CBCA short list 2011: GRAFFITI MOON By Cath Crowley. Pan Macmillan, 2010

I'm making my way through the short-listed books as I can get hold of them. My own opinions are just those: my own. You needn't agree with them. If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I have already reviewed Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood. My opinion on that one hasn't changed: it was an enjoyable book with a lot going for it, but a number of things that made me say, "Ouch!" such as the notion that a real-life school would, a. give the important job of organising the school dance as a punishment and, b. more importantly, in case someone writes to tell me that their school did it, so there, that a real school would then allow this dance to be unsupervised by teachers, putting itself at great risk of being sued if anything went wrong, as it does in this novel.

Now, on to my comments on the lovely Graffiti Moon.

I really should have read this some time ago, as I got it for reviewing, but was distracted by this and that and suddenly I had a million more review copies piling up. Now I've finished, I wish I had read it immediately! It's a lovely, gentle romantic comedy with coming-of-age elements. The whole thing takes place over one magical night in Melbourne, as glassblowing artist heroine Lucy spends the last night of Year 12 searching for her hero, graffiti artist Shadow, not knowing he's closer than she thought - and has his own problems. Like the fact that she broke his nose on their first date?

The teens in this are teens, with all the troubles teens have -it does help that the author has been a teacher herself and worked with teenagers - and there are so many times in the story when the characters are near disaster!

I loved the wacky relationships - Lucy's parents who have split with her father going into the shed to write while Mum finishes her novel, but not having the decency to want a divorce, and her friends Dylan and Daisy who adore each other but may also split after he threw eggs at her on Muckup Day. Or maybe not.

It's deservedly on this year's CBCA short list for Older Readers and I hope it does well. Fingers crossed!