Review

First published in Australian Book Review September 2003 Justin D’Ath 
Infamous, Archimedes Fusillo
 An Earful of Static, Sue Lawson Ferret Boy, Kierin Meehan
 Night Singing Kierin Meehan’s Hannah’s Winter was one of the most promising débuts in some time. Her second novel, the ambitious Night Singing, attests to Meehan’s importance as a new writer for the…

I’ve always thought of the years between nine and twelve to be a kind of “golden age” of reading, and yet for at least the past decade, some of the loudest grumblings about contemporary Australian children’s publishing have been about the dearth of substantial, complex and challenging literature for this readership. Program notes for a…

Secret Scribbled Notebooks by Joanne Horniman Published in Viewpoint: On Books for Young Adults vol. 12 no. 3 Spring 2004 The title of Joanne Horniman’s Secret Scribbled Notebooks comes from Jack Kerouac ‘s “Rules of Modern Prose” from Good Blonde and Others. The full quote refers to “secret scribbled notebooks and wild typewritten pages, for your…

From the Vault: Originally published on October 23 2006 at the old Misrule /s9y blog site (here). Note that not all the links from the original post remain live. Simmone has just published her third novel, Girl Defective, which I also really loved, and there’s a a recent interview with her here. My review copy…

This review was published in Viewpoint: On Books for Young Adults in 2003. When I told friends and colleagues that I was to review Saving Francesca, the new novel by Melina Marchetta, the reaction from each person was almost identical. First, there was delight that there was a new Marchetta novel. Then a pause. Then…

Deadly, Unna? by Phillip Gwynne Deadly, Unna? was the first novel by Phillip Gwynne and was an immediate critical and commercial success. It won the Book of the Year Award: Older Readers in the 1999 Children’s Book Council of Australia awards. The following review first appeared in Viewpoint: On Books for Young Adults, Volume 6…

This review was first published in Viewpoint: On Books for Young Adults Volume 1 Number 3 (Spring 1993)  “Do you believe in good and evil, Mum?” I asked… “…I mean evil as a sort of force that you could fight.”   She frowned. “Evil and good are potentials in all of us. You have a…

[I don’t seem to have a record of where this was first published!] David Metzenthen’s Boys of Blood and Bone is an ambitious novel linking the stories of Henry Lyon, in the summer before he starts his first year of Law at university, and Andy Lansell, Australian digger killed in the Somme in 1918. Andy…