Moonboy by Anna Ciddor. Sydney: Allen And Unwin, 2025

 

This is the latest of Anna Ciddor’s delightful time slip novels. In the others, the characters time travelled to Roman times. In this one, our heroine, Charlotte, time travels only as far as 1969, where she meets her grandfather when he was her age. Keith, nicknamed Moonboy during his childhood for his passion for the space program, is suffering dementia in his older years and is living in an aged care facility which looks after several dementia sufferers. Charlotte and her grandfather had been very close and it is hard for her to see him like this. 

Checking out his box of childhood treasures, mostly cuttings connected with Apollo 11, she puts on his footy jumper and finds that it takes her back to the past, where she meets and befriends young Keith and his family. 

She finds she can change the past, such as persuading his older sister Gwen to go to do a job at Honeysuckle Creek, the Australian tracking station which showed visuals from the moon. There Gwen becomes interested in the space program and becomes an engineer instead of working at a shop in Queensland as Charlotte remembers. This inspires Charlotte to change some more history for the better.

Charlotte finds ways to get her grandfather to recover some memories and speak again, by reminding him of the space program.

The scenes in 1969, with the moon landing approaching, are fun, especially for people like me who were there. There is one scene in a classroom where the children are given milk. I remember that. To this day there are people remembering this program with disgust because the milk was warm. My school was built of bluestone, so the milk was cool and I enjoyed it. 

There is a milk bar where Keith and his family live and sell stuff. Milk bars were convenience stores that sold groceries and sweets in the days before supermarkets became the main places to shop. Actually, there were still milk bars around till only a few years ago, near where I live(the most recent to close was replaced with a cafe). It definitely made me sentimental, but for the younger children at whom this novel is aimed, it’s history, as much as the details about Apollo 11. 

Anna has done a huge amount of research and has given links to the web sites she used, including one that shows a video mentioned in the book. 

The style of this particular novel reminds me of the work of the amazing Gabrielle Wang, best known as the author of A Ghost In My Suitcase, which was turned into a play some years ago. 

The chapters are short, and easy reading.

Highly recommended for readers 9-12. 

Available in ebook and print, at all good web sites. 

Septopus by Rebecca Fung.Owltitude Press, NSW, 2024

 

Stanley is a Septopus, born with only seven tentacles instead of eight. He can do what everyone else needs eight tentacles to do, but his father treats him like a fragile person who needs regular doctor appointments and is too weak to go anywhere, his mother, a scientist, pays very little attention while doing her experimenting and his siblings - and other octopus children - bully him.

Fortunately, Stanley, while he puts up with his family’s behaviour, finds ways around it. The first time involves embarrassing his oldest brother, Oswald the jock, in the middle of an octoball game.   He manages to get into a party which his family don’t want him to attend, inspired by the story of “Octorella”, and makes his first friend there.

It’s good to see a story in which a bullied child - even if they’re a sea creature - refuses to be a victim. It should inspire young readers.

The cartoon-style art of veteran children’s book illustrator Kathy Creamer, cover and internal, is delightful, funny and over the top. 

This book is suitable for readers from 8-14, as well as adults like me who love children’s books. Plus it will be good to read to children.

It’s currently only available in Australia, though it might be available elsewhere once Owltitude Press expands. It’s the first book by a new publishing company, though the author has written more books, some of which are already available on Amazon. Here is the Australian Amazon, but also available on the American and British sites. https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=rebecca+fung&crid=2QXCD8W5NMVMC&sprefix=%2Caps%2C244&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent

If you live in Sydney, try Abbey’s Bookshop, which has already sold out its current stock of Septopus, but should be willing to get in more. Or ask your local bookshop to order it if you live elsewhere in Australia. It’s past Christmas but this will make a good birthday gift for the child in your life.

The Owltitude web site is down right now, but I will put it here when it’s back.

Just Finished Re-Reading Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp.

 I seem to be doing a lot of re-reading lately, while there is a pile of review stuff to do. Sometimes I’m stressed out and just want something familiar to read. 

Recently, I binged on L.Sprague De Camp’s Compleat Enchanter series. That made me feel like going back to another book I’d read years ago, by the same author, Lest Darkness Fall. An interesting thing about this book is that it inspired Harry Turtledove, now best known as the king of alternative universe fiction.

It was written in the early 1940s, starting off in the late 1930s. The hero, Martin Padway, is in Italy doing research for a thesis. He is an archaeologist, so knows, not only history, but how quite a few things are made. Padway is talking to an Italian scholar who has theories about alternative universes, important to the plot, because he suggests that, if you went back into the past, you could change things without worrying that you might keep yourself from being born, because you’d just create another branch of the tree of time.

When Martin takes a walk, he is struck by lightning and finds himself in sixth century Rome, run by the Goths. He speaks Latin, so can communicate. He also eventually learns the language of the Goths.

Figuring he isn’t going back to his own time, he decides the best thing is to start a small business. He understands that it has to be something simple, because some things require the technology to build the technology to build the impressive stuff. He starts off with getting a loan to make brandy, and it goes from there. Eventually, he builds a telegraph line and a printing press, then creates paper to publish his weekly newspaper, because vellum is not easy to get hold of. 

Knowing that the armies of Justinian are on their way, he decides the Goths are a lot more laid back in their attitudes and he changes the things that will happen. 

This edition contains the original novella and a number of other stories  by well known authors that are basically Lest Darkness Fall fan fiction.  I bought it in Apple Books ebook and it wasn’t expensive. It’s also available in Kindle or print. If you haven’t read it, or not recently, it’s well worth a read.