This post was added by Rebecca Newman. Rebecca is a children's writer and poet, and the editor of the Australian children's literary blog, Alphabet Soup.
For more about Rebecca visit: rebeccanewman.net.au.
Jack’s Island is a short novel by Norman Jorgenson featuring a boy named Jack. Along with his friends Banjo and Dafty, Jack finds himself causing mischief on their small island village off the coast of Australia during World War II. One day, whilst exploring near the cliffs, Jack and Banjo stumble across a Japanese helmet and a rifle. Could this discovery be the invasion they have been anticipating? With Pearl Harbor already bombed just north of their tight-knit island, they possibly face a dangerous situation.
The book is hard to put down due to its ability to capture the reader’s attention and hold onto it for the duration of the book. The characters from the Japanese soldier to trouble-maker Jack, adds an engaging storyline for the readers. Because of this, I confidently rate this book 4 stars out of 5.
I would recommend this book for children ages 8-12 as it is a fun read and suitable for their reading level.
Deb Fitzpatrick writes for adults, young adults and children. She loves using stories from real life in her novels and regularly teaches creative writing to people of all ages. Deb’s own dog is a kelpie, who is absolutely not a failed sheep dog. Today we’re talking to Deb about her latest novel, Kelpie Chaos.
The publisher provided Alphabet Soup with a reading copy of Kelpie Chaos.
From the publisher:
A kelpie puppy is about to be sent to the pound and Eli knows he has to do something. After adopting the flame-chested kelpie, now named Zoom, the family falls in love, but they soon learn there’s a lot involved in raising a dog. Especially a working dog, who is hardwired to round up pretty much everything … even socks. When Zoom goes missing on a family bushwalk, the family sets out on a frantic search. What mischief could a dog get up to in the bush?
Can you tell us a bit about your own dog?
First thing I need to say here is I adore our dog, Louie. He really is our fur-baby!! He is a kelpie crossed with Australian shepherd, just like Zoom in Kelpie Chaos. And just like Zoom, he can be cheeky. Louie is black all over and has a small white flame on his chest, is dead handsome and smart-as. He has a huge loving heart, prefers people to dogs, and loves to take us on walks as frequently as possible!
Louie was a huge inspiration for Zoom in Kelpie Chaos, along with a story another dog-walker told me about her father’s kelpie. This kelpie would spend all day with him out at work on construction sites in the country. One day he disappeared, and what happened next became part of the book.
What’s the naughtiest thing your dog has ever done?
Thankfully, our dog Louie isn’t very naughty, except when it comes to chasing cats. By far the naughtiest dog we’ve ever owned was a gorgeous, intelligent and seriously cheeky fox terrier, when we lived in Costa Rica. We used to call him Chester the English Fox Terrier. My husband had gone to a lot of effort to bake a cake one morning and he left it to cool on the counter while the two of us went out to work. When we returned home, the cake was just crumbs all over the floor. Chester the English Fox Terrier did not spend that night inside with us, put it that way. I re-imagined this story in Kelpie Chaos, changing it to suit the book. I love to take things from real life and mash them into my fiction, as some of your readers may know from my other books.
What are some of your favourite books about dogs?
There are so many brilliant books about dogs and the connection between children and their dogs. There are several picture books about dogs that I particularly love, starting with Dog In, Cat Out by Gillian Rubinstein, which I read with my kids when they were younger. More recently, I love Briony Stewart’s Magoo books and When Billy was a Dog by Kirsty Murray and Karen Blair. Dianne Wolfer’s Scout and the Rescue Dogs is a huge personal favourite and I’m so happy to see it shortlisted in multiple literary awards this year! When I was a kid I adored Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight and then developed an obsession with the television show ‘Lassie’. Finally, I have to mention the ABC TV documentary series about working dogs, ‘Muster Dogs’, which I can’t get enough of. Those beautiful kelpies and border collies!
Do you have a word prompt or scenario you’d like to challenge young readers to try?
Here’s my challenge to Alphabet Soup readers: Write a scene or story, poem or song about your dog (or other beloved pet). Weave in a human character who is a bit like you and feel free to tweak a few details and add an event to make the story funnier or more dramatic. Have fun and see where it takes you! That’s pretty much all I do with my writing, and somehow I now have a small pile of novels with my name on them!
What’s next for you and your writing projects?
I’m halfway through the first draft of a new book – similar to Kelpie Chaos and also for middle readers,but this one’s about a different animal and a different family … It has adventure-in-the-forest vibes and that’s all I’m willing to reveal at this stage! Watch this space!
Kelpie Chaos is out now! Find it at your favourite bookshop, library or order online.
Cristy Burne writes fiction and nonfiction and her books are bursting with adventure, friendship, family, nature, science and technology. Cristy has worked as a science communicator for nearly 20 years across six countries. She has been a science circus performer, garbage analyst, museum writer, and atom-smashing reporter at CERN, but her all-time favourite job is working with kids to embrace the intersection between science, technology and creativity.
Today we’re thrilled to be chatting with Cristy about her novel Into the Blue, illustrated by Amanda Burnett.
The publisher provided Alphabet Soup with a reading copy of Into the Blue.
From the publisher:
Blair and his cousin embark on an adventurous day out, snorkelling on the wreck of the Omeo, but their excitement turns to panic when Blair loses his brother’s cherished GoPro camera on the seabed. No one knows about his mistake except his cousin, and she urges Blair to keep it a secret. But Blair’s lies quickly spiral out of control. Terrified to confess but wracked with guilt, Blair is left floundering in the deep.
I’ll take a wild guess that you’ve been snorkelling yourself! Where’s the best place you’ve been to snorkel?
I love snorkelling and I snorkelled a lot on the Omeo wreck to research this book. Many of my favourite places to snorkel are in Western Australia: Rottnest Island, Ningaloo Reef, Mettams Pool, Yanchep Lagoon and Penguin Island, to name a few. There are so many awesome places to explore!
I’ve also snorkelled and SCUBA dived a lot around Australia and the world. My Aussie favourites are Cocos Island and Christmas Island, plus the Whitsundays in Queensland. (I’ve never snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef … yet!)
My favourite dive spot ever is in Japan in the Ogasawara Islands, 1000 kilometres south of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean.
Do you have a favourite underwater creature or element that you look out for when you go snorkelling?
I don’t like to chase underwater creatures. Instead, I like to float around like a piece of seaweed and wait for them to come to me. In this way I’ve been lucky to have seen dolphins, turtles, seals and even sharks go swimming past.
Even though I love seeing big things, my favourites are tiny things. My absolute number-one favourite thing is something that Blair also experiences in Into The Blue. It’s when you find yourself in the middle of a school of teeny-tiny fish that glitter and whirl like a magical cloud and it feels like you’re in another world. I love that feeling!
When you were growing up, did you ever get into trouble for touching/using something you weren’t supposed to?
No. Never. I was always very obedient and good.
Right?
Except for a b-u-n-c-h of times when I got into trouble. One time I remember, my mum had brought a doll’s pram home from my sisters’ kindy. She parked it in the garage and said, “Don’t touch it, Cristy.”
But that pram looked soooo interesting. And I was sure it was big enough to fit more than just dolls. In fact, I was sure that if I tried, I could fit into that pram!
So I snuck into the garage and climbed in.
And you know what? I did fit! It was awesome!
But when I tried to climb out, I couldn’t. I was jammed stuck.
I knew that if Mum found me, she’d be cross, so I had to get out. But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t budge from that pram.
In the end, I had to cry out for help. When Mum finally arrived in the garage, looking very confused, she found me bawling my eyes out and stuck. So, she did what all good parents would do (!?!), and she fetched her camera to take a photo of me stuck there. How lovely. Now we can always remember The Time Cristy Got Stuck In The Doll’s Pram.
Do you have a word prompt or scenario you’d like to challenge young writers to try?
I think a wonderful way to write is to go into the place that you’re writing about with a notebook and pen. Then, breathe deep and tune your senses into that place. Write down all your thoughts and ideas and similes and feelings about:
– what you can smell and hear
– interesting ways to describe what you see
– how the landscape makes you feel and what you feel in your body in those moments
– how things feel to touch: bark, sand, leaves, wind, the pen in your hand, everything.
The place you write in might be your school playground, or a nearby bushland, or even waiting at a bus stop to go to school. (If you do this activity, I’d love to hear how you went…you can contact me through my website: cristyburne.com/
What’s next for Cristy Burne?
So many things!!! I want to learn how to be a bike mechanic so I can look after my mountain bike better. I want to dig up my lawn so I can plant native plants for lizards and birds and creatures to live in. I’m planning a hiking adventure in the gorges of Kalbarri National Park.
And … I’m doing lots of school visits and festival tours to talk to readers and creators about Into The Blue, plus my new graphic novel with Rebel Challenger (called Ultra Violet: Down to Business).
PLUS, I’m working on not one, not two but THREE new secret projects. I love having lots of things to make and create and try. It’s always hard to make new things, because they never really turn out how I want them to, especially on the first try. But I love the challenge of trying to make something I’m really proud of.
And I’m really proud of my books.
Thank you so much for reading down this far, and thank you also for reading my books. I hope they make you laugh and get you excited for having your own adventures!
Into the Blue is out now! Find it at your favourite bookshop, library or order online.
Maddy McAllister: Shipwreck Detective (Aussie STEM stars series), story told by Deb Fitzpatrick, Wild Dingo Press, ISBN 9781925893823
Elizabeth received a review copy of this book.
Six-year-old Maddy McAllister, a shipwreck detective, started her adventure in Wangi Falls – her favourite place to cool down. But then her parents took an unexpected turn. Maddy and her sister Ally changed schools and moved to Pine Creek for their father’s job. It was 225 kilometres from Darwin where they used to live. Then she moved closer to her grandparents because her father found a different job in Perth, which meant Maddy and Ally, could spend more time with their grandparents. Maddy’s grandad was always by her side ever since they moved to Perth, every step of the way, encouraging her every day. He told her stories all the time when they went on fishing trips which her grandad called “on the high seas”.
One day, her grandad told her a story about a shipwreck which made her curious. A few days later, she heard on the radio that there was going to be a lecture about a different shipwreck discovery. Little did she know that this lecture would change her life.
My favourite person in this book was Maddy’s grandad because he was encouraging and supportive of Maddy in every way he could. I can relate to this book because Maddy faced what I faced when I was six years old, which was to leave close friends and transfer to a new school and new town.
This book is by Deb Fitzpatrick who also wrote Ajay Rane that I have written a review for as well. I think that this book Maddy McAllister is interesting and inspiring.
I recommend this book for age seven plus and rate this book 10 out of 10.
Maddy McAllister: Shipwreck Detective is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library, or order it online.
Tracey Dembo writes books encouraging big questions, daring dreams and wild imaginations. She’s the author of two picture books: An A to Z of Dreaming Differently, illustrated by Lucia Masciullo, and This Book is a Time Machine, illustrated by Lucinda Gifford. Today we’re excited to chat to Tracey about This Book is a Time Machine!
From the publisher:
Guess what? You are holding a real-life time machine! You don’t believe me? I’ll show you! For a start, I wrote this blurb in the PAST. Yet, you are reading it in the PRESENT. And when you finish reading the blurb, it will be the FUTURE …
The author (you!) and the illustrator are both characters in This Book is a Time Machine. Did you meet Lucinda Gifford while she was working on the illustrations?
I actually didn’t meet Lucinda while working on the illustrations – the first time I met Lucinda was before that, during the Maurice Saxby Mentorship Program in 2022 (an incredible creative development program for children’s creators that I was fortunate enough to be part of). Lucinda was a former mentee of this program, and we were fortunate to have lunch with her and to hear all about her creative journey and processes as part of the mentorship. I was completely in awe of her, and it was so inspiring to listen to her experiences. So, you can imagine how excited I was to hear that she had agreed to do the illustrations for This Book Is a Time Machine! Once she had signed up, we met early in the process, via a video call with Tash, our publisher. This is not necessarily the conventional way authors and illustrators collaborate on a book, but because we are both actual characters in the book (which is unusual), it was really important to make sure we were all on the same page and to work closely together. It was a great experience to be able to work like this with such an incredible illustrator and creative team, including Tash and Kristy Lund-White (the designer).
If you climbed into a time machine, would you choose to go into the past or the future?
I would probably go backwards into the past and meet some of the incredible people who are no longer with us. Frida Kahlo and Albert Einstein would be two people who I would really love to meet.
This book features so many creatures, people and events escaping from their time in history – if you were dressing up as a character from This Book is a Time Machine for a Book Week parade, what would your costume be?
Although this is one book I could get away with not dressing up for (as I could go as myself), I would definitely go as the mummy.*
I just love the different facial expressions of this character throughout the book (I’m pretty sure one of those expressions is how I look before I’ve had my morning coffee).
*Check out the mummy in the letter E on the book’s cover.
If we took a time machine into the future, what would we see Future Tracey working on?
Look, I would love to be able to say that Future Tracey would be working on an international best-seller, but I guess I would need to use my time machine to find out if this is true!
In the meantime, I am writing as much as I can in the hope that a future brilliant idea will come to me.
Do you have a tip for young writers who would like to try writing their own picture books?
My tip would be to keep on going and persisting, even when your work does not turn out how you want it to. Making mistakes and mess and improving your craft is all part of the process and so it is really important not to give up.
This Book is a Time Machine is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library, or order online.
The First Summer of Callie McGee by A.L. Tait, Scholastic Australia Pty Ltd, ISBN 9781760260163
Mia received a review copy of this book.
The First Summer Of Callie McGee is a fantastic book written by A.L Tait.
In this book Callie and her family friends go on a traditional trip to Sawyers Point.
Callie’s character is a kind of nerdy goody-two-shoes. She is quiet, warm and kindhearted. Callie seems to be one of those girls though who wants to be a popular cool kid and thinks that she needs to have a cool name “CJ”. Callie’s real name is really Calliope-Jean!
Callie is constantly asking herself, what would CJ do? Callie finds herself in a variety of different situations where she must find her inner CJ.
Callie’s older friend Sasha is everything Callie dreams to be … she is cool, popular and pretty. When Sasha is told to go to the beach and watch all her cousins and the kids, instead she goes to hang out with a boy, Ned. Sasha puts Callie in charge but when one of the kids gets caught in a rip, Callie must once again think – what would CJ do?
Mitch’s parents and Callie’s parents are good friends, so Callie must deal with him and his cousin, Owen. The three of them find out there have been some robberies and a possible ghost sighting at Sawyers Point. Again, Callie had to find her inner CJ. Sasha goes missing one night and Callie, Mitch and Owen go out to find her.
Callie comes up against several situations where she must be brave or grown up and has to find her inner CJ. This book is definitely about the challenges of change and of growing up.
I recommend The First Summer of Callie McGee by A.L. Tait for ages 10+ because I think some of the concepts younger children wouldn’t understand.
I think this book is an amazing book that shows anyone can do or be anything.
The First Summer of Callie McGee is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookstore or local library, or order online.
Western Australian family-friendly event: Bring a picnic blanket and enjoy a morning of poetry and outdoor activities to celebrate the release of Right Way Down, a brand new children’s poetry collection from WA authors.
Poetry readings; games; activities; light snacks; and book sales from Dymocks Subiaco. Some of the contributing authors will be there on the day for signings.
WHEN: Saturday April 6th, 10:30am WHERE: Rankin Gardens, cnr Hamersley Rd and Rokeby Rd, Subiaco, WA BOOKINGS: FREE but required, via eventbrite.
Emily Gale writes for children and for teenagers – you might know her novels I am out with Lanterns and The Other Side of Summer. Nova Weetman also writes for children and teenagers and you might have read some of her books, such as The Secrets We Keep and Sick Bay. Emily and Nova previously collaborated on Elsewhere Girls. Their latest book collaboration is Outlaw Girls, the second co-authored book by these authors. We’re thrilled to chat to them about Outlaw Girls today.
Emily GaleNova Weetman
The publisher provided Alphabet Soup with a reading copy of Outlaw Girls.
From the publisher:
Kate and Ruby live in the High Country in Victoria. They’re both daring, quick-thinking and prepared to break the rules, and they’re both brilliant horse riders –they’d probably be great friends. But they live in different times, 145 years apart.
Two authors, one novel. How do you go about writing a story when there are two writers?
Nova Weetman: Outlaw Girls is a blend of historical research and fiction, so for the research part we spent several months visiting the sites of our ‘real’ character Kate Kelly and learning all that we could about her. Because Kate was Ned Kelly’s sister there was a ton of material to read and study.
We each wrote one character: Emily wrote Kate and I wrote Ruby. Before we started writing the chapters, we had to develop our own characters as well as plotting the entire book as a partnership. I started the Ruby story, then I sent my chapters to Emily and she wrote some of the Kate story, and then we went back and forth like that all the way to the end, giving and receiving chapters. Then we did the editing to make sure it flowed well. It’s important that the main story works but also that each character has their own storyline with its own satisfying ending.
Ned Kelly is a familiar name for most Australians. Can you tell us a bit about how you went about your research for the character of his sister? Did you both collate information?
Emily Gale: We did loads of research, all different kinds. Nova already knew a bit about Kate Kelly but I didn’t so I was starting from scratch. I read or listened to a lot of books. I looked in the index of even more books to see if they mentioned Kate and I read all of those bits too. I watched all the Ned Kelly movies, listened to podcasts, read books about horses, watched YouTube videos about young people taking care of their horses or going riding, and read old newspapers from 1878 on the website Trove, where it’s easy to look up articles from the past.
Then I made a Google Doc of all my research and shared it with Nova so that she could add to it.
A fun part of the research was going on the train with Nova to The Kelly Gang areas in Victoria. We saw the old chimney which is all that is left of the house where Kate Kelly grew up, and we walked around Glenrowan where The Kelly Gang came to an end.
If you could time-slip to any time in history, what year would you choose?
Emily Gale: If I could guarantee that I could come home any time I would take a quick trip to ancient Italy, the first century AD, when the Romans had a time of not fighting anyone – it’s a period called Pax Romana. It would be very smelly, and I wouldn’t like to be a slave forced to participate in gladiatorial games, but I think it would be incredible to go that far back in time.
Nova Weetman: I’d like to take a whirlwind trip through important historical moments, watching them like an eagle from above and then time slipping into the next one once all the drama was complete. I’d meet Cleopatra, visit the Colosseum to watch a gladiatorial battle, and eat Marie-Antoiniette’s cake.
What you are both working on next?
Emily Gale: I am working on a new story which instead of going back in time goes forward a generation. I’m only halfway through it so I can’t say much more but it’s interesting and challenging to make myself think about the future instead of the past.
Nova Weetman: I have just delivered the first draft of a new middle grade novel that is much lighter than the books I usually write, and I’m also working on a middle grade graphic novel with illustrator Renee Treml.
Do you have a tip for young writers who’d like to collaborate on a story?
Emily Gale: It helps to plan your story a little bit first so that you both know where you’re going. But you don’t have to plan every detail and it’s amazing when a story takes you somewhere unexpected, so you should both stay open to that. Choose a story idea that you are both very passionate about and listen to each other’s ideas carefully. If there is something the other person has written or suggested that you don’t like, you must be careful about how you say this: be very kind to each other always and don’t forget to tell them the things that you love about their writing – encouraging each other will get the most out of collaborating.
Nova Weetman: I think you need to be in agreement about how long and how complicated the story is before you start. It’s important that you are both thinking about the same sort of genre and tone, and that one of you isn’t imagining a murder mystery while the other is writing a romance. Have some really honest discussions before you start so there are fewer surprises when you begin to write.
Outlaw Girls is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop, library or order online.
Peter Carnavas is the creator of over twenty books, many of which have been shortlisted or won awards. Peter’s books have been translated into many languages. He lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Today we’re chatting about Leo and Ralph, his latest novel.
The publisher provided Alphabet Soup with a reading copy of Leo and Ralph.
From the publisher:
Leo and Ralph have been best friends ever since Ralph flew down from one of Jupiter’s moons. But now Leo’s older, and Mum and Dad think it’s time to say goodbye to Ralph. When the family moves to a small country town, they hope Leo might finally make a real friend. But someone like Ralph is hard to leave behind …
Leo loves everything about space. What’s your favourite fact about space?
I discovered my favourite space facts from one of my favourite books: Stellarphant, by James Foley. At the back of his book, he shows all the different animals that have been into space — rabbits, tortoises, frogs and chicken eggs!
Can you share a memory of what you and your friends liked to do at lunchtime when you were Leo’s age?
It was either soccer or handball. I loved playing soccer, and lunchtime never seemed long enough — we always wanted to score just one more goal. In my mind, I was the greatest handball player in the school, but I don’t have any trophies to prove it. You’ll just have to take my word for it.
Leo’s descriptions of Dundle are so effective we can picture the country town in our mind’s eye. Is Dundle based on a real town?
As I wrote about Dundle, I pictured a lovely country town called Clermont, in the central highlands of Queensland. I lived there for five years when I started teaching and I have great memories of the town and the community. Leo isn’t too sure about Dundle when he first arrives but he grows to love it, just like I did with Clermont.
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?
I won’t say too much, as the idea has only started growing, but I’m planning a novel about animals, and the main character is a stubborn, curious and very brave goat.
Do you have a tip for young writers?
When you write stories, you’re in charge, so write the story you really want to write. There are some basic rules to remember — a main character that readers want to cheer for, and some big problems to create tension — but most of all, try to write the kinds of stories you love to read.
Leo and Ralph is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop, library or order online!
Allison Tait (A.L. Tait) is the internationally published bestselling author of adventure series The Mapmaker Chronicles, the Ateban Cipher novels, and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries. Today we’re chatting to A.L. Tait about her latest novel The First Summer of Callie McGee, a cosy mystery novel.
From the publisher:
It’s the last summer before Callie starts high school and she’s been dragged along to yet another ‘family friends’ holiday. Determined to change her nerdy reputation, Callie sets out to make waves but nothing is quite as she expects. Her usual ally, Sasha, has outgrown Callie; her nemesis, Mitch, has brought his cousin Owen along; and the boring south coast town of Sawyer’s Point has been rocked by a series of burglaries. Callie, Owen and Mitch decide to investigate the robberies, bringing them face to face with a local gang … and a possible ghost. But then Sasha goes missing …
You’ve published multiple fantasy novels, what was different about writing contemporary realism?
When you’re writing a story set in a fantasy world, you have to work incredibly hard to bring that world to life on the page with every tiny detail. You’re thinking about everything from what people wear and what they eat to how they buy things at the shops and how they travel from A to B – and then you have to make sure the reader understands all of that without resorting to long descriptive passages (boring!).
In a contemporary world, your reader knows what a car is and what a double-storey brick house looks like, so that side of things is easier – but it’s still essential to build a world for the reader to immerse themselves in.
The biggest challenge for me in the switch was the ‘real’ factor. In a fantasy novel, my characters can drink ale and fling themselves into rivers and readers know it’s not real, without having to be told not to try it themselves. In a contemporary novel, I felt like I had to take a lot more care about my character’s action. When Callie throws herself into a rip to rescue her younger friend Cody, for instance, I’ve already made it clear that she’s a strong swimmer and she’s been a Nipper, so she knows what to do.
When your series The Mapmaker Chronicles began you talked about sketching a map of the books’ world. While you were writing The First Summer of Callie McGee, did you draw a map of Sawyer’s Point?
Sawyer’s Point is based on a real seaside village called Gerroa, about 20 minutes’ drive from my house. I’ve spent a lot of time there over the years (in a friend’s holiday house!) so I could see in my mind exactly where Callie and her friends were at any time. Having said that, I did move things around a bit – Sawyer’s Point has a surf club, but Gerroa does not.
Is Callie’s trying on of a new name based on your own childhood experiences – did you ever try out different nicknames for yourself when you were growing up?
I’ve always found names fascinating – what they say about us, how they fit us and, maybe, how we grow to fit them. And nicknames are even more interesting, because having one implies you have that easy sort of relationship with someone else. I didn’t try to change my name as a child (though I know people who did), and my nickname has always been Al.
Do you have a tip for kids who’d like to write a story based on a real place/setting?
Write what you know, but make it new. Choose a place that you know really well and then change one thing. That one thing might be bringing a new person (character) into that place (one of the best ways to describe a place is to show it through a new person’s eyes – even if it’s your class at school). It might be adding a mysterious statue that’s been there forever and then, one day, has vanished – or perhaps it’s never been there before and then, one day, appears out of nowhere. It might be putting a trapdoor in the floor that leads to a secret tunnel.
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?
I’m excited to be working on a new contemporary middle-grade novel, which will hopefully be out next year! It’s got all the things I love – a character with heart, adventure, and mystery. Watch this space!
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