Oceania

Materials from Oceania

Spinster Goose

Some children are simply too naughty for Mother Goose to handle. Luckily her sister Spinster Goose knows just how to deal with these uncouth urchins. Her school is home to some world-class troublemakers: they bite and pinch, they talk back and fight, and they eat chalk! But brats beware, this isn’t just any school, and Spinster isn’t your average goose. Her curious methods will rid these students of their horrendous behaviors. Fans of Mother Goose will delight in these devilishly twisted alternatives to classic rhymes.

Did My Mother Do That?

What was I like when I was born? The perennial question receives a fanciful response in a tale that takes an interspecies tour of mothers and babies. Holly loves to hear the story of the night when she was born—but first she needs to ask a lot of questions. Did her mother hatch her out of an egg? Did she carry Holly in her pocket? Maybe she fed her baby mice for dinner? As Holly and her dad rule out one imaginary scenario after another, little listeners will be eager to join in, while learning some interesting details along the way. And they’ll be just as comforted as Holly to hear one final, satisfying tale of a happy and loving human mother on the day her baby was born.

Go To Sleep, Gecko!: A Balinese Folktale

The author of The Girl Who Wore Too Much retells the folktale of the gecko who complains to the village chief that the fireflies keep him awake at night but then learns that in nature all things are connected.

Tall Story

Andi is short. And she has lots of wishes. She wishes she could play on the school basketball team, she wishes for her own bedroom, but most of all she wishes that her long-lost half-brother, Bernardo, could come and live in London where he belongs. Then Andi’s biggest wish comes true and she’s minutes away from becoming someone’s little sister. As she waits anxiously for Bernardo to arrive from the Philippines, she hopes he’ll turn out to be tall and just as crazy as she is about basketball. When he finally arrives, he’s tall all right. Eight feet tall, in fact—plagued by condition called Gigantism and troubled by secrets that he believes led to his phenomenal growth. In a novel packed with quirkiness and humor, Gourlay explores a touching sibling relationship and the clash of two very different cultures.

Guardian Of The Dead

Eighteen-year-old New Zealand boarding school student Ellie Spencer must use her rusty tae kwon do skills and new-found magic to try to stop a fairy-like race of creatures from Maori myth and legend that is plotting to kill millions of humans.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 2

I Lost My Mobile at the Mall

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?

Halo

Three angels are sent down to bring good to the world: Gabriel, the warrior; Ivy, the healer; and Bethany, a teenage girl who is the least experienced of the trio. But she is the most human, and when she is romantically drawn to a mortal boy, the angels fear she will not be strong enough to save anyone’ especially herself’from the Dark Forces. Is love a great enough power against evil? Here is the start of a stunning trilogy; the story continues in Hades (Fall 2011) and Heaven (Fall 2012).

The Beginner’s Guide to Living

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?