A charming, heartfelt middle-grade novel about a time when everything is changing, and a girl who’s trying to make sense of it all.
ALL THE LITTLE TRICKY THINGS
by Karys McEwen
Text Publishing Australia, May 2022
It’s the start of the summer holidays and eleven-year-old Bertie is worried. Next year she’s going to a high school in the city, while all her friends stay behind in Merri, the small town she’s lived in all her life. To help her feel better prepared for high school, her best friend, Claire, makes a list of eleven tasks Bertie has to complete over the summer. They start working through the list together, but the tasks begin to reveal some of the cracks in their friendship. Now Bertie’s not even sure she’ll have one friend by the end of the summer.
Karys McEwen is the current president of the Victorian branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia. She is also a school librarian, and she is passionate about the role libraries and literature play in the wellbeing of young people. She has been a columnist for Books+Publishing and her work has appeared in library journals such as FYI, Synergy and Connections. ALL THE LITTLE TRICKY THINGS is her debut middle-grade novel.
Brooke likes order, she likes lists, she likes rules. The first and only rule of her new sharehouse is ‘no unnecessary drama’. Which means no fights, no tension, and absolutely no romance with housemates Penny and Jesse. That’s fine by Brooke, because she has plans. This is going to be her year: her first year of university, the year she’s moved to Melbourne, and the year she’s going to live up to all of her potential. But things get off to a bad start: university isn’t what she thought it would be; she’s desperately homesick, chronically anxious and, to add to her problems, Brooke might be developing inconvenient romantic feelings for off-limits housemate Jesse.
Patch feels out of place at Mountford College: she wears the wrong clothes, she’s on a scholarship, and she has an embarrassingly persistent crush on Evie Vanhoutte, popular girl and golden child. Evie has no idea Patch exists until one day, a chance encounter sparks a friendship that’s equal parts exhilarating, terrifying, and very, very confusing.
In a busy street market, Abbie lets go of six-year-old Sarah’s hand. She isn’t a bad mother, just exhausted. When she turns around, her daughter isn’t there. After a full-scale search and a highprofile investigation, there is still no trace of Sarah.
Twenty years ago Charlie Deravin’s mother went missing near the family beach shack—believed murdered; body never found. His father has lived under a cloud of suspicion ever since. Now Charlie’s back living in the shack in Menlo Beach, on disciplinary leave from his job with the police sex-crimes unit, and permanent leave from his marriage. After two decades worrying away at the mystery of his mother’s disappearance, he’s run out of leads. Then the skeletal remains of two people are found in the excavation of a new building site—and the past comes crashing in on Charlie.