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Jen Banyard
Fremantle Press (2009)
ISBN: 9781921361517
Reviewed by Tehani Wessely (this review was first published in April 2009)
Western Australian publisher Fremantle Press – who brought us Kate McCaffrey’s eloquent young adult novels Destroying Avalon and In Ecstasy, and the excellent science fiction action comedy that is the Hal Spacejock series (by Simon Haynes) – have done it again, this time with a book for a younger audience. Spider Lies is a fantastic little read, with enough to amuse an adult while still being fully accessible and entertaining for a younger reader.
Jen Banyard takes inspiration from a true life experiment by NASA, looking at spiders in space, and twists it just left of centre. Connor is a fan of arachnids, and gets his science class involved in collecting spider colonies for the NASA space project. When the colony goes into space, Connor discovers one spider of the family left behind, so keeps him as a pet. Somehow, Connor also manages to finagle being home alone for the first time ever around the time of the space launch, and this means there’s no one to help when he starts to have strange feelings about being watched, and his elderly neighbour, Millie, begins to see things – enormous bug things… Read the rest of this entry »
Isobelle Carmody
The Legend of Little Fur, book 1
Penguin Books Australia (2005)
ISBN: 9780670040933
Reviewed by Rachel Holkner (this review was first published in February 2008)
The first thing you notice on picking up the first of Isobelle Carmody’s Little Fur series is that it’s fuzzy! The small, hardcover book is bound in a soft velvety cloth which is warm to the feel. The entire book is a delight to touch and read, being small enough to hold in one hand, heavy and solid, and within, superbly laid out. In fact it won an Australian Publishers Association Book Design Award in 2006.
What’s more the contents of the book hold up to this seeming extravagance. Little Fur: The Legend Begins introduces us to the half troll, half elf creature who lives in a magically protected forest close to a city. Little Fur is a healer and uses her skills to cure animals which come to her injured or in sickness. But she has never left her forest, until the day she must seek help across the city to stop humans from burning down trees. Read the rest of this entry »
Kate Forsyth
Pan Macmillan (2005)
ISBN:9780330421935
Reviewed by Rachel Holkner (this review was first published in July 2007)
Kate Forsyth’s Dragon Gold is a novel for younger readers that takes most of the staples of fantasy writing (dragons, princesses, pirates, flying carpets) and smooshes them into a plot that, if nothing else, will prepare the audience for Harry Potter.
Ben wishes for a dog more than anything in the world. After a long and convoluted argument, in which the focus changes from wanting a pet to wanting money, he figures that what he really needs to realise his wish are wizardly powers. A run in with a talking cat enables him, and Ben, younger brother Tim and best friend James, set out to find some dragon’s gold. The plot twist here hinges on a grammatical error that may be missed by young readers. Ben inadvertently wishes for dragon gold, whereby one appears and whisks away James’ younger sister. Read the rest of this entry »
Rowena Cory Daniells
The Lost Shimmaron, book 3
ABC Books (2008)
ISBN: 9780733320286
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack (the review was first published in February 2008)
The Evil Overlord is volume three in a seven volume series of children’s novels. Each novel is written by a different, well known Australian author, and each novel tells a different story of a Shimmaron’s search for rescue. The Shimmaron are energy beings who crash landed on Earth a long time ago. The force of the crash scattered them through time and across different worlds. Disguised in different forms, they call to the children of Amethyst to help them reunite in Lake Shimmer. Only when enough of the Shimmaron have gathered there will they be able to rebuild their ship and escape Earth.
This was a lively and enthusiastic tale of Lincoln and Sam’s efforts to rescue a Shimmaron from a land controlled by an evil overlord. Lincoln and Sam have just moved to Amethyst, and have barely had time to see their new home before they are swept away to another world on their rescue mission. Sam and Lincoln regularly play “Mage Wars” role playing games and initially think this mission will be little different from those games. Read the rest of this entry »
Margo Lanagan
The Lost Shimmaron, book 2
ABC Books (2007)
ISBN: 978073332079
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack (this review was first published in January 2008)
The Singing Stones is volume two in a seven volume series of children’s novels. Each novel is written by a different, well-known, Australian author, and each novel tells a different story of a Shimmaron’s search for rescue. The Shimmaron are energy beings who crash landed on Earth a long time ago. The force of the crash scattered them through time and across different worlds. Disguised in different forms, they call to the children of Amethyst to help them reunite in Lake Shimmer. Only when enough of the Shimmaron have gathered there will they be able to rebuild their ship and escape Earth.
In The Singing Stones, Lawrence and Jean are swept away by a willy-willy while fossicking for rocks with their grandfather, and find themselves in the land of Scintillon. The land runs on the power of magical jewels, and parts of it are being devastated by the thefts of jewels by the ruthless Rose twins. Lawrence and Jean slowly come to realise that in order to do what they have been called to Scintillon to do – rescue a Shimmaron who is disguised as a power jewel – they must also defeat the Roses and save Scintillon itself. Read the rest of this entry »
Tansy Rayner Roberts
The Lost Shimmaron, book 1
ABC Books (2007)
ISBN: 9780733320262
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack (this review was first published in July 2007)
This is a simple and charming children’s book, well pitched for the young readers it’s aimed at. I enjoyed it too, and adults in the mood for a very straightforward story which will only take them a couple of hours to read could do much worse than pick up Seacastle.
Nick has been sent out to find his annoying little brother, Thomas, who’s managed to wander off somewhere just before dinner. Thomas is sitting on the edge of Lake Shimmer, thinking about why he can’t seem to learn to swim well. After Nick finds him, he throws himself into the Lake to test a theory. Nick of course has to leap in to save him, and the next thing the brothers know, they’re in an underwater world. Habitat is plagued by increasingly dangerous seaquakes. Nick and Thomas need both to save Habitat and find a way back to their own world.
This is the first book in a series of (at least) seven, each written by a different Australian author. All are fairly well known in Australia, experienced and talented, and it’s likely the other books in the series will be of similar quality to Seacastle. I suspect each will be a stand-alone story, like this one, tied together by the over-arching theme of the series: when their spaceship crashed on earth, the Shimmaron were thrown into different worlds and times, and were forced to take on different shapes. They’re trying to re-gather in Lake Shimmer, in Australia, as they need to be together to rebuild their spaceship and escape. And only young children can hear their pleas for help. Read the rest of this entry »
Lian Tanner
The Keepers, Book 1
Allen & Unwin (2010)
ISBN: 978-1-74237-157-3
Reviewed by Tehani Wessely
Welcome to the city of Jewel, where children are coddled and overprotected to the point of effective imprisonment. In a place where this has happened for decades, impatience and boldness are considered very wrong, and adults are almost entirely weak and ineffectual. Goldie Roth finds herself in a highly unusual situation when the ruler of the city, the Protector, tries to loosen the ties on the young by releasing them early from the guardchains of childhood, only to have an explosion suddenly destroy the fragile steps she had begun to take. The Fugleman, the city’s spiritual guide and leader of the Blessed Guardians – who ensure the safety of children (whether they need taking care of or not) – has his own agenda, one that is not at all on the same wavelength as the Protector’s.
Simon Haynes
Bowman Press (2011)
ISBN: 978-1-877034-07-7
Reviewed by Guy Salvidge
Perth writer Simon Haynes has been writing Hal Spacejock novels for years, but this is his first venture into Young Adult territory. Hal Junior: The Secret Signal is a spin-off from the other Spacejock series, featuring an intrepid young adventurer by the name of Hal Junior. The nature of the relationship between Hal Junior and the Hal Spacejock of the earlier novels isn’t specified, but enough hints are dropped that the reader should be able to figure out who Captain Spacejock really is. The Secret Signal is intended for readers in the 9-12 age group, although it reads fine as an adult piece too. The book is a brisk read and I can recommend it wholeheartedly to younger readers.
We open with Hal Junior piloting the spaceship Phantom X1, only the spaceship is really a paper plane. He does live on a space station though, in an unspecified future time where tigers are extinct and paper is a historical oddity. Hal Junior is supposed to be doing an assignment for his robotic teacher, but he ends up in trouble straight away when he almost loses his work (the plane) down the recycling hatch. After some amusing buffoonery, Hal and his friend Stinky retrieve the plane by reversing the space station’s gravity. This is the first in a series of largely self-inflicted trials that Hal Junior undertakes in The Secret Signal, and it’s all good fun.
Catherine Jinks
Allen and Unwin
ISBN: 978-1-74237-363-8
Reviewed by Lorraine Cormack
The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group is a novel that perfectly catches the thought processes and mental “voice” of a teenage boy, and blends a fantasy plot with a very solid realistic attitude regarding what it would really be like to be caught up in something like this.
Toby – Tobias Vandevelde – wakes up in hospital with no memory of the night before. This is particularly unpleasant because not only is he in hospital, but he was brought there after being found naked in a dingo pen at a local wildlife park. Which is just the sort of story every thirteen year old boy wants his friends to hear about – not. In fact, Toby quickly convinces himself that it must have been the result of a prank by his friends, and it’s a fairly nasty sinking feeling when they convince him they’re as surprised as he is.
Garth Nix and Sean Williams
Troubletwisters, book 1
Allen & Unwin (2011)
ISBN: 9781742373980
Reviewed by Alexandra Pierce
I am a long-time fan of both Garth Nix and Sean Williams (more so the latter’s SF than fantasy), so the idea of a collaboration between the two – aimed at children – is exciting indeed. And I was fortunate enough to hear Sean Williams speak about the act of collaboration at Natcon Fifty, where he discussed the different aspects that each brought to the writing.
Troubletwisters harks very strongly to the classics of fantasy written for younger readers. The main characters are twins: Jaide and Jack. (In talking about the story, Williams admitted that he has long been intrigued by twins and their use in fiction. As I see it, it’s almost like you’re getting a character for free – and it means that you always have the opportunity for your characters to discuss things, disagree about things, or be worried about someone.) Their father is away a lot, and they know nothing about his side of the family … until a disaster means that they have to go and stay with their mysterious paternal grandmother, where they begin to learn about some strange abilities. These plot devices could have felt hackneyed and stale, being by no means original; instead they feel familiar, but by no means comfortable. Williams and Nix use the twins as a means of exploring different reactions to scenarios and individuals, and there are indications that the two will have different experiences of their abilities that will be explored in later books of the series (there will be another four). The trope of leaving home and going to an alien place is as old as fiction itself; it can be, and is used here as, the catalyst for self-discovery and learning about the world. The strange relative and slightly intimidating new environment – Grandma X and her weird house – are perfect for the target age-group: visiting unknown relatives can be a very scary thing indeed.
