Interview With Aleesah Darlison

Today I am interviewing Aussie children's writer Aleesah Darlison. Aleesah has, in recent years, been short listed for the Eve Pownall Award, which is the non-fiction section of the CBCA awards. I have made it as far as the Notables and the Claytons, for my book Potions To Pulsars: Women Doing Science but never the Pownall short list!

I will also be publishing her guest post in which she tells us a bit more about the books.

So, enjoy the Q and A below and maybe think of a book or two for your younger children. Aleesah's current publisher is Walker Books.

1.    Tell us a bit about yourself, e.g. what do you do when you aren't writing?  Where do you live?

I grew up in the country, living in a tiny house on a small farm with my parents, my brother and my two younger sisters. I left home at seventeen to attend uni in Sydney where I studied marketing. I’ve always had a passion for books and writing and although I worked for a number of years in corporate marketing, I spent every spare minute writing. For many years, I treated it as a hobby, never dreaming that I could actually become a published author.

It wasn’t until I left paid work to become a full-time mum that I decided to give writing as a career a proper shot. After three years of attending workshops, running writers’ groups and receiving copious amounts of rejection letters, I finally had my first picture book accepted for publication. That was two and a half years ago. Since then, I’ve published fifteen books.

I still live in Sydney, on the Northern Beaches with my husband, three young children (aged 9, 8 and 5) and two small but yappy dogs.

2.    What made you realise you were a children's writer?

When I finally had a picture book accepted for publication. Flowing on from that, and snowballing from all the years of writing manuscript after manuscript, I had other stories for primary school aged children published. I had tried writing short stories and novels for adults, but I just don’t think my inner voice (or inner child) has grown up enough for me to be successful at that. Writing for children is fun and rewarding, so I’m very happy to be where I am right now. Plus, I have loads of ideas that are yet to be turned into fully-fledged books so I could be in this space for quite some time to come.

3.    You've sold a lot of books for such a short career - how do you manage to do it all?

I’ve had some luck on my side having two series picked up, which means a lot of books need to be written in a short time to keep readers interested. I’ve worked hard and learned to make the most of each day. I have three young children – one still in preschool – so my writing time is quite limited. I don’t necessarily write every day as often I’m visiting schools to run writing workshops and author talks. I just try to make the most of every day and manage my time efficiently. I don’t watch much TV and I’m usually tapping away on my keyboard until late into the night. I’m certainly not the only author who does this!

 4.  How did you make your first sale? And how did you celebrate it?

I submitted my picture book text, Bearly There, to several publishers, through the slushpile. The story was eventually accepted by Windy Hollow Books. Even though that was my first acceptance, the book won’t be released until March 2013. It’s been a long time coming and I’ve had fifteen other books released in between times. I was so excited when Bearly There was accepted that I couldn’t speak at first. Then I ran around the house squealing. I phoned my husband pretty quickly after that and we celebrated with the kids (and a glass of champagne) later that night. I’ve since managed to secure a literary agent, Jacinta di Mase, but the joy in having a manuscript accepted for publication hasn’t dimmed at all, nor has the enjoyment of a glass of champagne to celebrate that acceptance.

    5.  Which of your fictional characters is your favourite and why?

It’s incredibly hard to choose between them. I love Persephone Pinchgut from my Totally Twins series because she’s clever, quirky, shy and witty all at the same time. I adore my four gutsy heroines in the Unicorn Riders series: Quinn, Willow, Ellabeth and Krystal, who are so courageous and work well as a team. Ben Hopper from I Dare You is funny, vulnerable, sensitive and brave. And he’s got a crush on this cute girl, Astrid. My animal characters, like Pipp Puggle, Warambi and Little Good Wolf, teach us lessons through their experiences ... see I really struggle with it. I guess my characters are like my children – I can’t choose between them!

6.    Which is your favourite book of those already published and why?

Again, this is hard for me to answer. If I HAD to choose one I could (perhaps!) narrow it down to my Unicorn Riders series, which has been very special for me. I’ve always loved unicorns and collected figurines since I was a child. The girls in the stories are strong, empowered female lead characters. The series has been a joy to write, the publisher, Walker Books, is very supportive of me. The stories are filled with magical adventures, life-lessons and twists and turns. And I’ve received high praise from readers, parents and teachers for the series.

Schooling Around: Treasure Fever!, Pencil of Doom!, Mascot Madness! By Andy Griffiths. Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 2008, 2009.

Andy Griffiths is the author of a lot of over-the-top Australian children’s books. His stories are funny and bizarre without quite the grossout of some other popular children’s writers.

Then again, there are the Bum stories. The first, The Day My Bum Went Psycho, started as a short story in which a boy’s bum detaches itself and runs away, leaving him with a major problem keeping his trousers on. In that particular story, there are official bum-catchers, so it’s not all that unusual.

And kids love the absurdity of it all, the sheer silliness, and no surprise there.

The Schooling Around series so far has the usual silliness of Griffiths stories. It manages to slip in messages about self-belief, bullying and courage, without hitting the reader over the head with them. In fact, it’s likely children will absorb them without noticing.

Schooling Around is set in Grade 5B at Northwest Southeast Central School. The Principal, Mr Greenbeard, loves ships and sailing, so treats the school as a ship and speaks in maritime terms. Most characters have appropriate names - the sports teacher is Mr Grunt, the gardener is Mr Spade, the teacher next door, Mrs Cross is always cross.

The adventures of 5B are narrated by Henry McThrottle, who has several friends - Jenny Friendly(she is), Jack Japes, Grant Gadget, whose father is an inventor, horse-loving Gina and Penny Palomino, the brilliant Fiona McBrain, Newton Hooton, who’s scared of everything. Their teacher, who arrives in the first novel, is the loopy Mr Brainfright, whose enthusiasm in teaching everything from how to breathe to how to eat a banana leads him to keep falling out of the window, into Mr Spade’s flower beds.

Each adventure is more or less stand-alone, although it refers to previous stories. In Treasure Fever! the students go searching for a “pirate treasure” buried in the school grounds years ago by Mr Greenbeard, when he was a student.

In Pencil of Doom! Henry desperately tries to get rid of a magical pencil that grants wishes when you use it to draw what you want, but definitely not in the way you were expecting your wishes granted. This story gives a nod to “The Monkey’s Paw” and even has Mr Brainfright telling the story to his class, as if it had happened to one of his friends.

In the recently-released Mascot Madness! the school has to compete in athletics sports against Northwest West Academy, whose obnoxious students jeer and throw things at our heroes whenever their bus is going past. They have been defeating Northwest Southeast Central for the last forty-nine years. Can Henry and his friends win this time, with the help of their new mascot - Mr Brainfright in a banana costume? Especially when their likable teacher is becoming obsessed with bananas and has started to think he is a banana?

Silliness or not - and there is something very silly about a giant dancing banana - there is a message here about believing in yourself and being optimistic.

Recommended for children from mid-primary to early secondary school.

Look What I Did!

I've just had the first advance copy of my new children's book, Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, which is coming out from Ford Street Publishing in March. It's always exciting to get something published and the cover and illustrations that went with this one made it even more exciting.

I'd done an article on forensic science for the New South Wales School Magazine, on commission, but it would never have occurred to me to write a history of crime in Australia if I hadn't received an e-mail from Paul Collins of Ford Street Publishing, asking me to write a book about "fifty infamous Australians" as a sort of companion volume to Meredith Costain's book Fifty Famous Australians. I was thrilled to be asked, though I begged for a better title, as "Fifty Infamous Australians" would end up on the reference shelves as research material for school assignments. Paul kindly changed the title for me (I'm useless at titles) and while it probably can be used for assignments, what with the bushrangers and such, not to mention the index, that's not what it's for. Children love gross stuff and funny stuff and they love it even more when it's true. I was going to choose, as well as the ones you had to put in, such as Ned Kelly, the grossest ones I could find.

I had Term 2 off, on long service leave, and had been hoping to spend the time writing a book, but Paul Collins was the only publisher obliging enough to offer me that chance. Everyone else responded with, "We don't do non-fiction" or "we have your details in our database, so go away. We'll Let You Know." Even better, he approached me, just as I was beginning to despair.

I started with a book of Australian ripping yarns and went on to lots of journalist books about modern crime in Australia, web sites and newspapers, both on-line archives and current ones. The current ones were good, because the entire Underbelly business was going on, trials were happening and one day I was having a coffee in an Elsternwick cafe when I spotted the story of Tony Mokbel's escape from Australia in the newspaper I was reading and got the idea for another chapter.

Oh, yes, that business of writing in cafes! We hear about it (especially in the case of J.K. Rowling), but it doesn't usually happen. But I ran out of hours on my dialup Internet account and the Presse cafe down the road has a wifi hotspot, so I found myself going there regularly and working on my book with endless pots of tea, muffins and Presse cafe lunches and you know what? It was great! I must write my next book over coffee and cake, at least on weekends.

Speaking of books over food, I had an interesting experience while on holiday in Central Australia. I was having dinner at the pub in the King's Canyon resort area when I got into a conversation with a grey nomad couple. I mentioned the book I was writing and gave as an example Caroline Grills, the kindly grandmother who poisoned her relatives with thallium in the 1940s and 50s. The wife said, "I met her." It turns out she was working at the hospital in Long Bay Jail when Caroline Grills was imprisoned there. She described the poisoner as "a sweet woman." That helped me with a sentence in the book where I mentionedthat the lady was liked both by staff and inmates at the prison. But what a small world! How much chance would you think there would be of such an encounter?

I knew someone would complain in a review that there were very few women in it, but while I picked out those I could, I found that most of the big-name female crooks in Australia in the past were madams. Someone has since suggested to me that probably the majority of female crooks didn't get caught.

Meanwhile, I put in Lola Montez (naughty rather than a crook), Mary Ann Bugg, the bushranger's wife who kept him alive, Bridget Hurford and Jean Lee (women who were hanged) and some baby farmers. And some modern women who did crazy things like hijacking a helicopter to rescue a boyfriend or helping a boyfriend escape jail or carry out cons.

I found some bizarre and downright silly stories to put into the "Did You Know" snippets that are part of a book like this. I learned a whole lot of stuff about crime in Australia that I would never have expected, or that I would have learned if I'd never been commissioned to write this book. That's the nice thing about writing non-fiction for children. If you're writing for adults, you're often an expert in a particular area and you write about that, and spend five years researching it in incredible detail. if you write for children, you can write about many different things and learn new stuff all the time and acquire new interests. Nowadays I'm reading news articles that would have been good in my book and thinking, "What a pity this didn't happen when I was writing it!"

Of course, when you're writing this sort of stuff, you have to be careful, because you can get sued and most publishers put a clause in the contract saying that you have to guarantee nobody is going to be upset by the book and if you get into trouble you're on your own. Previous history books I'd written had been set a long time ago. King Tut isn't going to sue you or send the boys around. So I worded carefully and I think Paul made sure the finished product was unlikely to get me into any trouble by re-checking the wording.

It's going to be a while before I can find out how this book will do, but I'm thrilled.

STRIDE’S SUMMER By Jenni Overend

Allen and Unwin, Crow’s Nest, NSW, 2007. 163 p.

It starts with a funeral - Stride’s father’s - and pouring rain.

Stride’s father Frank, a fisherman, had died at sea, leaving behind his wife and two children, Stride and his older sister Annie, and Ferd, a sulphur-crested cockatoo which Frank had raised from a chick, during his own childhood. Now Ferd becomes Stride’s constant companion and comfort as he coaxes the bird to recover from the loss of his master. Both boy and cockatoo make a new friend, Jess, who helps them both.

But things aren’t going to stay the same forever. What about Stride’s artist mother, who never really wanted to live outside the city? What about Gramps, his grandfather, who is now alone on the farm, with no one to help him? Will Stride lose his beloved home by the sea?

Stride needs to overcome his grief and sense of loss before he can go on with life. A bushfire forces him to learn about himself.

This is a gentle, easy-to-read story with a style reminiscent of Colin Thiele's. The author lives in the mountains, but she gives a convincing picture of life in a coastal town, surrounded by bush. You can feel the storms and the sea spray, smell the eucalyptus and see the pounding surf. Australia's on-going drought is also well-drawn.

The only quibble I have with it is that it reads like a story aimed at primary school children, but it becomes clear, before the end, that Stride is a teenager - to be honest, I’d assumed he was about twelve or thirteen at most. It might have worked better if he had been.

But it’s not a major issue - children don’t mind reading about characters a little older than themselves and this is a book I would give to children in late primary school.

Recommended.

Me 'N Harry

In a few hours, I will be going to the offices of Allen and Unwin in East Melbourne to collect my reviewer's copy of the very last Harry Potter book. It's been quite a journey, for me as well as for millions of other people. Thing is, I discovered it by word of mouth in 1999, when a fellow member of the committee of the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention, recommended the first book in the series. I'm a regular reader of children's books, but I hadn't heard of that one. I picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone at that year's Children's Book Week Fair, and quite enjoyed it, though I thought it rather reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones' Lives of Christopher Chant and its sequels(and not for nothing - when the Potter books became a world phenomenon, guess which series was reissued in bright new covers?). Then there was Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, which not only had a boy wake up on his 11th birthday to find he was a wizard - well, okay, the last of the Old Ones - but had a rather Dumbledore-like version of Merlin as his mentor. Luckily Merlin - or Merriman Lyon, as he was known in the 20th century - didn't die.

I also thought HPPS read like a cross between Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton's boarding school stories. The boarding school story has always been popular, because it's a fantasy in its own right - who hasn't imagined for themselves the midnight feasts (read "Gryffindor common room parties"), the sports matches, the noble heroes and heroines solving mysteries and fighting crooks?

While I liked the first two stories very much, I only became a fan with Prisoner of Azkaban, which was starting to become dark. There had been a hint in Chamber of Secrets that the wizarding world was not as glamorous as it seemed, when an innocent man, Hagrid, was sent to prison, to be tormented by Dementors, merely on suspicion, with no evidence whatsoever. But in Prisoner of Azkaban, I, at least, decided that I wouldn't want to live in the wizarding world! Mind you, this was the last book in the series in which nobody died.

While it's true that the novels published since really needed severe pruning, there's no getting around the power of the storytelling. I became well and truly hooked and the nice thing was that I could discuss the novels with colleagues and students alike, and go on-line to read lengthy posts on Harry Potter forums, with everyone having their own theories about what would happen, what had happened in the past, whether Snape was or was not a villain, what really happened to Professor Umbridge when she was carried off by those centaurs. I was even sucked into some of the fan fiction, I blush to admit - a guilty pleasure, but then I used to write fan fiction myself, based on media universes and there was just as much discussion of, and arguing about, those universes, just as many people coming to verbal blows over their respective theories. At least in the Harry Potter forum I frequent, there are moderators to request everyone play nice and remind them that they're just books, for heaven's sake, not Holy Writ!

There has been much arguing that harry Potter has 'got kids reading." Wrong. As a teacher-librarian, I know that kids have never stopped reading - and I work, not at some exclusive select-entry school or a middle-class private school, but a secondary school in the working-class suburbs, where many of the students are the children of parents on benefits - those of them who aren't refugees living with older siblings or aunts. What they read may not be to the taste of some of those who say so, but they read - books, magazines, newspapers, graphic novels, web-based manga...

No, what I love about the series is that it has drawn adults' attention to how wonderful children's literature can be. Before the series began, you'd constantly be meeting folk who sneered at "kiddielit" and asked children's writers like me when they were going to write a "real book". Now, they have had to set up a separate list on the New York Times because this kiddie series was hogging the regular one week after week, and you see everyone from workmen in uniforms to businessmen and women in suits reading the books on the train and the tram and not all of them with adult covers, either.

Whatever happens, I'll miss Harry after tomorrow, but always be grateful to his creator for making my life as a lover of children's books so much easier!

New Kate Constable and Catherine Jinks books - rejoice!

As it will be a while before these appear on January Magazine, I am going to park them here for the time being. Kate Constable and Catherine Jinks are top Australian writers who deserve wide exposure. Both of them are getting it, with overseas editions of their books, but hey, another review won't hurt!

THE TASTE OF LIGHTNING By Kate Constable. Published by Allen and Unwin, 2007.

Kate Constable’s “Chanters of Tremaris” trilogy presented a well-realised universe in which magic was divided into individual types - fire, ice, earth, animals and such, all of which was sung, or, rather, chanted, and only the heroine, Calwyn, the “Singer of All Songs”, could practise more than one kind. There were a lot of countries which she didn’t actually visit in the course of the series, but which the reader might well have wished to see.

In The Taste of Lightning, we get our wish. We are back in the world of Tremaris, about twenty years after the events of The Tenth Power, the last story in the original trilogy, and in a different part of the world. Here, magic - or chantment, as it is known on Tremaris - is not actually practised, although a woman called Wanion, known as the Witch-Woman is terrifying everyone by making them believe she can practise sympathetic magic. She can’t, but she knows something which will enable her to control those who can do magic if allowed to continue. She has her own, very good, reasons for wanting to have control over Skir, the young Priest-King of Cragonlands.

Skir, a laundry-maid called Tansy and Perrin, a soldier, flee together, with a number of pursuers after them. Skir is a sort of lama, of the kind who’s been recognised as someone’s reincarnation and taken to a temple to rule the faithful of that particular religion. The trouble is, the Priest-King is supposed to be able to practise ironcraft magic and he just can’t. He has been held as a hostage by Baltimar, the country at war with his own, but now his life is in danger, not only from the country holding him hostage but from a country called Rengan, which has its own agenda and reasons for wanting him dead. As a baby, Skir was hit by lightning and survived. This is significant, but we don’t find out why until nearly the end, when Skir learns who he actually is. When he gets home to the temple, he is not as welcome as he might have thought he would be, and he also discovers - eventually - why he can’t practise ironcraft in spite of all his efforts, and it isn’t only to do with himself.

As in the original trilogy, the main characters are likeable, the females are strong and Tremaris is still a believable world. There are ordinary soldiers rather than fantasy-universe warriors, and like soldiers everywhere they swear, though Constable has created her own swear-word, frug; she allows her readers to work out what that probably means, as in Red Dwarf’s swear-word smeg. If you have read the “Chanters of Tremaris” series you will be pleased to realise that one of the characters in this one was a main character in the original trilogy, though now an adult, many years older. You also find out what happened after Calwyn’s success, and it’s something that might have been predicted if the reader had thought about it, and not necessarily “happily ever after”.

There is plenty more that can happen in this world. The story doesn’t end on a clffhanger, but there are still plenty of things we don’t know at the end of it, and there is a strong possibility that there will be more novels to answer the questions raised at the end of this one.

Those who have read the orignal trilogy will fall comfortably back into this universe. If you haven’t read it, you should still enjoy this but why not go back and find out how it all started?

As with “Chanters of Tremaris”, The Taste Of Lightning should appeal to fans of Tamora Pierce.

ELYSIUM By Catherine Jinks. Published by Allen and Unwin, 2007

This is part of the “Allie’s Ghost Hunters” series, one of which, Eglantine, I have read and reviewed. Eglantine was an enjoyable children’s ghost story, in which the heroine and her friends played detectives, using their research skills and the school library to work out why a child ghost was haunting a room and how to lay it to rest.

In this story, Allie Gebhardt, President of the Exorcists’ Club, travels with her mother and brother and her mother’s boyfriend to stay at a hotel near the famous Jenolan Caves in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains, where she is going on a Ghost Tour at Caves House, a haunted hotel. The novel is written as a report to those other members of the club who can’t make it on the tour.

While there, she offers advice on someone’s dreams about a dead grandmother and encounters - sort of - a creature from local Aboriginal myth which is supposed to capture its prey by making it faint from the awful smell. Without question, there is something very smelly around the place, and somebody is going to end up covered in disgusting goo!

At the same time, she has to deal with family issues, such as her father’s utterly ridiculous New Age girlfriend, her friend Michelle’s family troubles and others.

There’s a lot of humour in this story and it’s written in Catherine Jinks’s usual entertaining style. What is doesn’t actually seem to be is a ghost story, or even a monster tale, or the “Paranormal Adventure” on the cover. If it was a stand-alone story, or promoted as just a light-hearted tale about family issues with a little monster and ghost stuff in the background, this would be fine.

In fact, it can be read more or less stand-alone, though the cover and internal references make it clear that this is one of four novels so far.

But a child who has read the other three, or even the cover blurb on the back of this one, would assume they were going to read something at least a little scary, and it’s not remotely scary. No ghosts appear, nobody is ever in any real danger from the Otherworld and while Allie gives advice about laying to rest the ghost of the grandmother of one of the characters, the ghost doesn’t actually appear on stage. No ghost appears, actually. One supposed haunting turns out to be a joke played by one of the less-sympathetic characters. The Mumuga - the dung-smelling creature - does nothing worse than make the ridiculous girlfriend smell awful. That’s assuming it is the creature that is responsible. The author never commits herself about this.

I quite enjoyed it, myself, but I suspect children expecting a ghost story will be disappointed.

It’s a pity. Catherine Jinks is a fine, versatile writer who has created everything from historical fiction in the Pagan series to science fiction, from children’s fiction such as the “Allie’s Ghost Hunters” series to adult fiction. This one is entertaining as always, but just doesn’t quite work as the kind of story it is supposed to be.

New Kate Constable and Catherine Jinks books - rejoice!

As it will be a while before these appear on January Magazine, I am going to park them here for the time being. Kate Constable and Catherine Jinks are top Australian writers who deserve wide exposure. Both of them are getting it, with overseas editions of their books, but hey, another review won't hurt!

THE TASTE OF LIGHTNING By Kate Constable. Published by Allen and Unwin, 2007. *This review has now been published at January Magazine, sooner than I expected, so go and have a look at it there. I will be removing this one from here shortly, as soon as i have sorted out a couple of things. I'll leave the Catherine Jinks review for the present.*

Kate Constable’s “Chanters of Tremaris” trilogy presented a well-realised universe in which magic was divided into individual types - fire, ice, earth, animals and such, all of which was sung, or, rather, chanted, and only the heroine, Calwyn, the “Singer of All Songs”, could practise more than one kind. There were a lot of countries which she didn’t actually visit in the course of the series, but which the reader might well have wished to see.

In The Taste of Lightning, we get our wish. We are back in the world of Tremaris, about twenty years after the events of The Tenth Power, the last story in the original trilogy, and in a different part of the world. Here, magic - or chantment, as it is known on Tremaris - is not actually practised, although a woman called Wanion, known as the Witch-Woman is terrifying everyone by making them believe she can practise sympathetic magic. She can’t, but she knows something which will enable her to control those who can do magic if allowed to continue. She has her own, very good, reasons for wanting to have control over Skir, the young Priest-King of Cragonlands.

Skir, a laundry-maid called Tansy and Perrin, a soldier, flee together, with a number of pursuers after them. Skir is a sort of lama, of the kind who’s been recognised as someone’s reincarnation and taken to a temple to rule the faithful of that particular religion. The trouble is, the Priest-King is supposed to be able to practise ironcraft magic and he just can’t. He has been held as a hostage by Baltimar, the country at war with his own, but now his life is in danger, not only from the country holding him hostage but from a country called Rengan, which has its own agenda and reasons for wanting him dead. As a baby, Skir was hit by lightning and survived. This is significant, but we don’t find out why until nearly the end, when Skir learns who he actually is. When he gets home to the temple, he is not as welcome as he might have thought he would be, and he also discovers - eventually - why he can’t practise ironcraft in spite of all his efforts, and it isn’t only to do with himself.

As in the original trilogy, the main characters are likeable, the females are strong and Tremaris is still a believable world. There are ordinary soldiers rather than fantasy-universe warriors, and like soldiers everywhere they swear, though Constable has created her own swear-word, frug; she allows her readers to work out what that probably means, as in Red Dwarf’s swear-word smeg. If you have read the “Chanters of Tremaris” series you will be pleased to realise that one of the characters in this one was a main character in the original trilogy, though now an adult, many years older. You also find out what happened after Calwyn’s success, and it’s something that might have been predicted if the reader had thought about it, and not necessarily “happily ever after”.

There is plenty more that can happen in this world. The story doesn’t end on a clffhanger, but there are still plenty of things we don’t know at the end of it, and there is a strong possibility that there will be more novels to answer the questions raised at the end of this one.

Those who have read the orignal trilogy will fall comfortably back into this universe. If you haven’t read it, you should still enjoy this but why not go back and find out how it all started?

As with “Chanters of Tremaris”, The Taste Of Lightning should appeal to fans of Tamora Pierce.

ELYSIUM By Catherine Jinks. Published by Allen and Unwin, 2007

This is part of the “Allie’s Ghost Hunters” series, one of which, Eglantine, I have read and reviewed. Eglantine was an enjoyable children’s ghost story, in which the heroine and her friends played detectives, using their research skills and the school library to work out why a child ghost was haunting a room and how to lay it to rest.

In this story, Allie Gebhardt, President of the Exorcists’ Club, travels with her mother and brother and her mother’s boyfriend to stay at a hotel near the famous Jenolan Caves in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains, where she is going on a Ghost Tour at Caves House, a haunted hotel. The novel is written as a report to those other members of the club who can’t make it on the tour.

While there, she offers advice on someone’s dreams about a dead grandmother and encounters - sort of - a creature from local Aboriginal myth which is supposed to capture its prey by making it faint from the awful smell. Without question, there is something very smelly around the place, and somebody is going to end up covered in disgusting goo!

At the same time, she has to deal with family issues, such as her father’s utterly ridiculous New Age girlfriend, her friend Michelle’s family troubles and others.

There’s a lot of humour in this story and it’s written in Catherine Jinks’s usual entertaining style. What is doesn’t actually seem to be is a ghost story, or even a monster tale, or the “Paranormal Adventure” on the cover. If it was a stand-alone story, or promoted as just a light-hearted tale about family issues with a little monster and ghost stuff in the background, this would be fine.

In fact, it can be read more or less stand-alone, though the cover and internal references make it clear that this is one of four novels so far.

But a child who has read the other three, or even the cover blurb on the back of this one, would assume they were going to read something at least a little scary, and it’s not remotely scary. No ghosts appear, nobody is ever in any real danger from the Otherworld and while Allie gives advice about laying to rest the ghost of the grandmother of one of the characters, the ghost doesn’t actually appear on stage. No ghost appears, actually. One supposed haunting turns out to be a joke played by one of the less-sympathetic characters. The Mumuga - the dung-smelling creature - does nothing worse than make the ridiculous girlfriend smell awful. That’s assuming it is the creature that is responsible. The author never commits herself about this.

I quite enjoyed it, myself, but I suspect children expecting a ghost story will be disappointed.

It’s a pity. Catherine Jinks is a fine, versatile writer who has created everything from historical fiction in the Pagan series to science fiction, from children’s fiction such as the “Allie’s Ghost Hunters” series to adult fiction. This one is entertaining as always, but just doesn’t quite work as the kind of story it is supposed to be.