Title: Kindling

Author: Kathleen Jennings

Reviewer: Natalie Lincoln

Audience:  Stage 6

Kindling draws together an obscure array of shadowy fantasy and fairy tale stories. Each quite different from the next, the reader is not quite sure where the next journey will take them. This is both a strength and weakness as the detail of some confuses, while others you wish to be an entire novel. All of the stories are unapologetic in their belief in magic and possibility.

The first story, ‘The Heart of Owl Abbas’ admittedly had me a little lost as I tried to follow the unfamiliar and strange, though I enjoyed the infusion of music throughout. Moving on, in particular I enjoyed the sad and beautiful ‘Ella and the Flame’ and ‘Not to Be Taken’.  ‘Annie Coal 'and ‘Undine Love’ came tinged with an entertaining dry wit, demonstrating further diversity in style.

The female protagonists of each tale are important. They foreground the courage of women and the power of telling their stories. Many are underestimated and refuse to be held back by men. The motif of birds abounds – owls, and most enjoyably for me, crows – wisened, capable and with a desire for freedom. Water too is frequently mentioned - the ocean, rivers and lakes. Coupled with the birds, the sense is given that women are born, reborn, cleansed and forged from the fire wrought by kindling.

These factors would have me use this collection, or pieces amongst it, with an Extension I or II English class. The vocabulary is such that I would recommend it to older readers in any case, but the strong, consistent use of motifs to flesh out the nuances of the ideas, is clever and thought provoking and a good lesson for budding writers.

Overall, the collection varies in its ‘readability’. Some are certainly easier to trace than others. Those that are more accessible are gold, however, and worth their weight in detail, both in writing style and concept.

Title: Silent Sister

Author: Megan Davidhizar

Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

Audience: Secondary Students

Mom pales. "What are you suggesting?" Dad's confusion surrenders to horrible understanding and realisation. He stumbles back against the wall. Detective Howard ignores them and focuses on me. I know exactly what he's thinking. This man believes I killed my own sister. And I can't remember enough to prove him wrong. (P 179) 

Two sisters go missing on their school's senior trip, but only one comes back. Grace cannot remember what happened and where is her sister, Maddy? When Grace tries to remember, she only gets blanks. And why did the police find spots of Maddy's blood on her clothes? Without her memories, Grace tries to piece together what happened using her classmates' stories and entries from the notebooks that they kept on the trip. Grace is desperate to find Maddy and to prove her own innocence before the gossip destroys her family.

Recommended for secondary students as a txt showcasing social perspectives, from popular and youth cultures.

History of the First Australians - Set 5

The History of The First Australians Reading Recovery books are filled with beautiful imagery that will engage students when reading the text. Indigenous languages are included, along with definitions. QR codes are included which provide links to relevant YouTube videos, providing an interactive feature that will further engage readers. The Walkabout Wellbeing Activity Cards are durable and of high quality, with attractive and engaging artwork on the front. The back of the cards contain relevant and culturally appropriate activities and suggestions for student are easily. The cards, like the books,  contain First Nations Languages; however one shortcoming is that the cards do not clearly identify which language/s are included. This information would be beneficial for the users of the cards. The cards also contain suggested Literature Links, which are very useful for teachers and teacher librarians.

The Readers and Wellbeing Activity Cards are written by First Nations author, Trevor Fourmile, who is from the Yidinji people of the Cairns area of Far North Queensland. Trevor is a Cultural Lead Officer at  Hymba Yumba Independent School in Brisbane where he loves teaching the younger generation about his culture through traditional dancing, storytelling and writing his children’s book. This love is evident in the books and activity cards, which provide cultural knowledge while also teaching literacy skills. These resources are accompanied by a Teacher Resource Workbooks, making the content easy to share. They will give confidence to teachers and teacher librarians who may feel that they don’t have the cultural expertise to teach the content. In particular, the Wellbeing Activity Cards Teachers’ Resource allows you to connect your Wellbeing activities with literacy lessons.

Title: Yellamundie: Voices and Faces of First Nations People in Sydney

Author: Michelle McGrath

Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

Audience: Secondary Students

"Keep an open heart. Learn some of our strengths. Don't step on eggshells, get in there and meet people. Together, we have to take this to the next level. Our culture isn't meant to be just ours - our culture is meant to be all of ours to share. You can belong to these thousands of years as well" (P 90) 

In the Dharug language, "Yellamundie" means storyteller.

This wonderful collection of stories from 30 of Sydney's Indigenous people reflects upon their past and shows how they embrace the future, which is strongly embedded in their culture. Although confronting and sad at a times, their stories give them a strong voice in informing readers of the traditions of their people and their process of healing so that we may move into the future together. 

Recommended for Secondary Students as a quality text by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors

Title: Catch your Death

Author: Ravena Guron

Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

Audience: Secondary Students

"If I'd been more sensible, I would have turned round and driven on my merry way, risking freezing to death in the snow. But I was too obsessed with the thought of a nice hot chocolate. And at that point, I had no idea that I was driving straight into a horror story -

you know the ones I am talking about, where people like me die first because we're too busy looking the other way to run from the danger - " (P160)

Three girls are stranded by a snowstorm at the wealthy Bramble Estate. As Devi, Lizzie and Jayne wait for the storm to blow out, the wealthy matriarch of the family, Emily Vanforte, dies in the middle of family dinner. With secret passageways, knives under floorboards, missing guns and many lies, as the girls going to be able to save themselves...? 

Relevant to Secondary Students Wide Reading Program

Title: What's Murder Between Friends

Author: Meg Gatland-Veness

Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

Audience: Older Readers (coarse language)

"Without Ms Lovelace, what will they do?" Dimitri asks. Will they cancel the show?" Penny adds. "And what about our drama class?" Dorothy says. "She is the only drama teacher in the school. Will we have to choose another elective? Dear god, please don't make me take engineering," I say. (P15) 

" The last thing we expect to find on the scavenger hunt is a dead body". Thus begins the story of Hallie and the other Year 12 Drama students who were at school on Saturday morning for their usual Scavenger Hunt. This was always organised by their Drama teacher, Ms Lovelace as a warm-up to their musical rehearsal. Instead of clues. the Year 12 students find their Drama teacher lying in a pool of blood outside the drama rooms. In this small country town with no police station, everyone becomes a suspect, including the Drama students. With the school musical still going ahead, exams coming up and romance in the air, the Year 12 students must discover whodunnit before another murder occurs.  A story with many twists and suspects, a sprinkling of drama, romance and murder.

Relevant to Stages 5 & 6 Wide Reading Program

Title: Father of the Lost Boys

Author: Yout A. Alaak

Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

Audience: Secondary School Readers*

"It's June 1988. Scantly covered in rags, malnourished boys roam the landscape, searching for scraps to eat. Thousands more lie under trees, naked and starving. Many will never wake up to see a new day. War has brought me to a land far from my own. All I've ever known is left behind. I am in the midst of sixteen thousand unaccompanied minors. I call them my dear brothers, but the world calls them the Lost Boys of Sudan". (P46)

Yout A. Alaak has written a moving and emotional memoir about his father, Mecak Ajang Alaak, who saved 20,000 young South Sudanese boys from certain death, including his own son, Yout. During the second Sudanese civil war, many displaced and orphaned boys were trained to be soldiers. In 2989, Mecak led these boys on a four-year journey from Sudan to Ethiopia and finally Kenya. Most were aged between 7 and 12 years. This is the incredible story of survival.

* A younger reader's adaptation

Relevant to 7-12 English Syllabus Representation of Life Experiences, Cultural Diversity and Cultural Identity

Title: Write Cut Rewrite

Author: Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon

Reviewer: Fabian Amuso

Audience: Stage 5 & 6

“Cutting and pasting often happens within a single work, moving a verse, a stanza, a sentence, a paragraph or even a chapter to another place.” (Page 151)

Authors Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon explore how writers not only have to write but also cut and rewrite their works before publication.

Featured are actual extracts from manuscripts held by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. The reader will explore and be guided through how and why changes were made to their works, whether by the writer or the publisher. Questions will be asked as one reads through - What if the change had not been made, and how would that have impacted the storyline or its meaning? Would sticking to a particular word, phrase, or sentence in an earlier draft have enhanced the work, or was the final product the perfect outcome?

Being a history teacher and a teacher librarian, along with my interest in literature and media, I applied a “never judge a book by its cover” approach to reading this book. The cover did appear exciting when initially seeing it, but once opened and began to read through Hulle and Nixon’s outline of the editing processes involved in literary and poetic works, along with its supporting extracts from manuscripts, I was left amazed at what great writers had done to master their written works, which would go onto make history themselves. By the end, I had taken a “behind the scenes” tour of the production of great literature.

In the classroom, this book is best suited to students undertaking Stage 5 and Stage 6 English as it provides useful insights into the writing process. For the leisure reader, it is recommended for those who wish to gain insight into the process of producing literary works, but also for those who would enjoy gaining an insight into how authors have composed their works in recent centuries.

Title: It's the sound of a thing

Author: Maxine Beneba Clarke

Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

Audience: young people and adults

TEXT SHRUG : a found poem

lol, omg,

srsly

icymi : idgas

rofl! (P 99)

CONFISCATED

I really need my phone back

Dad doesn't understand

how my fingers start a-twitching

when it isn't in my hand

I don't know where my mates are

I can't Snapchat-track their moves

I've really started panicking

I'm feeling kind of blue

(P 142)

Maxine Beneba Clarke has written 100 poems about everyday life, childhood, growing up, sounds of the neighbourhood, messy rooms, grandfather's fading memory, alliteration, screen time and 22 reasons I can't sleep. a collection of poems, from haikus to limericks, sonnets to concrete poems, free verse to rhyming couplets.  The poems are also listed by Poetic Form and encompasses a wonderful range of thoughts and ideas.

*Relevant to the Year 7-10 English Syllabus Wide Reading Program

Title: Don't even think about it

Author: Sarah Mlynowski

Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

Audience: Older Readers (contains some graphic language)

"She's hearing voices," Isabelle's mom told her, her voice trembling. Dr Coven thought Isabelle was either on drugs or having a psychotic episode, and instructed her mother to take her to the ER immediately. The two of them took a taxi to St Luke's emergency room. While her mom was filling out paperwork, Isabelle texted her friend Jordana: At hospital. Losing my mind. (P 91) 

What would you do if everyone could hear your thoughts? 10B are just your average, ordinary, high school class until they get their flu vaccinations. Then, complications occur - the students can hear everyone else's thoughts and everyone in the class can hear each other's thoughts... As secrets get spilled, friends became enemies, breakups and romances occur, and exam answers get easier if you sit near the right person, will it be the best or worst year of their high school life?

A highly entertaining novel about High School just becoming a bit more complicated than expected.

*Relevant to the Year 7-10 English Syllabus Wide Reading Program