Materials from Australia
Elly Pickering is dreading telling her parents thats she’s lost her mobile phone again, what with the Global Financial crisis and everything. But losing her mobile is just the beginning. A series of technological happenings and manipulations leads Elly to question her priorities, her friendships, and Will, her fabulous boyfriend. Is she facing certain social death? Or can a technological breakdown sometimes be kind of a good thing?
Seven days after his mother dies in a sudden, senseless accident, seventeen-year-old Will embarks on a search for meaning that leads him to the great philosophers—Plato, Seneca, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche—and to Taryn, the beautiful girl he meets at his mother’s wake. Will is desperate to find, however he can, something authentic, something ultimate, something so true he would live or die for it. But is he willing to risk losing Taryn—losing everything–to seek the answers he craves?
Clementine thinks her cousin Fan is everything that she could never be: beautiful, imaginative, wild. The girls promise to be best friends and sisters after the summer is over, but Clementine’s life in the city is different from Fan’s life in dusty Lake Conapaira. And Fan is looking for something, though neither she nor Clementine understands what it is. Printz Honor Winner Judith Clarke delivers a compassionate, compelling novel with the story of a friendship between two young women, and of the small tragedies that tear them apart from each other, and from thtemselves.
In this sweet, engaging picture book, Ollie celebrates all the things he loves about birthdays.
In Sydney, Australia, and in Morocco, two boys and their families have a day of shopping. Readers are invited to compare illustrations in two wordless stories that are intended to be read one from left to right and the other from right to left.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 2
It’s dawn, on an empty road in the countryside. Empty, except for the girl in the long, red evening gown, standing next to a bicycle, and looking back at the home she’s about to leave. Mannie’s ready to start a new life and forget the terrible things that have happened here, but there are questions that need to be answered before she can let go. Questions about her elegant but unstable mother, her brother who’s always overshadowed her, and his friend Harry Jacob, who just might be Mannie’s boyfriend. And her only clue is an unfamiliar address in Melbourne, written on a scrap of paper found in her brother’s room. As she makes her journey to the city, the mystery of this vulnerable, quirky girl is revealed piece by piece in her search for a way to become whole again. With rare sensitivity and a poetic voice that is unmistakably her own, Martine Murray tells a story about growing up and listening to your heart.
Skip, an eleven-year-old runaway, becomes friends with Billy, a homeless man, and together they flee a war-torn Australian city with six-year-old Max and camp out at a seaside amusement park, where they are joined by Tia, a fifteen-year-old ballerina, and her baby.
The Bell family’s ancestors were showered with honors, gifts and grants of land. In exchange, they have bestowed a Gift, once every 25 years, on the town. The Gifts have ranged from a statue to a bell tower with stained-glass windows, but now it is Darius’s father’s turn – and there is no money for an impressive gift. It looks as though a wheelbarrow full of vegetables is the best they can do. Darius is determined to preserve the family honor, and when an earthquake reveals something glorious, he thinks he’s found the answer.
Two young tooth fairies make their first lost-tooth collection. April Underhill, seven-year-old tooth fairy, gets a call on her cell phone. April and her little sister, Esme, must convince Mom and Dad to let them take on the task all by themselves. But soon, two tiny fairies fly off into the night, over a highway of thundering eighteen-wheelers, eager to prove how grown up they can be. As always, the charm is in the visual details: the pony-tailed, winged dad in baggy jeans; the snug fairy house with teeth dangling from the rafters like wind chimes. Once again, Bob Graham has crafted a tale of heartwarming adventure, magical yet very real.
The inimitable wombat who shared her adventures (eating, scratching, digging, sleeping) in the wildly successfulDiary of a Wombatis backwith a baby! This time, it’s the baby who tells the story. And a perfect wombat story it is, featuring eating, scratching, digging, sleeping, and playing, as well as the important task of finding a new underground home big enough for baby and Mum. Wry, understated humor and gorgeous, funny illustrations make this new picture book a brilliant next chapter in the wombat saga.