat, accompanied by their pet gazelle. Gris Grimly’s deliciously scary illustrations really tell as much of the story as the words. Perhaps more. There are monsters, pirates, treasure, constant movement.

Like everything else that Neil Gaiman is involved with, The Dangerous Alphabet (HarperCollins) is great fun. It’s well worth reading with your child.

Children’s Books: The Equen Queen by Alyssa Brugman

With The Equen Queen, the second in the Quentaris spinoff series, Alyssa Brugman, best known for mainstream teen fiction, enters the children’s fantasy genre.

The city of Quentaris has been in flight for a while now, since being ripped from its home planet and sent spinning into the vortex. It’s in orbit around a new world and it’s not alone. In fact, sky cities are not especially unusual -- there is even an etiquette about greeting them.

Tab Vidler, heroine of the new series, has found her powers of mental communication disappearing, although they return during the course of the novel. But for the time being, she has no way of guessing what are the intentions of the other sky city. The people seem to be friendly enough, and willing to trade useful stuff in return for being taught children’s games. They also throw in thousands of “mood stones” they claim to have traded from another sky city, which they haven’t found much use, but which are pretty. Obviously, these are going to become significant. They also hand over a couple of “equen,” creatures from the planet below which look more or less like horses, but might have healing abilities.

Tab and her friends have adventures, find out the true intentions of the other city, try to handle a newly-hatched dragon which is very hungry, have trouble with those mood stones and find out the truth about the equen before the end of the book. It’s amazing how much happens in the course of a short 163 pages!

Jeremy Maitlnd-Smith’s lush cover and insert and Louise Prout’s delicate illustrations add considerably to the novel, though I can’t agree with her portrayal of Storm, head of the City Watch. Storm is supposed to be a policewoman and fighter, but is drawn with a Greek-style gown and high-piled hair. I always imagined her more as Xena, which the original description of her suggested. Oh, well. The rest of the illustrations are great, especially the dragon.

The original Quentaris novels were centred around a sort of junior Ankh-Morpork, with new characters in each book. For the new series, think Space: 1999 or Star Trek: Voyager. The city is going to arrive at a new world each time. There may be new characters, but since the city is flying through space, there won’t be too much room for anyone not already there, so the focus has been narrowed.

It will be interesting to see how the series proceeds.

Meanwhile, it’s well worth adding this new series to the old.

Children’s Books: Mahtab’s Story by Libby Gleeson

Since the Taliban’s harsh rule sent refugees fleeing Afghanistan, a new genre of fiction has arrived: the child refugee story. In North America, Deborah Ellis specializes in this genre. Several Australian writers have also been doing it, because refugees have arrived there in boats and ended up in detention centres. It’s a huge issue in Australia, where the would-be immigrants are often in these camps for months or even years before a decision is made about their status, and writers -- especially children’s writers -- make statements through fiction. Morris Gleitzman’s Boy Overboard and Girl Underground are particularly good examples.

Mahtab’s Story (Allen & Unwin) is the latest entry in this genre. Like most others of its kind, it is based on a true story, that of a girl the author met at a Sydney high school while researching the book. At least this author has the courtesy to name and thank the young woman whose story has inspired the book; some other writers don’t.

When twelve-year-old Mahtab’s family suffers under the Taliban, they leave their home in Herat. In Pakistan, after a terrifying journey, Mahtab’s father reluctantly decides that the family will be better off if he goes ahead to Australia to arrange things for them. After they have waited without contact for months, Mahtab, her mother, sister and brother decide to follow by boat, a journey that costs them all their money. When they reach Australia they are placed in a detention camp while their claims to refugee status are being investigated. They find help and friendship from the camp’s nurse, who teaches Mahtab English. But the waiting time is long -- and they always have on their minds the possibility that they will be sent back to the nightmare. And where is Dad?

This story is easy reading and well told, a good introduction for children to the refugee experience.

That said, I’d like to add that while all these stories are important, we have had others since Afghanistan. I haven’t yet come across any novels about the experience of African refugees coming to Australia. Their nightmares are just as real and they, too, have stories that need telliing. As a teacher working with African refugee teenagers, I’d like to see them told.

Children’s Books: Screw Loose by Chris Wheat

Screw Loose (Allen & Unwin) is a welcome sequel to Chris Wheat’s hilarious Looselips, which was published several years ago. The new book stands alone, though it helps to have read Looselips. Looselips was set in Melbourne, in a school beside the Yarra River, loosely based on Richmond Secondary College, which was a bone of contention when the new State Government shut it down in 1992 and it refused to close. Vistaview was a Richmond Secondary College that hadn’t been closed, with a multicultural student population, from Vietnamese boy Khiem, who lived in a poor neighborhood and was into crime, to Italian Angelo Tarano, who dreamed of becoming a football hero.

That crazy bunch of students from Vistaview Secondary College is back, loonier than ever. A year has gone by since the events of Looselips. The kids are in their second-last year of school. Other things have changed. Khiem is trying to go straight. Angelo is the newest recruit for the Hobart Cockatoos football team, but has had to pose nude for a football calendar and has been told to get rid of his beloved girlfriend, obsessive-compulsive Zeynep (she boils and irons shoelaces), and replace her with someone the club thinks more suitable. In this case, it’s Matilda Grey, who was brought up by dingoes and is now famous -- a cult figure in Japanese manga, the face of Dingoes’ Dinner dog food, whose pin-up boy is Inspector Rex. But Matilda is going out with Craig Ryan, whose father has moved in with the mother of bossy rich girl Chelsea Dean, who talks to her collection of Barbie dolls and wants to start a boys’ rowing team.

Georgia Delahunty has moved to Mary Magdalene Ladies’ College in hopes of finding a gay girlfriend, but also because she slapped the overly-PC principal at Vistaview when he “outed” her at a school assembly. Not that it does much good, because she slaps the principal of her new school too. Zeynep has been charged with terrorism after trying on a life preserver vest on a plane.

What a mess! But somehow it all sorts itself out at the inter-school social event organized by Chelsea and everyone, both straight and gay, gets a boyfriend or girlfriend. Even Chelsea!

Chris Wheat hasn’t lost his sense of the ridiculous, or his touch for humor. The book is deliciously silly and laugh-out-loud funny. It can only be hoped that there will be plenty more of the same from this author. Perhaps a new set of characters at Vistaview, once this bunch has graduated?

Children’s Books: Ironbark By Barry Jonsberg

Ironbark is Barry Jonsberg’s fourth novel. His first two, The Whole Trouble With Kiffo and the Pitbull and It’s not all about YOU, Calma! were set in Darwin, Australia, where he lives, and were centred around the life and crazy troubles of intelligent, smart-alec teenager Calma. Both books were laugh-out-loud funny, with suddenly shocking endings that weren’t funny at all, but they worked. In Dreamrider, the laughs stopped altogether. It was grim, but there was a twist at the end that readers had come to expect from a Jonsberg novel.

Ironbark also features a disturbed protagonist, though no sudden shock ending, this time. The young narrator, whose name we never discover, has a major problem. He suffers from something called IED -- Intermittent Explosive Disorder -- which means that every so often, he is subject to bouts of rage, during which he simply blanks out. When he wakes, he finds himself in the middle of a trail of destruction and, sometimes, injured people, with no memory of how it happened.

He’s been desperately trying to control his inner beast, terrified that sooner or later he’s going to kill someone -- maybe someone he cares about. After an explosion in a fast food joint in Melbourne, his wealthy father has paid for a psychiatric assessment of his condition, persuading the court that this is a medical disorder, not plain hooliganism. The hero knows that if he’d been poor, he wouldn’t have been spared prison.

As it is, he is put on probation, on condition that he spends time in Tasmania with his grandfather, who lives out in the bush. Presumably out there the young IED sufferer won’t have anything to smash, except maybe some trees. He is to keep a journal -- through which we gradually learn what happened -- and he is to report to the local policeman.

Despite the hero’s city-boy attitude, he and his grandfather soon bond and it turns out the hero enjoys cooking and loves to offer his grandfather new taste sensations. Unfortunately, the policeman, Richie, has decided to make the “hooligan’s” life miserable, harassing him every chance he gets and as the boy has thrown out his medication, it’s only a matter of time before he suffers an explosion. Trying to control his rage is an important part of finding himself.

Jonsberg’s books are always worth waiting for. A teacher himself, he has plenty of connection with teenagers and knows how they think. His language is usually right for the kind of people his characters are supposed to be. Calma uses a lot of long words, but she’s an intellectual. The hero of this book speaks in simpler language. Perhaps a few too many “yo”s and “dudes” but maybe Jonsberg’s students speak like that.

I do have a few nitpicks, though. The ending is sudden -- literally a cliffhanger -- though it is positive. However, there are a number of unanswered questions. For example, who sent the mysterious text message that saved the boy when he was lost, early in the novel? It’s implied, near the end, that it was Richie. Trouble is, he hasn’t actually met Richie when the message arrives and there is no cell phone signal where he sees it. And why is the man following him around in the bush anyway?

Still, it’s a good story, which should appeal to teenage boys.

Review: The Ice-Cream Man by Jenny Mounfield

Jenny Mounfield is fairly new to children’s and young adult fiction. The Ice-Cream Man (Ford Street) is only her third novel, though she also has a short story in Ford Street’s recent YA anthology Trust Me!. So far, she’s doing well.

The Ice-Cream Man is a thriller. The book suggests that it’s really not a good idea to play silly jokes on people, especially those you don’t know well. At the same time, it features a protagonist with cerebral palsy, who regards his wheelchair as a tool of independence and has no intention of swapping it for a walker, as his well-meaning parents want him to do. In fact, his friends can hardly keep up with him.

When Marty, Rick and Aaron miss the ice-cream van one hot summer day, they show their annoyance by harassing the driver as the van drives on down the streets of their small town.

Big mistake.

This is a small town, after all. People know each other. Someone knows who they are and where they live. Someone even knows the number of Marty’s new mobile phone, bought by his overanxious parents to make him reachable, since he won’t give up the wheelchair. And he hasn’t told anyone yet!

Aaron has his own problems with a bullying stepbrother. Rick’s problems are even worse. Dad has died recently and his mother has hit the bottle and the sleeping pills. The last thing he needs is to hear the music of an ice-cream van parked outside his home after midnight.

The police aren’t helpful, either, with no details of the stalker or the caller.

When Rick disappears, apparently kidnapped, it’s up to Marty and Aaron to find him -- but that means entering the ice-cream man’s lair...

The Ice-Cream Man is a great introduction to the thriller genre for children in early secondary or late primary school. It shows a fairly positive image of a disabled person, without preaching. Marty is in a wheelchair. It matters to his parents, but otherwise he just gets on with life. In fact, there are some things he can do in the chair that he couldn’t do on foot.

It might have worked better with a photographic cover than the cover illustration of an ice-cream van, though the back cover is a little scarier.

In my opinion, this book is, so far, the best novel published by new Australian children’s and young adult publisher Ford Street Publishing.

Jenny Mounfield, I believe, has a bright future writing for young people.

Children’s Books: The OK Team by Nick Place

Nick Place writes about serious issues and makes them hilarious, while still making his point. His first novel, The Kazillion Wish, featured two children making a wish for an “also-mum” to make their father happy after his divorce. The children -- who had very silly names -- were told they had to earn this wish and went off on a non-stop adventure with lots of silliness and fun.

The OK Team (Allen & Unwin), Place’s new novel, is themed around being happy with what you are and believing in yourself, but he tells it in laugh-out-loud style.

Thirteen-year-old Hazy Retina (again with the absurd names!) has a problem. When he’s frightened or stressed, he has a tendency to fall through walls or just disappear. His parents have become used to it, though his father has the irritating habit of trying to cheer him up with facts about freakish events worldwide. At school, he is teased as a freak. His only comfort is reading his superhero comics.

One night, he is visited by superhero Chameleon (Leon for short) who points out that his supposed disability is actually a power and that he is, in fact, a Hero himself -- Hero, Entry Level, Grade Two, to be precise -- and leaves him with a handbook and a remote control that will gain him access to a special Hero TV channel, which gives the information Heroes need to perform their good deeds against Villains (as opposed to villains). It’s suggested that new Heroes form teams rather than try to work alone.

In his first meeting with the Hero community, Hazy discovers that powers aren’t necessarily useful. They can range from speaking in Morse code to making all your food taste like boysenberry.

When Hazy -- with the new Hero name of Focus -- forms his Hero team, their superpowers don’t seem to be much use either. Beautiful Liarbird can’t tell the truth; her friends communicate by assuming she means the opposite of what she says. Cannonball can fly, but can’t choose his direction and tends to fly into walls. The Torch, grandson of a superhero, can make flames, but only from his index fingers -- not much use to the team, but useful to light villains’ cigarettes. Switchy is a shapechanger, who can change into anything from a crab to an iPod, complete with music, but can’t control it. In fact. he doesn’t actually know what he looks like in his normal body. Yesterday, the Girl Who can See Into The Past, is only with them because she’s Cannonball’s little sister and he has to babysit her.

After this team of klutzes has been defeated 14 times, including once by a bunch of aggressive ten-year-olds, they decide they need some coaching. Fortunately, Torch’s grandfather, whose single power isn’t much help to them, does have some connections in the superhero world and 94-year-old Mr. Fabulous (“You young punks wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes back in my day.”) is soon on his way to Australia.

In the end, the young Heroes do find a use for their powers, when used together, and when Mr. Fabulous is kidnapped and the Earth is being threatened by a meteor, it’s up to the team to use their powers to find their mentor.

The novel is great fun, and manages to get across its message without hitting you on the head with it. There are many books around in which a bunch of “loser” types work together and succeed, but in this one it isn’t only the kids who need self-confidence, Golden Boy, Australia’s top superhero and Hazy’s hero, has never actually saved the world and is now the only one who can do it. He suddenly loses his confidence in himself -- that’s a huge meteor, what if he can’t do the job? Time is ticking by, and if a superhero can’t stop that meteor from hitting, who can?

The book should appeal to late primary children up to early secondary students and older students who are reluctant readers, especially those who have enjoyed the X-Men stories, though X-Men was never quite like this!

Children’s Books: Solo by Alyssa Brugman

Mackenzie is attending a special wilderness camp being run for teenagers with problems. It’s not a brat camp or a punishment. Among the workshops and other activities, the camp offers its attendees the chance to spend 24 hours camping alone in the Australian bush: the Solo. Most of the teens have refused it. Mackenzie has accepted, for reasons that aren’t made clear, though by the end of Solo (Allen & Unwin), the reader understands why she needed that time to herself.

Most of the novel takes place in flashback, as Mackenzie sits by the river or in her tent, recalling all the events in her life that have led her to where she is now. This isn’t easy because, as Mackenzie herself admits, she’s a liar, who has been lying all her life, to her schoolmates -- who are first sympathetic and then angry as they find out -- and to herself. Eventually, most of the truth comes out, although the final part of it isn’t told till the last few pages, not to the reader but to a fellow camper who hadn’t opted for the Solo, but whom Mackenzie thinks would benefit from it, as she has.

By the end, we even understand why Mackenzie would find lying the best way to go, when we find out the tragedy that resulted from her telling the truth for once, to the wrong people; she has been blaming herself ever since.

Alone in the bush, with no distractions, Mackenzie is able to re-live her life, however traumatic the experience is. The ghosts of her past almost literally come back to haunt her, but she fights them and is eventually at peace with herself for something that wasn’t really her fault.

The book is a not-too-hard read in short chapters, though Mackenzie seems to know a lot of long words, maybe as a result of all that talking with counselors, and it has the sort of themes that teen readers like -- lots of angst, for starters -- and Mackenzie has every reason for feeling angst. After all, she has had a lot more to worry about than whether her schoolmates have been talking about her behind her back or whether that cute boy likes her. Homelessness, for example. The fact that nobody likes her, although the teachers and counselors at school are kind and helpful to her. The fact that her mother has kicked her out of the house and her father is gone.

Mackenzie is solo in more ways than the obvious.

My quibble with Solo is that the author built up a character, Callum, early in the book, and then he didn’t play any real role in the story. He was just there to trade deep secrets with Mackenzie in the last few pages of the book and be urged to have a go at the Solo. I’m guessing that girls who read the book will feel a little cheated.

Solo should appeal to older girls who like Maureen McCarthy or Margaret Clark’s grimmer stories.

Children’s Books: The World of Grrym: Allira’s Gift by Paul Collins and Danny Willis

When their grandfather, Fergus, disappears, Allira Hart and her brother Steven are taken to his Victorian country home by their father. Gerald Hart hasn’t seen much of his father for years and is angry with the old man for having wasted the family fortune on his crazy ideas. Like the castle. Niangula isn’t just a folly -- it’s a full-scale fortress which can be defended from the ravening hordes and it’s right in the middle of the Australian bush!

Of course, it turns out that there’s a good reason for having a fortress in the middle of the bush. Niangula is the gateway between two worlds and there are beings in the other world who would like to use it to invade.

Allira has strange powers. She has always known when something awful was going to happen -- and she has been hearing her grandfather’s voice in her head. He was, in fact, kidnapped by a bunch of troll mercenaries, who somehow managed to get past the defenses into our world and take him back into the world of Grrym, where he is the king. They did it on the orders of goblin Queen Morgassa, who had been overthrown by her subjects, with Fergus’ help, because of her tyranny.

The goblins loyal to Fergus want his granddaughter to take over and save them, since she is the only one in the family, after Fergus, to have the Sight. She is their Princess, as far as they are concerned, and has her own elite guard, even if they are so short that she has to sit down on the ground to talk to them properly. Of course, she protests that she wants to be an ordinary kid and anyway, she has to go to school, but comes good when needed.

The second half of the novel features a lot of fighting and sieges by the enemy armies as the action moves to Grrym, while at Niangula Steven is trying to find out what’s going on, family retainer Gardunk is having a hard time keeping control of Allira’s “g’loom,” a temporary illusion conjured up to replace her if Gerald returns from town, where he’s making arrangements for the children to go to school locally.

Who wouldn’t dream about being a Prince/Princess/Chosen One in another world, even if your subjects are a bunch of short, colorful pointy-eared beings? Children do. It has formed the basis of a lot of popular fiction and movies, from Star Wars to Harry Potter. As in the other stories of this genre, of course, the heroine protests that she doesn’t want to be royalty, she just wants to be an ordinary kid, but comes through when needed.

There’s enough action and humor in The World of Grrym (Five Mile Press) to keep young readers highly entertained, though the sequel had better come out quickly as the novel ends on a cliffhanger! The book is beautifully illustrated by co-author Danny Willis, whose pencil-drawn critters are reminiscent of Brian Froud in style. Despite all the goblins, trolls and giants taking part in the battles, the authors don’t forget that the story is centered around Australia. The scent of eucalyptus trees is strong, Australian animals wander about, the displaced Aboriginal spirit makes an appearance (hopefully to play a larger role in the next novel) and the bunyip plays his part in defending his home from otherworldly invaders.

This book should appeal to mid to late-primary school and early secondary students.

H.I.V.E.: The Overlord Protocol by Mark Walden

In the first novel in this series, 13-year-old Otto Malpense found himself whisked off to the Higher Institute of Villainous Education after a major achievement in crime. H.I.V.E. was a sort of Hogwarts for young criminal geniuses, established to channel their abilities into skills that would let them become the sort of super-villains who sit surrounded by henchmen while stroking a white cat with a jeweled collar. Actually, at H.I.V.E. the cat with the jeweled collar is one of the teaching staff, a woman who got stuck in her cat’s body after an experiment intended to give her the grace and stalking abilities of a cat. The collar is to help her speak.

It was explained to the students that while they could commit crime by simple methods, the idea of this training was to help them do it with style. Otto made some friends: Wing Fanchu, whose parents had worked for the organization sponsoring the school, sweet Laura whose computer genius had been used to hack into the computers of the local American military base (she was only trying to find out what other girls at school were saying about her) and American girl Shelby who, at only 13, had already been an international jewel thief. There was a sort of Neville Longbottom character whose brilliance with plants nearly destroyed the school when a plant mutated and went on the rampage.

In H.I.V.E.: The Overlord Protocol, Wing is told his father has died and is allowed to go to Tokyo for the funeral, accompanied by Otto. This is, of course, only the beginning of a non-stop adventure in which something that Wing’s parents did in the past impacts on the present day. The benign school computer which had gone offline in the previous book, has been brought back, but with a new program that makes it completely unemotional. The school’s principal, Max Nero, remembers what happened the last time a computer had emotions -- the Overlord of the title.

The first book was mostly a romp, with plenty of humor and silliness. I mean, a school for villains, honestly -- including a henchman program! And a giant mutated plant stalking the school. However, despite the silly premise, in Overlord Protocol the H.I.V.E. world is starting to look a lot more grim.

The organization running H.I.V.E., known as Global League of Villainous Enterprises -- G.L.O.V.E. -- is split. Some of the members actually want to do evil take-over-the-world sort of stuff. In which case, why have an organization at all? But you don’t let down Number One, leader of the group, if you want a long life. It is at this point that we discover that Max Nero is starting to look oddly like Dumbledore. He loves his school and his students and quite frankly, he thinks the whole point of having G.L.O.V.E is to make sure that crime doesn’t get into take-over-the-world mode. He was there the day Overlord came online and was defeated by Number One. The trouble is, there are villains and villains in this novel’s world and some of them start to look like good guys. The entire story is centered around the lives and adventures of the villain community, with not a single outsider. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next book, now that Nero and his supporters are more or less good guys, while still thinking of themselves as villains!

H.I.V.E.: The Overlord Protocol is full of technology, gadgets and action. There are helicopters, martial arts and ninja robots. And in the end, Otto and his friends couldn’t save the day if they thought like good guys. But as villains go, they’re not likely to be sitting on thrones with cats to stroke either. You have to wonder how the author will manage this problem as the series goes on.

The Changing Face of History

When I was growing up in the 1960s, my father used to bring me all sorts of treasures of knowledge, from weekly magazines that built up into a multi-volume library (“Buy your binder today and get a free index!”) to gorgeous single-volume encyclopedias with paintings of planets and cavemen and dinosaurs striding through tropical jungles. Children have always liked true stories when interestingly presented, whether it’s books about dinosaurs or the Guinness Book of Records. That doesn’t change.

Opening History: The Definitive Visual Guide from the Dawn of Civilization to the Present Day (Dorling Kindersley Books) took me right back to my childhood, except that in those days there were far more paintings than photos. Unlike the books that excited me so much, this one is about human history; there’s no artist’s impression of the Big Bang, say, or of dinosaurs and mostly, cavemen are represented by photos of skulls, tools and fires, with the beautiful cave art of Lascaux to demonstrate communication.

The book is laid out in a combination of themes, including “Rulers and Hierarchies,” “Warriors, Travelers and Inventors” and “Population and Power.” There are timelines, both in the course of the book and at the end, which is a set of national histories, from North and Central America to Oceania.

History includes all the usual stuff: ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, mediaeval Europe, the Industrial Revolution, France and the World Wars. It also offers information about mediaeval Korea, Polynesian expansion, the ancient African states and 17th century Japan, among other things. It extends from the first creatures that might be considered human ancestors to the present problems of climate change and world health.

The world has changed since those books of my childhood were published; the contents of this book show that. History recognizes that the world is a much bigger place than Western publishers and teachers were admitting back then: an irony, in these days of globalization.

Right Book, Right Time by Agnes Nieuwenhuizen

For many years, before her retirement, the name of Agnes Nieuwenhuizen was synonymous with with children’s and YA literature in Australia. Nobody else did so much to promote writing for young people. She arranged traveling writers’ gigs, “Booktalker” sessions aimed at teenagers during the day and interested adults in the evening. In these, writers and illustrators talked about their work and answered questions and new books were promoted. All of these continue after her retirement, through the Melbourne-based Centre for Youth Literature, as do the biennial Reading Matters conferences, which are writers’ festivals centered around books for children and young adults.

What Agnes Nieuwenhuizen doesn’t know about books for young people is probably not worth knowing and some years ago she produced a good books guide to the field. Now, she has produced a new guide, Right Book, Right Time: 500 Great Reads for Teenagers (Allen & Unwin) which includes books in many different genres and has a handy index at the end if you want to look up something specific.

Not all of Right Book, Right Time was written by Agnes Nieuwenhuizen. The section on translation is by her husband, John, who has himself translated several books from the Dutch. Allen and Unwin publisher Erica Wagner wrote the section on graphic novels. Other sections are written by specialists in the particular genre and one each were written by Lili Wilkinson and Mike Shuttleworth, who have continued the program at the Centre for Youth Literature.

This is not a book to read from cover to cover, but good to browse if you love books for young people, to see which of your favorites is represented. It’s also a handy selection tool if you work in a school or local library; I found quite a few books I hadn’t encountered and this will be going on my workroom shelf.

To be honest, not all the books included are ones I would have chosen and there were some choices with which I disagreed, but each to their own, and it’s a good spread. Whether you’re a parent looking for ideas, a teacher-librarian or just someone who likes kids’ books, this one is well worth having.

M Is for Magic by Neil Gaiman

Even if you’ve never read any of Neil Gaiman’s delightful fiction, you might have seen the film adaptation of Stardust, which did justice to the novel and has been compared to The Princess Bride.

M Is for Magic (HarperCollins) is a collection of mostly previously published short stories aimed at younger readers -- teenagers, really, rather than children, as the style of most of them is closer to adult than child. Four of the stories were published in the anthology Smoke and Mirrors. Others were also previously published. One of them is a chapter from a forthcoming novel.

In an introduction, the author explains the title as having been inspired by Ray Bradbury’s younger-reader anthologies, which had such names as R Is For Rocket and S Is For Space. This is appropriate because a number of the stories have a definite flavour of Bradbury. One of them, “October in the Chair,” is actually dedicated to Bradbury, but “The Witch’s Headstone,” which is the chapter from Gaiman’s forthcoming novel, The Graveyard Book, has the feel of Bradbury’s stories about the Family. In it, a young boy has been brought up and taught in a graveyard by ghosts and even a vampire. The stories range from the scary, such as “The Price,” in which the family cat has been fighting the Devil to protect his owners, to the deliciously silly, such as “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” in which two inexperienced teenage boys turn up at the wrong party only to find out that all the girls there actually do come from another planet. There’s “Chivalry,” from Smoke and Mirrors, in which an old lady finds the Holy Grail in a second-hand shop. A young knight comes to ask for its return, but it looks so nice on the mantelpiece…

If you want an introduction to the short fiction of Neil Gaiman, this is a good place to start, and teens or children who are good readers should find it enjoyable.

Children’s Books: “Girlfriend Fiction” 3 & 4

The first two books in Allen & Unwin’s “Girlfriend series,” My Life and Other Catastrophes by Rowena Mohr and The Indigo Girls by Penni Russon, were perfectly good teen fiction that would have worked without those hearts on the covers. The new books are more like the kind of fiction the covers suggest, except that things happen in them that you would never have found in fiction aimed at very young women and older girls back in the 1980s: especially Kate Constable’s Always Mackenzie.

She’s With The Band by Georgia Clark is the story of Mia Mannix. Mia has moved to Sydney from the small Snowy Mountains town where she had lived with her father, a famous artist. She has promised him faithfully to drop the music and concentrate on her art, in exchange for the move. Of course, she doesn’t keep the promise for long. Not with a battle of the bands and two new friends. After all, she’s at a school for the arts, like the one in Fame, except nearly everyone is snooty and unpleasant, all of them wealthy because they or their parents are famous.

And there are boys. A few pages in, we meet the boy who is clearly going to be the one Mia ends up with, but she spends the book picking the wrong boys. Needless to say, it’s happily ever after and she learns her lesson. This book reads like a teen soap, which is fair enough since the author works for a popular Australian teen soapie, so it will probably do well. Girls will like it, though it has a gay character, something that tells you this is the 21st century and teen fiction has changed. Teenagers haven’t, though; “That’s so gay,” is still an insult in most schools.

Always Mackenzie, by fantasy writer Kate Constable, starts as a standard teen friendship story. Girls will understand it because their own lives are full of friends and enemies and wondering why your friend has suddenly stopped talking to you... Nerdy Jem meets popular Mackenzie Woodrow at camp. They make friends. Jem is gradually losing touch with her closest friends, for reasons unconnected with Mackenzie.

Jem finds joy in her new friendship. And then, suddenly, Mackenzie stops talking to her, for no reason she can fathom, and those bitchy girls with whom Mackenzie hangs out become even bitchier.

Well, there’s a kiss on the last page all right, but not the kind teenage girls generally expect in a book with hearts on the cover. Whether this will appeal to the average girl or embarrass her I don’t know. There’s a lot of truth in all that girl angst in the course of the book, but what readers will think of the ending, I’m not sure. Kate Constable is a brave woman -- but this is the 21st century, after all. We can only wish her well.

Children’s Books: Sunny Side Up by Marion Roberts

Sunny Side Up (Allen & Unwin) is Marion Roberts’ first novel. It is gentle and humorous and sad all at once. For me, personally, it has the added pleasure of being set in the Melbourne suburb where I live. I recognize the places described and can assure you that they’re real, as are some of the shops mentioned.

Eleven-year-old Sunday -- mostly known as “Sunny” -- lives with her mother and their dog Willow in a seaside suburb of Melbourne. Every Friday, she and her friend Claud -- short for Claudia -- make pizza and deliver it to regular customers. Not just any pizza, of course -- gourmet pizza! Their business, Pizza-A-Go-Girl, is doing well and has just expanded to include deliveries to the uncle of that awful Buster Conroy.

Now Claud seems to be making friends with Buster, Sunny’s mother has announced that her boyfriend and his children are moving in (Ouch! Brady Bunch stuff!) and Mum still won’t tell her why she isn’t talking to her own mother, Granny Carmelene, who has just sent her first Christmas gift in years.

With all the other stuff happening, Sunny decides to visit her grandmother and, hopefully, discover what’s going on. She doesn’t find out immediately, but she does find out why Granny Carmelene has made contact after all these years and it’s rather poignant. By the end of the book, we find out Buster’s problems and he becomes another friend.

This is well worth a read and should suit children in late primary school or early secondary. Marion Roberts should do very well as a children’s writer and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Review: Diego’s Pride by Deborah Ellis

Today in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Diego’s Pride by Deborah Ellis. Says Bursztynski:

Deborah Ellis specializes in novels about children in the world’s trouble spots. For example, one of her early novels, Parvana, was about a girl trying to cope with life in Afghanistan just after the Taliban takeover. It was successful and the first of a trilogy.

Diego’s Pride, set in Bolivia in the early 2000s, is also part of a series, the sequel to Diego, Run! I haven’t read the first book, but had no problem following this one. It begins with a “story so far” and then just gets on with the current tale. Quite often, there is a reference to what happened in the previous book, but you don’t have to have read that one to understand the action. There is a handy glossary at the end of the Diego’s Pride, but you can generally work out roughly what the words mean.

The full review is here.

Review: Airman by Eoin Colfer

Today in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Airman by Eoin Colfer. Says Bursztynski:

Eoin Colfer is best known for the Artemis Fowl series, those novels centered around a young Irish genius who burst on the scene by kidnapping a fairy for ransom and who has had several adventures since then.

In Airman, he ventures into Jules Verne territory, with some touches of The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s a breathless, non-stop adventure.

Conor Broekhart was born in a balloon as it was shot down at the Paris World Fair in 1878. This is only the start of his love for flying. He lives with his parents in the miniature kingdom of the Saltee Islands, somewhere between Britain, Ireland and France. The Islands were given to an ambitious knight, Raymond Trudeau, by British King Henry II, to keep his mind off his own kingdom. The place had no natural resources, until diamonds were discovered on the smaller island of the Saltees. The mines have kept the place going for centuries and provided a place to send convicts.

The full review is here.

Review: Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp by Odo Hirsch

Today in January Magazine’s children’s book section, Sue Bursztynski looks at Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp by Odo Hirsch. Says Bursztynski:

Odo Hirsch’s books range from the Bartlett adventures, set in a sort of 18th century Europe, with imaginary countries, to the Hazel Green novels, centered around a block of flats in an imaginary city in an unnamed country, and the children who live there.

Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp is closer to Hazel Green than Bartlett, but is different again. The Hazel Green tales usually have a bit of adventure and a bit of mystery and a moral. This novel is fairly strong on the moral, with some mystery and no actual adventure.

The full review is here.

Review: Michael Sweeney’s Method by Sean Condon

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Michael Sweeney’s Method by Sean Condon. Says Bursztynski:

Michael Sweeney and his friend Dud attend an expensive private school in a wealthy suburb, although they come from a less wealthy area. They aren’t in the “loser” bunch, but aren’t at the top, either; that’s reserved for the rich, cool kids. Michael has never been in trouble at school and actually enjoys most of his studies.

It is their final year of high school. Michael’s decision that they will be kind to the new student, an American boy who doesn’t seem to have made any friends in the first few weeks of school, changes their lives. Tom is friendly and lively and his attitude to life is different from theirs -- different enough to get them all into trouble. He also turns out to be the son of a famous American actor, in Australia for a year to make a film. Nobody has taken an interest in him because the family name has been changed for school purposes, precisely to keep away the hangers-on and the press.

The full review is here.

Review: Starcross by Philip Reeve

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Starcross by Philip Reeve. Says Bursztynski :

In the novel Larklight, we met Art and Myrtle Mumby, who lived with their parents in the house of the title, orbiting the Earth of a Victorian era in a universe in which Isaac Newton is known, not for the laws of gravity but for his achievements in alchemy….

This sequel is more or less standalone, though it’s better to have read the first book to familiarize yourself with the universe. Some time after the events of Larklight, the Mumby children and their mother are invited to spend some time at Starcross, a seaside resort in the asteroid belt. There is something very strange about Starcross, beginning with the question of how you can have a seaside on an asteroid with no oceans, and a married couple of secret agents have already vanished while checking it out.

The full review is here.

Review: Pool by Justin D’Ath

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Pool by Justin D’Ath. Bursztynski sets Pool up in this way:

New Lourdes in Victoria, Australia, has been a site for pilgrimage for the last several years since a healing miracle happened at the local swimming pool -- which has also, miraculously, started sloping and become known as the Eighth Wonder of the World. In fact, things have gone well enough to change the town’s name to New Lourdes, from its original name of Loddon Springs. The tourist industry is going very nicely, thank you, and the pool is selling a range of religious goods to the pilgrims.

The full review is here.

Review: To the Boy in Berlin by Elizabeth Honey and Heike Brandt

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews To the Boy in Berlin by Elizabeth Honey and Heike Brandt. Says Bursztynski :

Well-known Australian writer Elizabeth Honey here collaborates with her German translator to produce a very readable novel. To the Boy in Berlin is told entirely in e-mail and postcards, which proves to be an easily read format for reluctant readers, because you can put it down after each section.

A 13-year-old Australian girl named Henni spends a holiday in Cauldron Bay, a coastal town in Victoria, where she finds books and papers belonging to the Schmidts, a German family who lived there in 1914. Henni becomes fascinated with them, especially Leopold Schmidt, the son of the family, who was her own age at the time. Leaving a note for whoever comes next, she is pleasantly surprised to receive e-mail from Berlin, from a modern-day Leopold Schmidt. He’s no relation to the original, but he’s happy to become a penpal and to help her out in her research when she decides to do a school project on the 1914 Schmidt family, and what happened to them.

The full review is here.

Review: Memoirs of A Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Memoirs of A Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. Says Bursztynski:

Memoirs Of A Teenage Amnesiac is Gabrielle Zevin’s second young adult novel. The first, Elsewhere, was a fantasy tale in which the heroine woke up in the afterlife and found it not too different from this world except you aged backwards and eventually returned as a baby. She hadn’t resolved her life when killed in a road accident and so needed to manage a coming-of-age while living backwards. An interesting idea and it seems to have worked, at least for the students at my school, who borrowed it frequently and enjoyed it.

This novel has another unusual idea for a coming-of-age story. What if you had to sort out a life you didn’t remember because a head trauma had knocked out the last four years of your life, from puberty onwards? Would you be the same person anyway?

The full review is here.

Review: Cold Skin by Steven Herrick

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Cold Skin by Steven Herrick. Says Bursztynski:

Verse novels are good, at school level, for encouraging reluctant readers. Each “chapter” need only take a page or two and a lot of meaning can be conveyed in a few words. You can tell the story from the viewpoint of several different characters in a way that just wouldn’t work in prose, and get into the minds of each of them with the minimum of description and detail.

You have to be good at it, though; if you aren’t capable of telling a story with some depth, you might as well not bother trying a book in verse. Margaret Wild, best-known in Australia as the author of a number of very good picture books, has, in recent years, written some first-rate young adult verse novels, probably helped by her skill in telling the maximum story in the minimum of words.

The most prolific author in the field, though, is Steven Herrick. Herrick has been telling stories in verse for young readers, from children to young adults, for many years, in between visiting schools as a performance poet.

The full review is here.

Review: Heart of Gold by Michael Pryor

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Heart of Gold by Michael Pryor. Says Bursztynski:

In the first novel in the Laws of Magic series, Blaze of Glory, we met Aubrey Fitzwilliam, son of an aristocratic family in the land of Albion, an alternative universe version of Edwardian England. In this world, magic is a science, totally unconnected with superstition or the summoning of demons, ouija boards or midnight rituals. Well, admittedly it’s done best in such ancient languages as Chaldean.

The laws of magic of the series title are a lot like the laws of physics -- “ye cannae change them, Captain” -- although you can mix and match and adapt them if you know what you’re doing. Unlike the magic of the Harry Potter universe, it isn’t genetically-based, but something you can learn at school and then practice as a career.

The full review is here.

Review: Fremantle Impressions by Ron Davidson

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Fremantle Impressions by Ron Davidson. Says Bursztynski:

The port of Fremantle in Western Australia is old. Founded in 1829, it’s actually older than Melbourne, which didn’t begin until 1835. Fremantle has been a center of whaling, of imports and exports, it has had convicts and Aboriginal rebels and union strikes and has seen the foundation of business dynasties. In the 1980s, it was the site of the America’s Cup race. This was the first time in many years that the Cup was won away from the United States and it was won by a millionaire yachtsman who later lost his hero status in Australia when he was caught out in crooked business dealings.

The full review is here.

Review: Nim at Sea by Wendy Orr

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Nim at Sea by Wendy Orr. Says Bursztynski:

The only book by Wendy Orr I had read before was the rather grim Peeling The Onion, in which a teenager who had been an athlete is now confined to a wheelchair and has to get her life in order. Of course, teenagers enjoy tragic tales -- at least, the ones I know do -- and it was a good story for its audience. Nonetheless, it was a pleasant surprise to come to Nim at Sea -- a book intended for younger readers -- and find it gentle and funny and warm.

The full review is here.

Review: Earth: A Visitor’s Guide by Ian Harrison

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Earth: A Visitor’s Guide by Ian Harrison. Says Bursztynski:

Earth: A Visitor’s Guide is a book of fascinating facts and trivia for those readers who enjoy the Guinness Book of Records. It is more than just records, of course. ...

The facts don’t stop. Did you know that in Tudor England, the ruler had someone whose job it was to wipe the royal bottom after it used the toilet? That the first artificial limb was made by an escaping criminal in ancient Greece, who had to cut off his own leg to get away? There are also some debunkings of previously accepted “facts” and a section on urban myths. There is even a recipe for a football-sized scotch egg and some unusual origami patterns.

The full review is here.

Review: Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful by Bridgid Lowry

Today, in January Magazine’s section featuring books for younger readers, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful by Bridgid Lowry. Says Bursztynski:

The author is well-known for funny, sad, gentle novels for teenagers. She does them beautifully but, despite the cover blurb and the enthusiastic endorsements from teenage girls on the cover, this book is not aimed entirely at young adults.

The full review is here.

Review: Worse Than Boys by Catherine MacPhail

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Worse Than Boys by Catherine MacPhail. Says Bursztynski:

It has often been said that boys will bully each other physically, while girls will bully each other by exclusion and words. I work with teenagers, and it is true that friendships, especially those of girls, break up and re-form at the drop of a hat. It’s part of being a teenage girl, as is cringing with embarrassment about your mother.

The full review is here.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

With the end of the embargo on the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, January Magazine contributing editor Sue Bursztynski got right to work.

As a children’s librarian and the author of several books for young readers, Bursztynski can see the flaws in Rowling’s final installment. However, she’s quick to point out that they’re not fatal flaws: she came away feeling satisfied that most of the loose bits had been tied up. Says Bursztynski:

Rowling warned us that there would be deaths and the first occurs while Harry is being escorted to the Burrow. Another character loses an ear. By the end of the book, there are more bodies than in the last scene of Hamlet. In previous books, the author killed beloved characters one at a time and left Harry time to mourn. In Deathly Hallows, they are killed en masse, mostly offstage, and there is simply no time to mourn.

The full review is here.

Review: I, Nigel Dorking by Mary-Anne Fahey

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski looks at I, Nigel Dorking by Mary-Anne Fahey. Says Bursztynski:

I am in two minds about this. There are so many novels, these days, seen from the viewpoint of a loser. While everyone has had problems and times when they feel unpopular and unloved, you really have to be able to suggest that the hero has something admirable about him to make it work. Another book written in the last year, Michael Bauer’s Don’t Call Me Ishmael! has a bully who is actually defeated by wit when one of the characters stands up to him verbally. It may not be realistic, but the reader wishes it was. Readers can identify with the characters in the Bauer book, however nerdy, while it’s difficult to identify with Nigel. When he meets a bunch of bullies early in the novel, he hopes to get them on-side by telling them all sorts of fascinating facts and it only leads to a beating. You cringe and wish he would shut up, because the reader, unlike Nigel, can see where it will end.

The full review is here.

Review: Living Hell by Catherine Jinks

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski looks at Living Hell by Catherine Jinks. Says Bursztynski:

Living Hell is young adult science fiction. The author describes it as Alien for teenagers. Well, not quite. Nothing is laying its eggs in unsuspecting humans who then burst open when the young alien hatches. More like Fantastic Voyage for teens. It is scary, though.

The full review is here.

Review: Hal Spacejock #3: Just Desserts by Simon Haynes

Today, in January Magazine’s science fiction and fantasy section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski looks at the third novel in the Hal Spacejock series. Says Bursztynski:

This is the third in what is likely to be a long-lasting series. At least, at the front of Just Desserts, author Simon Haynes says there will be about 15 volumes in the saga, or until someone takes away his keyboard. As this keyboard theft seems unlikely to happen in the near future, fans of the series should have plenty more Hal adventures to anticipate.

The full review is here.

Review: Night of the Fifth Moon by Anna Ciddor

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski looks at Night of the Fifth Moon by Anna Ciddor. Says Bursztynski:

As in the Viking Magic series, [in Night of the Fifth Moon] magic is a part of everyday life. It is taken for granted that Druids can control the weather and find out who is lying in a legal case. When the hero brings some ancient warriors from their tomb to stop a battle, the reaction to what he has done from those about to fight is irritation rather than terror.

The full review is here.

Review: Magic’s Child by Justine Larbalestier

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski examines Magic’s Child by Justine Larbalestier.

Bursztynski says that the “final book in Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness series ... is tightly written, a roller coaster ride all the way, with no wasted space.”

The full review is here.

Review: Love Like Water by Meme McDonald

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski looks at Love Like Water, a book Bursztynski feels will be most enjoyed by older teens.

Meme McDonald’s young adult trilogy, My Girragundji, The Binna Binna Man and Ngunjul The Sun, all written with Boori Monty Pryor, were coming-of-age stories centred around a young Aboriginal boy in present-day Australia. In Love Like Water, also on Aboriginal themes, the author travels back in time to the early 1980s.

Bursztynski’s review is here.

Review: Elysium by Catherine Jinks

Today in the January Magazine children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Catherine Jinks’ Elysium, book four in the Allie’s Ghost Hunters series.

While Bursztynski enjoyed Jinks’ engaging style, she asks one burning question: where are the ghosts?

The review is here.

Review: The Taste of Lightning by Kate Constable

Today, in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews The Taste of Lightening by Kate Constable, which takes us back to the world the author created for her very successful Chanters of Tremaris trilogy.

“As in the original trilogy,” writes Bursztynski, “the main characters are likeable, the females are strong and Tremaris is still a believable world.”

Bursztynski’s review is here.