SOMETHING MORE By Mo Johnson. Series: Girlfriend Fiction 11. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009

Girlfriend Fiction series is quite a mixture, from the hilarious (My Life and Other Catastrophes, The (Not Quite) Perfect Boyfriend) to the thoughtful (Cassie, which was about friendship and family and living with disability rather than boys) to the different, such as Being Mackenzie, which ends on a kiss but not with a new boyfriend. There was the girl caught up with Christian fundamentalism with a cute boy in Winter of Grace and the girl whose Greek background clashed in some ways with her other life (Step Up and Dance).

And then there are the simple romances, which girls often like best, because they reflect their own teen concerns - will the cute boy like me? Does he already have a girlfriend? Do I have a pimple breaking out just when he’s asked me on a date?

This is one of them and, like all the others in this series, it’s a lot better-written than the teen romances that came out in the 1980s when I first started working in school libraries. It has that -well, something more than they did.

True, there are the two attractive boys in the heroine’s life and you just KNOW she’s going to end up with the one she thinks she hates at the beginning. There’s the girl who’s a rival for the affections of the gorgeous one, who’s being horrible to the heroine. It’s formula, but that’s fine. Teenagers like formula. They’d be annoyed if the girl did end up with the first boy she liked in the book.

But unlike the abovementioned 1980s teen romances, the gorgeous boy is actually a nice person. He may not be right for the heroine, but he’s decent enough. The rival is not as bad as she seems. She has her own problems, some of them connected to what’s happening to the heroine’s sister. And unlike the witch-queens of the 80s, she’s actually good at her schoolwork.

Briefly, Isla McBay and her family have migrated to Australia. She has made friends, but misses Scotland, her wise grandmother whose pithy sayings head each chapter, her best friend and the boyfriend who might even now be finding a new girlfriend. She has not yet had the courage to contact him, but thinks she’s making a clean break.

Her sister, with whom she has never gotten along, might be pregnant and suddenly Isla’s worries about boyfriends and pimples don’t seem so important. But it might affect her own relationships...

This novel is never going to set the world of young adult fiction alight, but it’s not meant to. It’s just a nice, gentle story in which the heroine learns something and finds some courage while scoring her new boyfriend. It works.

I had to lend it out to a student following the Girlfriend series without processing it. That must say something about the quality of the series.

THE GIMLET EYE By James Roy. Quentaris: Quest of the Lost City #3. Melbourne, Ford Street Publishing, 2009.

In this third instalment of the spin-off of the popular Quentaris shared-world series, a character from the original series is actually killed off, something that doesn’t usually happen in shared universes. As it happens in the prologue, it’s no secret.

The Archon, ruler of Quentaris, is dying. His horrible nephew Florian is persuaded to finish him off rather than wait for his inevitable death. Florian’s “friend” Janus (as in the two-faced god?) reminds him of the prophecy that declares that anyone who kills the previous ruler will rule properly himself. Janus, of course, has his own agenda.

Meanwhile, the adult magicians have been banished to a very nasty part of the city (well, they can’t be exiled elsewhere, short of being thrown overboard, since Quentaris has been travelling from one vortex to another). The younger ones, such as Tab Vidler, former Dung Brigader and recently an apprentice magician, and her friend Amelia, have been spared the dungeons, but left to their own devices. Tab is back to shovelling dung, though on a farm rather than the streets, while Amelia is working at a pub. Torby, the boy rescued in the first novel, The Spell of Undoing, is lying in hospital in a catatonic state. Nobody knows how this happened, except, of course, the reader.

That conceited ac-tor, Fontagu Wizroth the Third, has been ordered to do a command performance of a play called The Gimlet Eye for the new Emperor’s birthday, and he’s thrilled. Tab, Amelia and their friend, the former pirate Verris, can’t persuade Fontagu that there’s something fishy going on…

In my opinion, this one is the best so far in the new series. We learn more about the characters and their feelings. The adventure is fast, but straightforward enough for the young readers for whom this is an introduction to fantasy. At the same time, there’s a murder in the first chapter; there’s no tiptoeing around the issue. What happens to the adult magicians is also scary.

But there’s still plenty of humour, maybe more than there's been since the end of the original series – and in the end, Fontagu is shown in a more positive light than before.

The only thing is, while you can probably get something out of this book without having read the others, you really do need to have read them to understand properly what’s going on. The series is no longer a lot of related but individual titles. There is still, however, a policy of using some of Australia’s top children’s writers to keep the quality up.

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

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.

EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL By Simmone Howell. Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2008

Riley Rose is stuck at Spirit Ranch Holiday Camp, just when she was about to get close and personal with that hunk Ben. It’s filled with Christian teenagers and camp counsellors who blow bugles at you and make you sing around camp fires, when you’re not memorising Bible quotes or having presentations on the domestic life of the mallee fowl.

Of course, there’s the very hunkish Craig, but he’s not all he seems. Besides, he’s with Riley’s room-mate Fleur and Fleur is not about to share. Then there’s Dylan, who used to be Craig’s friend and equally good-looking, before an accident left him in a wheelchair. He’s back at camp, but no one seems sure what the accident actually was, and he’s not saying.

And Riley has her own issues, centred party, at least, around her mother’s death from cancer, her father’s new partner and her own overweight state.

There’s an entire genre of fiction about a wilderness camp and a troubled teenager who finds answers there, despite being originally reluctant to go. I have reviewed one, Solo by Alyssa Brugman, in the last year. This one isn’t quite as grim as Solo, although it’s also readable and broken into easily-digestible short chapters.

Riley has issues to sort out, but she also has things to teach the other campers, even those who mock her weight and call her a slut. That is perhaps less common in summer camp fiction. Before the novel is over, she is also feeling sympathy even for the worst of them, which helps her. And the beautiful Ben, when he appears, is a comical character rather than the hunk she remembers.

I do have a nitpick or two. Dylan’s accident turns out to have been far less dramatic than was implied at the start and has no real bearing on the story. It would be okay if the issue was about how he handles his confinement to a wheelchair, but he seems to have sorted out most of that before the story begins. I can sort of see why the author plays around with the possible reasons for the accident, but for me, it didn’t quite work.

Still, Riley is a likeable, sympathetic character and the novel makes some serious points in a humorous context. Teenage girls will enjoy it, whether or not they follow it up by seeking out Thomas More’s Utopia, which is quoted throughout the book.

Hi Jenny G!

Thanks, Jenny! You're not the first one to say Phryne Fisher is too perfect and you won't be the last. I treat it as delightful fantasy, which is why I started reading the series in the first place - to get away! And I bet that's why Kerry writes them. She has too many real-life legal clients who have real problems. Escaping to 1928, with a heroine who is rich, beautiful, clever and in control, is absolutely fair enough. Not to mention that Phryne Fisher eats all sorts of yummy stuff without ever putting on weight and looks great in designer clothes - I'll be in that!

While I was waiting for my autographed copy, I chatted with an old man behind me in the queue who said the historical background was absolutely spot on.

Corinna Chapman is a lot more like Kerry in build and in personality - she loves to cook and to bake and is sensible, but has a sense of fun. At the same time, those are fantasy too; I'd move into Insula tomorrow if it existed, and who wouldn't want Corinna's yummy boyfriend who looks like Angel? And oh, that chocolate shop around the corner and the fascinating neighbours and the magic shop run by a real witch... Yeah, that's my kind of fantasy.

I think they have put some of Linda Short's (may she rest in peace) stuff on CD - better check the web site - but this one I did because it was a personal thing, not one of her official tapes, and I hated to see it get corrupt and disappear. I do still have a tape recorder, but I'd rather feel safe!

Bookmark Days By Scot Gardner. (Girlfriend Fiction 9) Crow’s Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2009

Avril lives with her farming family in rural Victoria, Australia. She loves her life, although her family has had a feud going with their neighbours, the Carringtons, for about half a century. Actually, the feud is between the two grandfathers, Hoppy and Les, and they’re not sharing their reasons for the quarrel with their children or grandchildren, who are expected to go along with it. Their wives know, but they’ve continued their own friendship.

But a chance encounter with the Carringtons’ gorgeous teenage son, Nathaniel, and a late-night rescue on the road after a local agricultural show, begins to bring the families back together. the grandfathers don’t agree, of course, and work hard to stop the reconciliation.

As a teen romance, this sort of succeeds. It takes only about a week for the girl and boy to declare their love for each other - probably lucky they met, because there’s no local school where they can meet other teenagers; they study by correspondence. It takes a little longer for the families to bury the hatchet(literally in the grandfathers’ case). And no, Avril doesn’t, as the cover blurb indicates, have to stand up to her family. They quite approve of the blossoming romance, apart from Hoppy. She doesn’t even have to work to find out what the problem is: the two grandmothers finally tell her.

The chronology is kind of weird, if you’re reading carefully. Both old men are in their eighties, but while it’s implied that they fought in World War II, they wouldn’t be quite old enough for that. You only have to add up what you’re told of their history to work out that they would probably have been about fifteen at most by the end of the war. And then it takes another twenty-three years or so for them to start the quarrel. None of it is impossible, just - strange.

It doesn’t matter, really. Young readers are unlikely to notice or care. It does a nice job of depicting life in rural Australia, too.

An entertaining first try at teen romance by a writer better known for his boys’ books.

Murder On A Midsummer Night by Kerry Greenwood

Crow's Nest, Allen and Unwin, 2008

We all thought it would never happen - Phryne Fisher in 1929? The author said it was always going to be 1928, because that was the year she knew about. But sooner or later the year had to end, didn’t it? Phryne had crammed so much into the months between May and December 1928 that it was going to be impossible to move on and the chronology was looking distinctly strange. Still, when Murder in the Dark ended on New Year’s Eve, many of Kerry Greenwood’s fans, myself included, wondered if this was the proverbial It.

Fortunately, it wasn’t. It should be possible to cram another 17 adventures into 1929, if the author doesn’t get sick of it, before then.

I discovered Phryne Fisher after reading an article in the Melbourne Age. The heroine was beautiful, rich, smart, independent and zoomed around Melbourne in her fast red car. And she lived in St Kilda, not far from where I spent my childhood and still within walking distance of where I live now. The combination of Melbourne, history and mystery was perfect for me. They were fun, unlike some grim thrillers I’ve read. I became hooked - and the novels have become comfort reading which I read and re-read. These are what I think of as “whodunnits”, rather than “cosies” - you really CAN’T describe as a cosy something that speeds along as these do.

While standing in the signing queue for this one, I chatted with an elderly gentleman who told me that he could remember the 1930s, which were not too different from the 20s, and that these novels got it absolutely right. Nice to know, though the flavour of 1928 Melbourne always felt right to me.

In January 1929, Phryne Fisher, that rich and elegant private detective, is planning her birthday celebration, not another job, but a young junkshop and antique dealer has been found dead on St Kilda beach and his mother is positive it was murder, not suicide as the coroner has concluded. Time for Miss Fisher to check it out. She is also busy on a case centred around a recently-deceased old lady’s illegitimate child who might have inherited money from her, but needs to be found.

Bright young things, ouija boards, actors, Williamstown, Australian soldiers in wartime Palestine, a missing treasure - it’s all there,and more. We learn about furniture trends in the Melbourne of the 20s and meet a relative of Phryne’s friend, the Communist taxi driver Cec Yates.

As usual, there’s plenty of food and gorgeous clothes and it ends with a party. Kerry Greenwood loves her designer clothes and delicious food. She writes about both with enormous enjoyment and brings this enjoyment across to her readers.

I didn’t work out the killer, but even if I had, the story is such fun that I wouldn’t have cared. If you can re-read a mystery, as I do these, it must be good. And I started re-reading this one as soon as I’d finished it.

That says it all. Buy it. You won’t be disappointed.

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.

Some More Girlfriend Fiction

STEP UP AND DANCE, by Thalia Kalkipsakis, THE SWEET LIFE by Rebecca Lim, CASSIE by Barry Jonsberg: Girlfriend Fiction 6, 7 and 8. St Leonards, Allen and Unwin, 2008

Girlfriend Fiction has been coming out at an amazing rate over the last few months and has varied from the kind of novels that could be straight YA fiction, with no need for the hearts on the cover, to those that read more or less like standard teen romance, but better written than most. I have to say that so far, they’re doing well in my secondary school library, especially among ESL students who want to try something a little harder and closer to their age level than the ultra-thin children’s books they have been reading. I’ve had especially enthusiastic comments about My Life and Other Catastrophes and The Not Quite Perfect Boyfriend, which were both very funny.

None of the three books I’m reviewing this time is completely funny, but we’ll see how they go over with the students.

Step Up And Dance is the closest to standard teen romance of all the books in this series so far. The heroine, Saph, is a cheerleader for a professional basketball team and the boy in her life is a basketball player for another team, who goes to her school. Annoyed with him for what she believes is a practical joke, she plots revenge and it goes on and on throughout the book till, of course, all is sorted out and it turns out she had misunderstood his motives.

I hadn’t realised we even had cheerleaders in Australia, to be honest, but am always happy to learn something new. It certainly isn’t part of school culture here, but in this book the team is professional and the girl is the youngest member of a team of dancers which includes two boys.

There’s enough about the headaches of being a girl with an ethnic background to make some readers nod in agreement. Saph loves her fairly strict Greek father, but gets just a bit frustrated by the rules he makes about not staying out late and not accepting lifts from friends after dance practice. I suspect there is something here that comes from the author’s own teenage years. These days the strict ethnic parents are more likely to be African or Middle Eastern, but kids can still identify. I remember teaching Looking For Alibrandi to my ESL students and hearing one of them remark, “These Italians are so like Sudanese!”

In The Sweet Life, recently-orphaned Janey finds she has an aunt, working at the Australian Embassy in Rome, living with her daughter Federica (Freddy). Aunt Celia invites her to stay for the school holidays, but someone using the name Fellini is stalking her, first through her MySpace page, then on the mobile phone her aunt has lent her. Janey hasn’t had any boys in her life, and finds herself attracted to the Embassy’s young driver as well as to one of Freddy’s friends.

As for Freddy herself, it soon becomes clear to the reader, if not to Janey, that she doesn’t like having her newly-discovered cousin around; trouble follows.

At times I felt I was getting a guided tour of Rome, but I must admit it made me wish I could visit some of the places Janey sees in Rome and if I did, so should the readers. Possibly, they’ll be disappointed when there’s no last-page kiss, but it isn’t that type of book.

Barry Jonsberg has written on a wide variety of themes since his first novel, The Whole Business With Kiffo and the Pitbull. His first two books, about intelligent but over-the-top teenager Calma, were laugh-out-loud funny, but had sudden serious twists at the end. Ironbark dealt with a teenage boy who had a mental problem causing him to lash out suddenly, then not remember what he’d done. Dreamrider was a thriller with a mental issue and another twist at the end. Cassie is also about a serious issue. The title character is a quadriplegic with serious cerebral palsy, neither of which has stopped her from working hard at school and producing first-class work.Inside her problem body she is a normal teenager with a sense of humour. The novel’s issue is how to get all this across to her cousin, who has the embarrassing name of Holly Holley.

Holly is a girl with only one friend, the nerdy Amy, who’s more interested in mathematics than boys and clothes. Holly wants desperately to be a member of the in crowd and attract the attention of the good-looking if dumb Raph McDonald. When a chance to do both comes up, she resents having to share a house with Cassie and her mother, who have travelled down from Darwin after a marriage breakup, resents even Amy’s common-sense comments about the people she wants so badly to hang out with. The novel is about working out what’s important and who really cares about you. It’s about surfaces and what’s underneath. And because it’s written by Barry Jonsberg, however serious the theme, there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Using humour, he manages to get across a serious issue.

There is an afterword which explains that Jonsberg, when he was teaching, had a quadriplegic student with cerebral palsy who is now studying Art at university and generally doing well.

It’s always interesting to read a book about young women by a man, but then, Barry Jonsberg was a teacher for many years and has his own children. This is my favourite of the three, but we’ll see which the kids at my school, at least, like best and I will enter a post about it when I know.

Loathing Lola comment

Whoops! The author has sent a comment that he has only a brother, not a sister. I can only plead that I'd been up since 6.00 a.m., at work all day and attending meetings before going to the State Library to hear him in Booktalkers. But my general comments on the book stand and I'm pleased William was happy with his review. It was well-deserved. He's gonna go far! :-)

LOATHING LOLA By William Kostakis

Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 2008.

I didn’t get this book for reviewing. I bought it after hearing the author speak and, having read it, decided that it was worth a review. Quite apart from the fact that he’s a male writing about a teenage girl - something unusual - he’s a teenager himself, still living at home, telling his audience about playing jokes on his sister. I believe this young writer is going to go far in the world of YA fiction.

His heroine, Courtney Marlow, is an earnest, nerdy girl who wants to save the world and thinks her chance has arrived when she scores the chance to play the lead role in a TV reality show, Real Teens, in which a camera crew will follow her around at school and home and, it seems, build her up into a star. Courtney decides this is the perfect opportunity to be a good role model for teens watching the show and raise money for charity at the same time. Unfortunately, the show’s producers have different ideas. Very different ideas – and they don’t care who they hurt in carrying them out.

And who is the “phantom texter” who is sending her text message warnings about what to expect from them– warnings she finds are all too accurate? Then again, there are plenty of other things to worry about. Her divorced father hasn’t been keeping up payments for her outrageously expensive private school – one reason she took on the show with its large advance. His dippy second wife – the Lola of the title – wants fame and fortune of her own. Just how much is she prepared to do to get it? And can Courtney count on her best friend Katie, who also wants a share of the limelight?

The novel is deliciously over-the-top, very funny, though with a serious underlying theme. It has a host of outrageous characters and situations, but in the end, what counts is friendship and family and not having to destroy your integrity for money.

If William Kostakis is writing this well now, I look forward to seeing what else he can do.

NAOMI AND ELY’S NO-KISS LIST By Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 22008

Naomi and Ely, two university students in New York city, have known each other since early childhood. They live in the same huge apartment block. At one point, her father had a brief affair with his (lesbian) mother and then left. Since then, Naomi has had to look after her mother, who hasn’t stopped grieving.

Beautiful Naomi can have almost any boy she wants and has had boyfriends (Bruce 1 and 2). The trouble is, the only boy she wants is Ely, the one she can’t have, because he’s gay - and not only gay, but promiscuous. So the two of them, to keep their friendship intact, have created a “no-kiss list” - a list of boys neither of them will kiss. When Ely breaks the rules and starts a relationship with Naomi’s current boyfriend, Bruce 2, he risks the friendship - and Naomi has to ask herself what she really wants and what is most important to her. Likewise, Ely has to decide whether he can keep his current lifestyle going or whether there is something more important to him now.

Cohn and Levithan wrote another book together, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, which was set in the course of one night and had a similar style, though the main characters were heterosexual. It was seen alternatively from the title characters’ viewpoints.

This one has more viewpoints - Naomi, Ely, both Bruces, Gabriel the gorgeous doorman and some friends from universiity. Somehow, it works and the various strands pull together. The style is whimsical, the ending is positive and on the whole it’s a readable book, but heavens, how the characters swear! As in Nick and Norah, the book is filled with four-letter words. I have worked with teenagers for most of my career and, while they do use four-letter words a lot and look at you in surprise if you suggest they are swearing, they don’t do it that much. I don’t think it’s necesssary to write it into a book in the interests of “realism” and about half the swearing would have been plenty. You really can overdo it. It is, in my opinion, well and truly overdone in this novel.

Keep this one for the older teenagers in your life.

THE CHAOS CODE By Justin Richards. London: Faber and Faber, 2007

Computers that can create monsters in the real world, using the elements of water, fire, air and earth, ancient jungle ruins, a millionaire and his daughter who are more than they seem, Atlantis! It’s all here for teens who are waiting for their next fix of Anthony Horowitz, and very entertaining it is, too.

Fifteen year old Matt returns from boarding school for the summer to find that his mother, a high-flying computer consultant, is about to head off overseas on a special job and can’t take him along. He will have to go stay with his absent-minded archaeologist father.

When Dad isn’t home and the place has been ransacked, Matt takes a hint from a cryptic note his father had sent via a neighbour and goes to stay with his aunt Jane. Jane is a PA to millionaire Julius Venture, owner of a large estate near the village where Jane and her brother Arnold, Matt’s Dad, had grown up. Matt can’t understand why his aunt has warned him against getting too friendly with Venture’s strong, intelligent daughter Robin. Soon, however, there are other things to worry about. Matt’s father has been abducted because of his knowledge of a historical treasure that’s much, much more important than gold and jewels. Matt, Robin and Venture are off to South America, plunging into an adventure that could mean the end of the world as we know it, if they fail in their quest.

Richards, best known for his Dr Who novels, has become a writer of very good thrillers with a fantasy edge and this one doesn’t disappoint. There are, it’s true, a lot of scenes in which characters stop to discuss their situation and where someone gives a long explanation of the scientific reasons for what’s happening. These don’t really slow up the story too much, but never mistake this for science fiction – it’s fantasy! When Atlantis comes into the picture, it’s always going to be fantasy. I won’t go any further, because I couldn’t, with without giving away a couple of twists I admit I didn’t quite see coming.

The novel reads like a cross between Horowitz and Indiana Jones. Great fun!

Suitable for teens from about thirteen upwards.

Anonymous Comment on Alison Croggon

I got a comment from Anonymous, not on the book I have reviewed but on Alison Croggon. Sorry. I don't do personal. If I want to do political, I'll start another blog. This is a book and SF blog, with the occasional - very occasional! - divergence. And whether I agree or disagree, I just won't publish a comment that has nothing to do with the actual post. I don't care if you hate the book I'm reviewing, even if I love it, I'll still publish your comment, as long as it's relevant. Also, I'm more likely to publish a comment, on anything, if you give me your name. I have published a few anonymous comments because they were non-controversial, but not this sort of thing. if you feel strongly about it, this particular Anonymous, start your own blog.

The Gift. First Book of Pellinor. By Alison Croggon

Camberwell, Vic.: Penguin, 2002

Alison Croggon is a poet. It shows, in the style of her writing and in the verses used as ballads and prophecies in this book.

The fourth Pellinor book has come out recently and I was sent a copy to review, but as I hadn’t read the others, I thought it might be better to go back and read the series from the start. As I can’t review this one for January Magazine, which only does recent publications, I thought it might be reasonable to put my thoughts about the earlier books on this site instead. After all, not everyone has read them.

I’m not crazy about most fantasy being published these days. I loathe the multi-volume sagas in which the long-lost heir or the Chosen One is chased by the minions of the Dark Lord. And I feel let down by SF writers who have changed over to fantasy, however well they write it.(Lois McMaster Bujold, for example, has lost this particular reader till she returns to science fiction.)

But young adult fantasy is different, perhaps because its intended audience is just discovering it. It tends to be more readable, even if it is about a Chosen One being chased by the minions of the Dark Lord. The Harry Potter series did very well, thank you!

Maerad, a slave in a northern community with a Saxon flavour, finds out that she has magical abilities, when Cadvan, a Bard, turns up in the barn and only she sees him. She escapes with him, taking her precious lyre, the only reminder of her early life. She learns that her mother was a Bard, one of a magically and musically gifted community who mostly run the towns around their Schools, doing the healing and the other things necessary to keep them running smoothly. But the Nameless One, a former Bard who went over to the Dark Arts centuries ago, is almost certainly on his way back, helped by sidekicks known as Hulls. The problem is, how do you convince the Bards of the Light to do something about it when they’re fighting among themselves and some of them can’t even keep their peasants happy any more?


Again, in this novel, we have a heroine who is a Chosen One being - yeah, chased by the minions of the Dark. The author is clearly a fan of Tolkien. Like Tolkien, she has an introduction which indicates that the story takes place on this planet in a time in the distant past, possibly on a continent that no longer exists. There was the equivalent of the Last Allaince between Elves and Men. There’s even a sort of Galadriel figure ruling over a forest kingdom. But I did find the Bardic politics intriguing. And Tolkien wasn’t cheeky enough to include a bibliography of non-existent books at the end.

I found this book very readable stuff, with characters worth caring about, and will be interested to read the rest of the series.

Melbourne Writers' Festival 2008

Good news. Melbourne has been declared a UNESCO "City of Literature." Nice to hear, if we can live up to it.

I have been going to the annual Writers' Festival for many years. This year, it has been moved from the cramped but cheerful Malthouse complex, where you could see people sitting around having food and drink and gloating over purchases while waiting for their next session, to the fancier but windswept Federation Square, where there's none of the ambience of the old place. If you have one session at the ACMI cinemas and another at BMW Edge, you have to cross the Square. There are eating places, but near the theatres there's nothing but people waiting politely in a queue for their session, sometimes down the stairs if it's a popular event.

Still, as a friend of mine on the committee says, you have to make space to extend the Festival. And perhaps by next year there will be some ambience.

But the last several years, there has been less and less that I want to see. When I started going, you could hear writers for children and teens speaking on weekends and in the evening. Now, it seems to be assumed that if you're not taking a school group to the Youth Days, you don't want to hear children's/YA writers. And even if you are taking kids, the session will be very different from the ones that used to be held for the benefit of adults who love this stuff.

Genre fiction, too. There used to be SF writers and crime writers. There haven't been any SF/F writers I can recall since China Mieville. I did once send a letter suggesting a panel of small press SF publishers(which is now the main way of publishing the genre in Australia, apart from the horrible fantasy sagas) but they didn't bother to reply. There is still the odd crime writer, mostly during the week, when I have to be at work, but not many.

You take what you can get and I have managed to find a few that were of mild interest, though I am seriously considering not going next year if there's no more of the kind of stuff I want to hear.

Last week I went to hear a panel by three journalists who have written books - quite interesting, but nothing in the way of books that I need on my shelves. The library will supply my needs in this area. The panel on Georgette Heyer was fun, mainly because I know nothing about her, only about some of her books. My friend Anne Devrell, who does know about Heyer, said she suspected the book involved was a PhD thesis - she was right, as it turned out.

Because there is very little on subjects that already interest me, I opt for things that sound like fun. I made the mistake of attending a panel called "Writing Love" under the impression it would be about romance writing. Big mistake. Three deadly serious writers and the resident philosopher from a university Economics Department (?)sat and discussed Life, the Universe and Everything and what is love anyway? A wasted $15 - I was very glad I had paid early bird rates!

The next panel was much better. The guest was Andrew Davies, who wrote those delightful Jane Austen adaptations for the BBC - a charming, funny man who had some fascinating things to say about why he had added scenes that were never in the novels. I decided to buy a ticket for his afternoon session on "What Women Want" (and was not disappointed - a hilarious panel by himself and two other writers made us all laugh). I got hold of a DVD copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I'd been meaning to buy anyway and had him sign the cover.

I had a choice of one more panel - should I go hear John Marsden, the only YA writer I knew of who was on during the weekend, but on a panel with others, and be tempted to buy Hamlet The Novel, or the panel on book reviewing? Oddly enough, I chose the book reviewing panel and am very glad I did. It was great fun. I am a reviewer myself, of course, and wanted to see what people who get paid for reviewing had to say. Two of them were fairly earnest and explained what they did and how they really hated writing bad reviews, honest (I believed them) but the third made us all laugh. First she asked if there were any writers, editors or publishers in the audience. I admitted to being a writer but added that I was also a reviewer, so it was okay. Then she tipped out the contents of her tote bag, which included some of the stuff she'd been sent to review - one utterly awful book, some proof copies which you had to be careful about reviewing because they were uncorrected and even one set of page proofs! She talked about some of her horror experiences and there were some doozies.

I was relieved; the last time I went to a panel on book reviewing, the whole panel ganged up on Bryce Courtenay, who was there on the panel with them, and it was in the newspapers next day, which probably sold more copies of Courtenay's books anyway, so ganging up on him was stupid and useless if they wanted the opposite. This panel was much gentler.

On my way out, I ran into a lady who had been given a ticket to the wrong panel and was too tired to be bothered telling her story yet again. We went out for coffee and she told me some shocking stuff about information she had gained during a radio interview she did and how hard it was to get anyone else to run the story.

Strange end to the day. One more panel tomorrow, with Mark Billingham on it. I would have liked to hear him speak on his own, but it was on during the day on a weekday. I want to hear about his work, because I know him best as one of the two dumb guards in Maid Marion and Her Merry Men and here he is as an international bestselling crime writer.

I am willing to attend panels with writers I don't know if the subject interests me, but I can only hope next year's mix will be better, with less of the arty-farty and more of the genre stuff.

CROSSING THE LINE By Dianne Bates. Ford Street Publishing

CROSSING THE LINE By Dianne Bates

Seventeen-year-old Sophie is intelligent, good at her studies and a fine poet. She’s also a self-harmer, who cuts herself when feeling stressed. And she has plenty about which to feel stressed. She has been fostered since early childhood, after losing first her neglectful mother, then her beloved aunt and uncle when they divorced. She has been with one foster-family after another, constantly changing schools and unable to make friends because she keeps moving.

Now it seems things will improve, since she has been allowed some independence and has started sharing a house with the likeable and kind-hearted Amy and Matt. She’s made friends at her new school and is hoping to finish her last year.

Will these be enough for a girl who feels a desperate need for family - especially a mother? A spell in a mental hospital introduces her to psychiatrist Helen Marshall, to whom she clings, mistaking treatment for affection.

Can her new friends help her? Will Matt’s affection be enough?

Sophie is a lucky girl, actually, to have friends as patient as Amy and Matt! There were times in the book when I felt like slapping her and telling her to get over it. The first-person narrative worked well, however, making it easier to understand what was going on in her head.

Self-harm has become known as the new anorexia among teenage girls. It has been estimated that one in ten girls in Australia is a self-harmer. Girls who feel they have no control over their lives may cut because that’s something they can control. Sophie does it as a form of release, or even a tribute, in the form of initials cut into her arm. It’s a major issue in this day and age and veteran Australian children’s and young adult writer Dianne Bates handles it well, in a readable and gripping book. The characters and storyline are believable. I believe this book will make it into classrooms, as there is a lot of material for discussion.

Highly recommended.

THE DETACHABLE BOY By Scot Gardner

John Johnson keeps losing his head - literally. And his feet (especially the small one, which doesn’t seem to fit and keeps falling off) and arms and legs. He is a detachable person - and not, as he discovers, the only one. In fact, that’s the problem. When John’s friend Crystal is kidnapped by men in vinyl suits and taken to an underground base in America, full of detachable people, he has to follow, while his parents think he’s on a school camp. He can’t afford to buy a plane ticket, but his genius friend Ravi designes a suitcase that will fit his bits and posts him to the U.S.

And that’s only the start of a story that becomes progressively sillier and funnier as it goes. It has the grossout factor that kids enjoy without ever becoming too disgusting. The characters are amusing (my favourite is the American pretzel-collector (among them is one shaped like Elvis and another like the Eiffel Tower) who helps John and Crystal). I did wonder how Ravi, who has a distinctly Indian accent, had a surname like Carter, but never mind. Suspend disbelief. The young readers won’t care.

Heath McKenzie’s delightful illustrations add to the story.

It’s aimed at boys between nine and twelve, but let the girls read it too - they’re just as likely to enjoy it.

Comment on Stride's Summer Review

Dear 12 and a 1/2 year-old who commented on my Stride's Summer review,

Yes, Stride's Summer is a great book, isn't it? Why don't you send a letter or e-mail to the author through the publishers, Allen and Unwin? I bet she'll be thrilled to hear that you enjoyed her book and will write back to you. No writer ever has a problem with hearing that someone enjoyed what they wrote.

Keep reading!

Sue Bursztynski

The Book and Me

When I took long service leave, I'd hoped to get a book to write while I was away from work. I had taken an extravagant twelve weeks, only a small part of which was to be spent travelling. At some stage I'll be grabbing my superannuation early and hoping to write full-time, so now was the time to establish a relationship with, perhaps, an education publisher or any publisher I've worked with or hoped to work with. I even had an idea, forensic science, which I'd just spent a lot of time researching for my article in the NSW School Magazine. Not that I wouldn't do whatever else was required.

One publisher after another was not interested. Great idea, forensics, but we're not doing non-fiction right now, it's not on our list of subjects, we're full for this year, try again in July...

And then, out of the blue, came an offer from the new Ford Street Publishing, run by Paul Collins, whom I have known since he was running a bookshop in St Kilda and who has published some of my short fiction. His partner, Meredith Costain, once did very well with a children's book about "Fifty famous Australians" but never got around to the infamous ones. Would I like to have a go?

Someone has offered me a book? I'd write it if they wanted a book about deep-fried squid!

So off I went, on-line, to the library, wherever I could find information about Aussies on the other side of the law - or illegal things going on in Australia, whoever did it. Fascinating stuff, from the Batavia mutiny to the cannibal convict Alexander Pearce, from the bushranger Matthew Brady to the Melbourne Gangland Wars. I found some funny stories, some bizarre stories, some sickening stories that had to be toned down for kids. I'm 39 down and 11 to go as I write this, although I also have to do a pile of "Did You Know...?" snippets. My favourite Did You Know is that until a few years ago, convicted criminals could claim all their guns, bullets, etc. on tax as a business expense!

This is my ninth book, hopefully not the last. It's a fascinating subject and I feel strange to be so near the end of the research process. Over the years, I have been working differently on each book. The first one, on monsters, was mostly researched at the State Library. Those were the early days of the Internet. My little Mac Classic 2 computer wouldn't take it. I used to travel a long way on the tram to an Internet cafe which actually was a cafe; you could buy coffee and cake while you went on-line. I did this once a week. It cost $12 an hour, but you got a discount ticket each time you went on, so I ended up paying only $6.

I also used the State Library for the second one, though I went on-line a bit more. I had to buy a few books on various sciences, because the book was on women scientists and I wasn't much of a scientist myself. Each book had a higher level of personal books and Internet research. My last book, Your Cat Could Be A Spy, had some books involved, but mostly for background to help me find more on-line. The CIA web site, where I found a lot of stuff about gadgets, was a lot more fun than the Australian equivalent, which was a public service web site.

I think I've been going about half-half with this one. Not everything is on-line. But you have to be careful with the books, because sometimes things have changed since they were published. For example, one of my criminals had hanged himself in jail since the book I was reading came out.

I ran out of dialup time for the month, so I have been visiting the local cafe, the Presse, which has wifi facilities, to send off my stories and do some more research. I don't usually do this, of course, because I;m at work during the week. I will miss it when I get back. There are so many regulars in here, so many others with their computers, doing what I'm doing, going on-line, checking their e-mail. One woman I spoke to yesterday has no Internet connection at home and can't get even dialup right now, because she has no landline phone!

They're really getting to know me at this place. I will have to go on weekends once I'm back at work.

The place is peaceful and I can get my work done better than at home, with the temptations of DVDs, CDs, the fridge and the kettle... I buy a pot of tea here and someone else makes it for me while I work and it lasts me till I'm finished.

And no telemarketers ringing me!