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.
The Riding Gallery by Sally Murphy, illustrations by Martina Heiduczek, Walker Books Australia, ISBN 9781760657345
REVIEWED BY AASHI, 10, VIC
Alphabet Soup provided Aashi with a review copy of this book.
The Riding Gallery is a beautiful book that is written in verse. It is historical fiction with poems that bring it to life. The book, written by Sally Murphy, is set in St Kilda. St Kilda is a busy place, in Melbourne, that is right by the sea shore. When you read the book you can almost feel the sand grind between your feet, and the sea roar.
The book features a German engineer, Anton, with a dream. His dream is to build a steam powered merry-go-round. He works on it day and night, carving wood and painting the horses. As he works on it, he realises not everyone trusts him since he’s German.
Evelyn, is the daughter of a newsagent. She wrinkles her nose when her dad tells her they are moving to St Kilda. She is quite reluctant to move to St Kilda untill she hears that her neighbours have a son, her age.
There is also a boy named Rory. He is Evelyn’s neighbour. Rory has a hard time choosing what is right. He wants the Allies (Australia’s side) to win especially because all three of his brothers are fighting. Rory also thinks all Germans are bad, unlike Evelyn.
Soon Anton’s ride is complete. At first, everyone is excited about the new ride. But when the war starts, things change. People get scared. They think Anton is bad, even though he has done nothing wrong. Evelyn tries to understand. Rory feels confused and worried about his brothers. Some people are still kind, but others are not.
Will Anton’s ride become a hit or go down in flames? Will Rory’s brothers make it home? Will Evelyn find friends?
The book is beautifully written. It gives insights for all the characters and their feelings. The pictures by Martina Heiduczek give a great visual interpretation. I would recommend the book for anyone in upper primary school.
The Light in Everything by Katya Balen, illustrated by Sydney Smith, Bloomsbury Publishing (AUS), ISBN 9781526622983
REVIEWED BY MILAN, 10, NSW.
Milan reviewed his own copy of this title.
The Light In Everything is a very intriguing fictional novel written by Katya Balen. The story is set in a seaside cottage. Here we meet Zofia and her dad, Marek, as well as Tom and his mum, Fiona. Each chapter switches perspectives between Zofia and Tom. Their personalities are the polar opposite of each other. Tom is a shy, timid boy who has trouble trusting others due to a traumatic experience with his father. Zofia, on the other hand, is an energetic, confident girl who has a close relationship with her dad and finds it difficult to share his attention. As the story progresses, Marek and Fiona fall in love and the families move in together which poses many challenges. The four of them quickly discover their differences and this causes tension in their relationships. Later, Fiona and Marek have a baby who is born with complications which forces Tom and Zofia to spend more time together.
Overall this was a very engaging book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really liked the description of the pain Zofia and Tom were going through. The language she used made me feel as if I was really there and experiencing their emotions. One of the quotes I really liked was “The sea is bright today. Far out towards the inky horizon are little licks of white foam that mirror the lazy clouds above them.” This quote shows us how powerful Katya Balen’s descriptions are and it made me imagine how the characters might feel.
One thing I didn’t like was how ruthless Fiona’s last husband was and how brutal he was towards Tom. The quote “I tell her that Dad used to hurt us and now he’s in prison but I’m still afraid” shows the impact Tom’s dad made on him. This made me empathise with Tom but I also found it difficult to read because it made me feel fearful. I thought that the end was quite predictable and I usually prefer a twist at the end of a book.
I would rate this book 4/5 stars and highly recommend it to readers who enjoy a heartfelt story about relationships and family.
This is Milan’s first book review for Alphabet Soup. To send us YOUR book review, read our submission guidelines. Happy reading!
Dragon Girls: Zoe the Beach Dragon by Maddy Mara, Scholastic Inc, ISBN 9781760265151
REVIEWED BY SCOUT, 8, QLD
Scout reviewed her own copy of this title.
Zoe the Beach Dragon by Maddy Mara is part of the ‘Dragon Girls’ series. I love that there are lots of animals like turtles and seals and lots more in this series.
In this book Zoe and her friends, Grace and Sofia, have to stop the Firesparks and their leader, the Fire Queen, from making the water disappear. They also need to save the ocean leaders like the turtle leader and the dolphin leader.
I think kids who like dragons and are aged 8, 9 and 10 would maybe like this book. I would give this book 10/10 stars.
This is Scout’s first book review for Alphabet Soup. To send us YOUR book review, read our submission guidelines. Happy reading!
The Wonder Brothers by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, illustrated by Steven Lenton, Pan Macmillan UK, ISBN 9781529048315
REVIEWED BY SCARLETT, 10, QLD
Scarlett reviewed her own copy of this book.
The Wonder Brothers is a book about three kids named Brodie, Nathan and Middy and Brodie’s unusual rabbit, Queenie, who decide to go to see the famous magician called Perplexion at his last show.
They climbed on a truck because they thought they were going to meet Perplexion at the airport on his way to Las Vegas for his final show. They end up stuck in Las Vegas, find out something mysterious about Perplexion and then have to find their way back to Blackpool.
I like this book because it is about kids, travelling, magic and it is very funny. I like the bit where they arrive in Las Vegas and don’t know where they are. They think they are in Paris and then they think they’re in Egypt because they see an Eiffel Tower and some pyramids. That is one of the funniest parts of the book.
I recommend this book for 8-15 year olds, I think they would really like it. I rate this book 9 out of 10. I didn’t rate it 10 out of 10 because I wish there more great books in the series so I can read more about the Wonder Brothers.
This is Scarlett’s first book review for Alphabet Soup. To send us YOUR book review, read our submission guidelines. Happy reading!
Jeanette Stampone grew up in England in a spooky 300-year-old house surrounded by stories of local legends, ghosts, fairies, and pixies. Jeanette now calls Western Australia home. She is the author of two picture books and the Junior Fiction Ghost Detectives series, illustrated by Jasmine Berry. Today we’re chatting to Jeanette about book one in the series: Terry Fide and the Bakery Ghost.
From the publisher:
Nine-year-old Terry Fide dreams of being the next great ghost detective like his dad. But there’s one problem: Terry is terrified of anything remotely scary (except his ghost dog, Bones). When his dad is called to work in Sydney, Terry is left to deal with a spook causing havoc at the bakery.
How did you come to write about a ghost haunting a bakery?
I was born in England and lived in a three-hundred-year-old house. It was always very spooky and I spent quite a lot of time hiding under my covers! So, that’s where the ghost part came from. As for the bakery, well my parents owned a bakery, and when I turned 15, I worked there, too. So, I pretty much grew up in a bakery environment, and was always spoiled with yummy treats. When I was trying to think of an idea for the book, I decided it would be fun to combine these two elements and create a bakery ghost.
Terry Fide is a punny name for your main character and his name also tells us about his personality! Have you ever found yourself having to do something that you found terrifying?
I did a solo parachute jump! If that’s not terrifying enough, my walkie-talkie failed so I couldn’t hear the instructors as they tried to guide me down. Thankfully, I managed to get myself down safely. I have to say, it was an amazing experience.
What’s your go-to order when you visit a bakery?
Can I only choose one? I don’t think that’s possible, so I am picking a few! For sweets, I love carrot cake and caramel slice. For savoury, I won’t say no to a pasty or spinach & ricotta roll. Yum!
Do you have a tip for young writers who want to write their own novels?
Take lots of time to get to know your characters. Imagine you are interviewing them and ask about their lives, what they do for fun, their likes and dislikes. Imagine how they would respond to you. Would they roll their eyes? Would they get distracted? Would they speak fast or slow? Doing this will really help you to understand them and build a strong character. And from there, you can start to figure out story ideas. You’ll be surprised how many ideas start flowing after you’ve ‘interviewed’ your character!
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?
I am always working on picture book ideas. I also love to draw so I am hoping to become an author-illustrator one day. So, lots of doodling and playing on my favourite drawing app, Procreate.
Terry Fide and the Bakery Ghost is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.
AWESOME EXTRAS:
If you live in Western Australia, you can book a private 10-minute story time experience with Jeanette on the Story Wheel as part of the Totally Lit Festival in Fremantle! (October 10, 2025) Info and bookings via the Totally Lit website.
Spooky Sleuth & Solve:Decode mind-twisting mysteries inspired by classic creepy characters by Victor Escandell (an adaptation of mysteries by Ana Gallo), Chronicle Books, ISBN 9781797205908
REVIEWED BY ARJAN, 11, NSW
Arjan reviewed his own copy of this book.
This is a nice adaption of spooky stories for kids to read and added twist of detective work. I liked its goofy and hideous drawings.
I learned that you need to fully read and absorb the information given to be able to solve the mystery. The book helps with building comprehension skills. When I read the first story, I didn’t get the answer but by the third story I had improved my thinking and observation skills. It was fun solving the questions and decrypting the answers.
I recommend this book for kids to read for Halloween, and it gives ideas for Halloween costumes. It’s a fun book that has twists on classic scary stories. When I first started reading the book, I found it was quite creepy and dark, but the more I read, the stories became funny and interesting. My personal favourite story was ‘The Loch Ness Monster’ because you had to read the text thoroughly to get the answer.
Zana Fraillon is an award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Her work has been published in over 15 countries and is in development for stage and screen. Today we’re chatting to Zana about Song of a Thousand Seas, her latest verse novel, with illustrations by Aviva Reed.
The publisher provided Alphabet Soup with a reading copy of this tile.
From the publisher:
Houdini the octopus lives in an aquarium, but she misses her home in the wild Sea. She doesn’t like the visitors who bang on her tank. Or the way she can’t feel the sun on her skin or the wind rippling the water. Then one day she meets someone who is different to the other visitors. The singing of the Sea is growing stronger and harder to resist. Can Houdini make Juno understand what she needs before it’s too late?
Your verse novel is written from the point of view of an octopus. How did you approach finding Houdini’s voice?
This novel was a bit different to the way I usually work. Usually, the character’s voice is the first thing that comes to me, but this time around it was the opposite. I actually had a dream that I was an octopus. I was looking out through octopus eyes at the sun filtering in through the water, and tasting things with my skin – it was all very surreal – but this dream stayed with me when I woke and kept nudging at me during the day. I knew this was a story I wanted to write, but the dream had been utterly silent and peaceful, and I felt by giving voice to the character I was somehow destroying that peace. I looked at a lot of ways to get around this – I tried very hard to sell this as a graphic novel, but that wasn’t something my publishers were keen to explore. So I was a bit stuck!
When I am stuck on something, I know the best thing to do is to come at it from a different angle. So instead of trying to actively find and force the voice, I threw myself into research. This led me to approaching Sea Life aquarium in Sydney, who were wonderfully supportive and invited me to come meet their resident octopus – Houdini. As soon as I met her, the voice of my octopus came to me as clear as day. I find that the more I know about a character, the stronger their voice is in my head. I suspect the initial silence was due to me not knowing anything about octopuses. Research is definitely a writer’s best friend.
How do you decide whether to write a story as a prose novel or as a verse novel?
I don’t really decide – the story decides for me! When I get a sense of the character, their way of talking and expressing their world and their place within their world becomes evident pretty quickly. For some, especially characters who are not people, this comes through as verse. There is also something about the musicality and rhythm of the more-than-human world that I want to try and capture in my words, and this seems to work best through verse.
I also just really love writing verse novels, so if a character lends itself to this style I am all for it! I love how playful you can be with the words in a verse novel, and the way they are set on the page. I love that the words themselves can be saying one thing, while the way they are written on the page can be saying something else. For example, if you have a character saying how brave they are, but those words are tiny and small and set off over in the corner, the reader understands that the narrator isn’t that brave at all. I also really love how verse novels leave space for the reader’s imagination – the breaks between verses is like a breathing space that allows images and ideas and connections to grow.
Could you share a favourite octopus fact?
Octopuses are amazing creatures – so alien and monstrous and also so very, very human. They are curious and funny! Octopuses have been known to target certain people and squirt those people with water any time they come past. To me, this is deliberately humorous behaviour! I think my favourite fact is that octopuses watch other animals to see what those animals are scared of, so that the octopus can then mimic that in order to protect itself. It shows such self-awareness and planning and thought. It is also just an excellent superpower.
Do you have a tip for young writers who would like to write a story from the point of view of an animal?
Pay attention to the animal – as in, watch the animal, notice everything you can about what they do and how they do it and try to figure out why they behave in that way. Put yourself in their position as much as is possible and safe. For example, when I was writing The Way of DogI took my dogs for a walk and when they stopped to sniff a tree, I would stop and sniff that tree. I curled up in their bed, and under the table. It is amazing how different the world looks from just this small change of perspective. For Song of a Thousand SeasI looked out at the world through the glass of a tank. I went swimming and looked up at the lights through the water and listened to how sound changes. Also – use your research! Find out as much as you can about the animal and that will give you hints about how the world seems to them. For example, octopuses taste with their suckers – imagine tasting with your hands and feet!
Could you tell us a little about what you’re working on now?
I have two picture books which are coming out in the next year or so – I really love writing picture books and collaborating with an artist on a project that I could never do on my own. I love how the illustrations can tell a whole other part to the story, and how the story couldn’t live without both parts. My ideal writing life would be one where I spent all my time collaborating with other creatives. I haven’t worked out how to do this on a large scale yet, but I’m sure there is a way!
A friend of mine also suggested I should make a verse novel trilogy – having written one from the point of view of a land animal, and one from the point of view of a sea animal, it makes sense to write one from the point of view of a sky animal … Now I can’t get this idea out of my head. We’ll see … (but if anyone has any sky animal recommendations, please let me know!)
Song of a Thousand Seas is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.
Wonder by RJ Palacio, Random House UK, ISBN 9780552565974
REVIEWED BY EMILY, 10, New York, USA
Emily reviewed her own copy of this title.
Wonder by RJ Palacio is an incredible book. It is about the main character, Auggie Pullmen and the challenges he has to face at a real school because of a facial disorder that he was born with. This is a book of mixed emotions – some of his feelings were happy, sad, mad and embarrassed.
Auggie had many struggles at school and with his friends because he was different. One example of when Auggie felt embarrassed is when Auggie trusted Jack with secrets of his surgeries, but Jack let him down by making fun of him with other kids behind his back. Even though this made him feel sad he didn’t forget about his other friendships. Another friend, Summer, made Auggie feel stronger about himself. Summer was always there for him and she didn’t care what other kids thought about his face. And Summer was very kind to Auggie. The way Jack treated Auggie made me feel unhappy and sad because you should always treat others the way you want to be treated. But Jack was unkind and didn’t care about how Auggie felt.
The life lesson of this book is to be brave and to not care what other people think of you. And to try and overcome those challenges in life even if it’s hard.
This is Emily’s first book review for Alphabet Soup. To send us YOUR book review, read our submission guidelines. Happy reading!
D-Day Dog by Tom Palmer, illustrations by Clohosy Cole, HarperCollins, ISBN 9781781128688
REVIEWED BY Arjan, 11, NSW
Arjan reviewed his own copy of this title.
D-Day Dog is a book that teaches kids about the D-Day landings on 6th June 1944. Eleven-year-old Jack has an admiration for war heroes, particularly men on D-Day. But his beliefs are questioned when his dad is called up for active service in Afghanistan. Out of the blue, Jack’s class is taken on an excursion to Normandy. There he learns the true story about D-Day and how one paratrooper took his dog with him at the airborne landings. Sadly neither of them survived.
I loved the shared dialogue between the different characters as well as the descriptions of the characters and the places. I liked the dream sequence, it showed Jack’s emotional turmoil.
The book teaches kids that war is not a good thing and empathises with different characters and their common traits.
This is Arjan’s first book review for Alphabet Soup. To send us YOUR book review, read our submission guidelines. Happy reading!
Kristy Nita Brown is a Western Australian author writing junior fiction books and delivering creative writing, independent publishing and film making workshops at libraries and schools. Today we’re pleased to be chatting to Kristy about the second book in her Mavey and Beth’s Double Act series: The Hole Truth, illustrated by Alison Mutton.
The author provided Alphabet Soup with a reading copy of The Hole Truth.
Almost everyone in Year Three is rocking earrings. Shiny gold stars, diamond studs, dangly rainbows, buzzy bees. Everyone except Mavey, that is. With her twin sister Beth and her best friend Woody by her side, Mavey’s facing a big decision. Fit in? Stand out? Studs or no studs? Can Mavey figure it out before the whole school finds out the hole truth?
This is Book 2 in your junior fiction series. Have you planned out the series in advance or do you just focus on the book you’re currently working on?
When I first came up with the idea for Mavey and Beth, I only had one book in mind. But once I finished it, I realised it could work as a series, with the girls taking on a new challenge in each school year up to Year 4. I won’t go past Year 4, as this would push the series into middle-grade territory, and these are chapter books for early readers.
A fan recently asked me why the story is always told from Mavey’s point of view and not split with Beth over the books, since they’re twins. Mavey is shy, introverted, and thoughtful. I feel these kinds of characters are underrepresented in junior fiction. Beth is more outgoing and dramatic, the kind of character who’s already well represented. For me, Mavey is the heart of the story. She’s trying to figure out her place in the world and make sense of things other kids seem to grasp more easily, and that’s the perspective I want to explore.
Beth has her ears pierced, but her sister Mavey is nervous about getting her ears pierced. Do you have your ears pierced? How old were you when you made the decision?
The Hole Truth is inspired by my daughter and the pressure she felt from her peers in Year 3 to get her ears pierced. It’s a real issue for primary school kids and isn’t just girls, kids of all genders are getting piercings these days.
I do have my ears pierced, but I don’t remember when or how it happened. I also have my nose pierced. I did it while writing The Hole Truth to learn more about the process. The piercer explained everything to me including the process and the importance of consent. The person getting pierced is always in control, no matter their age, and can say “no” or “stop” at any time. Some of the stories of kids she’d pierced even made their way into the book!
What’s your best tip for someone who feels anxious about the pressure to do something they’re unsure about?
My best tip is to remember that it’s okay to take your time and say “no” if something doesn’t feel right. You don’t have to give in to pressure just to fit in or please others. It’s important to listen to your own feelings and boundaries. Sometimes talking it through with someone you trust, whether that’s a parent, teacher, or friend, can really help you figure out what’s best for you. And remember, you’re always in control of your choices, just like I learned from the piercer. Your choices are important, because they are yours.
Spelling homework gets a mention in the book – is spelling one of your superpowers or superchallenges?
Spelling is definitely not one of my superpowers, and I love telling kids this! So many young writers struggle with spelling, and I want them to know it doesn’t have to hold them back. Being an author doesn’t mean you have to be a perfect speller. We have editors who help fix punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Once kids realise this, they can let go of the fear and just focus on the story they want to tell. I even tell them I use voice-to-text when writing sometimes. You don’t even need a pen – just an idea! I’m living proof that you don’t have to be a perfect speller to be a storyteller. If you’ve got a good idea, there’s always a way to get it down on paper.
What’s next for Mavey and Beth?
Will there be a third Mavey and Beth book? In my mind, yes … I think there will be! It will be set in Year 4, and I’m thinking it might be about skateboarding … but I’m open to suggestions. If anyone has ideas for the next book, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to email me! That said, my writing time is limited because I also run the Book Builders Challenge in schools, which takes up a lot of my year. So, the plan is for a third book, but I’ll see how it all fits together!
The Hole Story is out now! See the list of stockists at the author’s website.
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