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