viewpoint on books for young adults vol 20 no 2 winter 2012 Current Issue

Volume 20 Number 2 Winter 2012

Table of Contents

Distorted mirror images Mal Peet 2

Soonchild by Russell Hoban Mike Shuttleworth 4

Frances, Tom, a mouse, his child and Riddley: Vale Russell Hoban Virginia Lowe 5

Green and Good: young adult fiction with environmental Themes Malcolm Tattersall 6

McKenzie’s Boots by Michael Noonan & Surrender by Sonya Hartnett Maurice Saxby 9

Trading children: Rosanne Hawke on writing Mountain Wolf Rosanne Hawke 11

Mountain Wolf by Rosanne Hawke Stella Lees 12

Turning the page: writing a story based on a picture Felicity Pulman 13

Shades of grey: writing The Industry Rose Foster 15

The Industry by Rose Foster Bernadette Welch 16

Craig Smith wins Pheme (Euphemia) Tanner Award Jeff Prentice 17

Vampires, werewolves and reading widely: interview with

Claudia Gray Sarah Mills, Madeleine Warrillow,

Katherine Costello & Alice Mulvogue 18

Live life and stories will follow Matt Zurbo 19

Transmedia toe-dipping: Kiss Kill Jeni Mawter 20

Things a Map Won’t Show You edited by Susan La Marca

& Pam Macintyre Lynne Vero 22

The Best Day of My Life by Deborah Ellis Soo Lee Tan 23

A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix Elizabeth Braithwaite 24

Spoiled by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan & Blue Fish by Pat Schmatz Jenny Zimmerman 26

Cinnamon Rain by Emma Cameron Liam Frost-Camilleri 27

17 Equations that Changed the World by Ian Stewart Aaron Claringbold 28

Trust Me Too edited by Paul Collins Stella Lees 29

The Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett Chris Thompson 30

The Diggers’ Menagerie by Barry Stone & The Horses Didn’t

Come Home by Pamela Rushby Stella Lees 31

Rocks in the Belly by Jon Bauer Ruth Starke 32

The Shiny Guys by Doug MacLeod Susan La Marca 33

The Ink Bridge by Neil Grant Agnes Nieuwenhuizen 34 The Reluctant Hallelujah by Gabrielle Williams Betty Wohlers 35

Dead, Actually by Kaz Delaney &

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews Alice Mulvogue 36

Divine Clementine by Harley S Kirk & Paradise by Joanna Nadin Diana Hodge 37

Erebos by Ursula Poznanski Bill Wootton 38

Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan Mario La Marca 39

Crave by Melissa Darnell Suzanne Rofe 40

Habibi by Craig Thompson Suzanne Rofe 41

Jessica Rules the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey & I’ll Tell You Mine by Pip Harry Bec Kavanagh 42

The Messenger Bird by Rosanne Hawke Moira Robinson 43

Three Summers by Judith Clarke Margaret Robson Kett 44

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley Mario La Marca 45

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler Anna Ryan Punch 46

Love-shy by Lili Wilkinson Jo Wishart 47

NYR@Galen College, Wangaratta Annette Fletcher 48

Young Readers’ Viewpoint 49

Book Notes 52

Rocks in the Belly Jon Bauer Scribe, 2011 9781921844539 $24.95pb It's been a long time since I have read a novel that disturbed me as much as Rocks in the Belly, and it put me in mind of a television documentary I saw years ago. It was about people who, in occupied countries during WWII, took in Jewish children and passed them off as members of their own families. Of course, by doing so they put themselves and their own children in the most appalling danger: the penalty for harbouring Jews was death. In the documentary, some of the people involved – the Jewish survivors and the families who sheltered them – told their stories. The one that stuck in my mind was the woman who, as the young daughter in a Dutch family, had been intensely jealous of the small Jewish girl who had, as she saw it, been foisted on her as a phony cousin, and was furious with her parents for putting all their lives at risk. Some six decades later, her dislike of that girl and sense of injustice were still strong. Jon Bauer's remarkable debut novel, Rocks in the Belly, first published in 2010, focuses on similar themes of childhood jealousy and family displacement, but in it nobody wins, nobody is saved through sacrifice, and everybody suffers. In many ways it is a shocking story; anyone who has raised a child, and particularly mothers, will find it a gritty, even a brutal, read. It is not a young adult novel; a level of maturity is required to negotiate and fully comprehend the unravelling of the narrative. The story is told in two voices by the unnamed narrator: as a bitter, twenty-eight year old man reluctantly returning from overseas to his family home where his once powerful mother, Mary, is dying of brain cancer; and in the naïve, childish voice of the insecure eight-year-old he was when thirteen-year-old Robert joined the family. ‘I used to tell people I was a foster child,’ is the narrator's opening line, a measure of how he felt then, as the true son of the house, and feels twenty years later as he mentally revisits those traumatic months and their devastating consequences. For all of his short life, he has had to share his mother with, or give her over almost entirely to, a succession of needy foster children, a sacrifice he has not made gladly. It has embedded in him a fierce jealousy and rivalry that blights his life and that of the last foster child, Robert. (And that of the family cat, Alfie: the long-suffering feline bears the brunt of some of the narrator's most spiteful acts.) There is a father in this family, well-meaning, cheerful and more empathetic than his wife, but he, too, is unnamed; it's the mother who is the focus of the narrative and the one who dominates. It is not until the end of the book that we learn the circumstances that have led to Mary's commitment to fostering boys (always boys), so for most of the story the reader wonders in some frustration why she devotes herself to Robert at the expense of her own son, even in the face of the most obvious signs – the fact that he is still wetting the bed at eight, for example. Twenty years on, the father is dead and Robert has been the victim of some appalling accident for which the narrator feels responsible, although he has never admitted this to anyone. The tables have been turned and now the adult son is in the perfect position to make life disagreeable for his incapacitated mother. How he does this, and the resulting climax, will freeze the blood. It is a considerable achievement on Bauer's part that the story is so engrossing, given that the adult narrator is so objectionable. The child is a disturbing mix of sensitivity, sharp observations (he is a child who 'watches') and sociopathic tendencies, but we can forgive even his most deliberate and vindictive acts for he is, after all, eight years old. It is harder to sympathise with a narrator who is twenty-eight and still behaving as if the world owes him a living. Bauer renders this character, if not likeable, at least palatable, by the technique of the dual narration which admits us into the private thoughts of the disturbed child, and thus allows us to understand how the adult was formed. The downside of this is that there's too much of the naïve voice, telling us things that have already been made clear, or at times testing this reader's tolerance: ‘If I go a week without wetting the bed I get any toy I want and I definitely want a remote car like Ralph and Simon have. They've got this really cool enormous suspension and are really fast, only the batteries don't last that long. Mum and Dad won't let me drink anything after about 5 o'clock and sometimes I get so thirsty...’.

This could not have been an easy story to bring to a conclusion, especially one that while not exactly promising hope and redemption, at least lends a small glimmer of light to the dark final chapters. Bauer just manages to bring it off, albeit through the introduction of a new character who fortuitously appears just as he is needed, and the last pages, with the final, uplifting glimpses of Robert, are intensely moving. Admirers of Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin will find this novel makes for a fascinating comparison.

Ruth Starke supervises postgraduates in creative writing at Flinders University. Index

10 Futures 55 Faulkner, William 9 Love-shy 47 Sea Hearts 39 17 Equations that Changed the World Fitzgerald, Becca 40 Lucky Dip 8 Secret Circle, The 51 28 FitzOsbornes at War, The 53 Machine Man 52 Sendak, Maurice 3 19 Clues 21 Flannery, Tim 6 MacLeod, Doug 29, 33 Sewing Circles of Herat, The 34 Abbey, Edward 6 Flush 7 Mahoney, Karen 50 Shadow Seeker 7 Abela, Deborah 29 Flyaway 7, 8 Make Room! Make Room! 6 Shah, Saira 34 Ahmed, Tanveer 22 Flynn, Pat 29 Making Tracks 13 Shalott 13 Akimbo and the Snakes 7 Forty Signs of Rain 8 Makler, Irris 34 Shearer, Tony 7 Always Coming Home 8 Foster, Rose 15, 16 Margarets, The 8 Sheather, Allan 7 American Born Chinese 45 Freestone, Peta 22 Marr, Melissa 54 Shiny Guys, The 33 Ampersand 42 Fussell, Sandy 29 Marr, Shirley 55 Shriver, Lionel 32 Amsterdam, Steven 55 Future Eaters, The 6 Marrying Ameera 11 Sick Puppy 8 Andrews, Jesse 36 Future Primitive 8 Mattingley, Christobel 7 Silent Spring 6 Art of Immersion, The 20 Futurist’s Manifesto, A 20 Mawter, Jeni 20 Simon Black 9 Atwood, Margaret 8 Ghost Boy 13 Maze, The 8 Sinclair, Tim 22 Avatar 8 Ghost of Ping-Ling, The 49 McCall Smith, Alexander 7 Sister Madge’s Book of Nuns 33 Bad Book, The 50 Girl Underground 34 McCarthy, Maureen 42 Skinny Dip 8 Bafut Beagles, The 6 Gleitzman, Morris 34 McDonald, Caroline 7 Skulduggery Pleasant: The End of the Baillie, Allan 52 GoFugYourself 26 McGuire, Hugh 20 World 50 Baker, Jeannie 7 Gone With The Wind 18 McKenzie’s Boots 9, 10 Sleeping Dogs 9 Barefoot Book of Earth Tales, The 7 Gore, Al 6 McMullen, Sean 29 Slide 50 Barry, Max 52 Grant, Neil 34, 35 McVeity, Jen 7 Slow Loris 4 Base, Graeme 7 Gray, Claudia 18 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl 36 Smith, LJ 51 Bates, Dianne 29 Griffiths, Andy 50 Messenger Bird, The 43 Snakeskin Road 8 Bauer, Jon 32 Growing Summer, The 37 Metamorphosis 33 Soonchild 4 Bauer, Michael Gerard 29 Gwynne, Phillip 29 Midsummer Tights Dream, A 51 Soraya the Storyteller 34 Beckett, Samuel 5 Habibi 41 Miller, David 29 Southall, Ivan 9 Belonging 7 Halliday, Susan 29 Mitchell, Margaret 18 Speer, Scott 52 Best Day of My Life, The 23 Handler, Daniel 46, 47 Monkey Wrench Gang, The 6 Spoiled 26 Blankets, 41 Harris, Christine 54 Montmaray Journals, The 53 Springfield 13 Bliss 6 Harrison, Harry 6 Morgan, Jessica 26 Stand on Zanzibar 6 Blotsville 7 Harry, Pip 42 Mounfield, Jenny 29 Staples, Suzanne Fisher 34 Blue Feather, The 8 Hartnett, Sonya 9, 22, 30 Mountain Wolf 11, 12 Starke, Ruth 22 Bluefish 26 Hathaway, Jill 50 Mouse and His Child, The 4, 5 Steele, Mary 7 Boy Overboard 34 Hawke, Rosanne 11, 12, 34, 43 Mowat, Farley 6 Steven, Kenneth 7 Braziel, James 8 Heath, Jack 29 Murray, Kirsty 29 Stewart, Ian 28 Brunner, John 6 Hegland, Jean 8 Murty, Sudha 22 Stone, Barry 31 Buffalo Gals 8 Herbert, Frank 6 My Australian Story 54 Stones for My Father 54 Bursztynski, Sue 29 Hiaasen, Carl 7, 8 My Family and Other Animals 6 Stories for a Fragile Planet 7 Cameron, Emma 27 Higgins, Simon 29 My Forbidden Face, 34 Storyteller’s Daughter, The 34 Carbon Diaries, The 8 Hillman, Robert 48 Nadin, Joanna 37 Stracher, Cameron 8 Carey, Peter 6 Hoban, Russell 4, 5 Nature Girl 8 Streatfield, Noel 37 Carmody, Isobelle 29 Hobbs, Leigh 29 Nix, Garth 24 Summer Hawk 8 Casey, Dawn 7 Hobbs, Will 8 Noonan, Michael 9 Surrender 9, 10 Castor, HM 53 Holfeld, Greg 29 O’Hara, Michael 8 Suzuki, David 6 Chelonia Green, Champion of Turtles 7 Honey, Elizabeth 7 O’Leary, Brian 20 Swallows of Khabul, The 34 Children of the King, The 30, 31 Hoot 7 One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish 26 Sydney Harbour Bridge 54 Christopher, Lucy 7 Hope Bay 7 One Less Fish 7 Taj and the Great Camel Trek 11 Chronicle of Australia 13 Horses Didn’t Come Home, The 31 Oodgeroo 22 Tales of the Blue Jade 49 Cinnamon Rain 27 Hosseini, Khaled 34 Orr, Wendy 29 Tamar 2 City of Ember, The 7 How Tom Beat Captain Najork and his Oryx and Crake 8 Tan, Shaun 29 Clarke, Judith 44 Hired Sportsmen 4, 5 Our Woman in Kabul 34 Taylor, Peter 13 Cocks, Heather 26 Hunger Games: Movie Companion, 49 Outpost 52 Tepper, Sheri S 8 Collapse 6 Hush, Hush 40 Overloaded Ark, The 6 Things a Map Won’t Show You 22 Collins, Paul 29, 48 I’ll Tell You Mine 42 Pacific Edge 8 Things We Didn’t See Coming 55 Confusion of Princes, A 24, 25 Immortal City 52 Paradise 37 Thompson, Craig 41 Cooper, Michelle 53 Inconvenient Truth, An 6 Parvana 34 Three Summers 44 Cooper, Peter 49 Industry, The 15, 16 Peet, Mal 2 Toft, Kim Michelle 7 Crave 40 Ink Bridge, The 34, 35 People of Sparks, The 7 Trokeville Way, The 4 Crew, Gary 8, 29 In the Land of the Talking Trees 9 Phommavanh, Oliver 29, 51 Trust Me Too 29 D’Ath, Justin 29 Into the Forest 8 Pluss, Nicole 7 Twain, Mark 20 Darnell, Melissa 40 Invisible Assassin, The 49 Pocketful of Eyes, A 47 Twilight 42 Davis, Jack 22 Irvine, Ian 29 Pohl, Frederik 6 Under the Persimmon Tree 34 Deacon, Alexis 4 Ivanoff, George 29 Ponders, The 5 Uno’s Garden 7 Dead, Actually 36 Janna Mysteries, The 13 Population Bomb, The 6 Vane, Mitch 29 Delaney, Kaz 36 Jessica Rules the Dark Side 42 Poznanski, Ursula 38 VIII 53 Devil Latch, The 9 Johnson, Mo 29 Praying Flute, The 7 Viska, Peter 29 Diamond, Jared 6 Jonsberg, Barry 7 Preloved 55 Walk in My Shoes 34 Diamond of Darkhold, The 7 Kafka, Franz 33 Princes 9 Water War, The 8 Diggers’ Menagerie, The 31 Kane, Kim 29 Prophet of Yonwood, The 7 We Need to Talk About Kevin 32 Divine Clementine 37 Kemmerer, Brigid 50 Pryor, Michael 29, 55 Whaley, John Corey 45 Dog that Dumped on My Doona, The 7 Kent, Trilby 54 Pulman, Felicity 13 Where the Forest Meets the Sea 7 Dreamcatcher 7 Kettle, Phil 29 Punchlines 51 Where Things Come Back 45 Dr Seuss 26 Khadra, Yasmina 34 Queen Kat, Carmel & St Jude, Get A Life 42 Why We Broke Up 46, 47 Dune 6 Kirk, Hayley S 37 Quentaris Series 48 Wicked Lovely 54, 55 DuPrau, Jeanne 7 Kiss Kill 20, 21 Raven Lucas 1: Missing 54 Wilkinson, Lili 47 Durrell, Gerald 6 Kite Runner, The 34 Reluctant Hallelujah, The 35 Williams, Gabrielle 35 Edwards, Hazel 29 Kornbluth, CM 6 Remote Man 7 Williams, Sean 29 Egan, Kate 49 Laguna, Sophie 29 Rennison, Louise 51 Winch, Tara June 22 Eldridge, Jim 49 Lake at the End of the World, The 7 Replacement, The 40 Wonder 9, 26, 31, 37 Elementals: Storm 50 La Marca, Susan 22 Riddley Walker 5 Wonderstruck 9, 31 Ellis, Deborah 23, 34 Lamb, Christina 34 Robinson, Kim Stanley 8 Wood Queen, The 50 Endgame 5 Lanagan, Margo 39 Rocks in the Belly 32 Word for World is Forest, The 8 Erebos 38, 39 Landy, Derek 50 Rose, Frank 20 World That We Want, The 7 Evans, Alwyn 34 Le Guin, Ursula 8 Roy, James 22, 29 Yang, Gene 45 Evernight 18 Levithan, David 21 Rushby, Pamela 31 Yovanoff, Brena 40 Faery Tales & Nightmares 54 Life: An Exploded Diagram 2,3 Sacred Balance, The 6 Zurbo, Matt 19 Family Tree, The 8 Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher, The 33 Savage, Deborah 8 Fantaskey, Beth 42 Limits to Growth 6 Scat 7 Farrer, Vashti 54 Lloyd, Saci 8 Schmatz, Pat 26