Archives de catégorie : Fiction

SHOW US WHERE YOU LIVE, HUMPBACK de Beryl Young, illustré par Sakika Kikuchi

This evocative picture book celebrates a child’s connection and kinship with whales.

SHOW US WHERE YOU LIVE, HUMPBACK
by Beryl Young
illustrated by Sakika Kikuchi
Greystone Books, May 2021

Swimming, singing, and blowing bubbles—children and baby whales love many of the same things! This lyrical picture book compares the parent-child relationship with the bond between a mother humpback whale and her calf, showing how their underwater lives are touchingly like our own. Patterned in a call-and-response format, where the mother observes and the child responds, this book is peppered with facts and begs to be read aloud. At the story’s end, acclaimed author Beryl Young and debut illustrator Sakika Kikuchi leave readers dreaming of the wonderful world we share with whales.

Beryl Young is the author of several critically acclaimed and award-winning books for children, including picture books, middle-grade novels, and biographies.Young fell in love with humpback whales watching them swim off the coast of British Columbia and in the warm bays of Hawaii.She lives in Vancouver and has three children and four grandchildren.

Sakika Kikuchi is an illustrator who has loved picture books and stories since her childhood. After studying graphic design at Tama Art University in Tokyo, she worked as an in-house designer for a few years before moving to the UK to complete her MA in children’s book illustration at the Cambridge School of Art. She lives in Japan. This is her first picture book.

THE THOUSAND STEPS de Helen Brain

A smart and pacy dystopian thriller trilogy, in the vein of Divergent, with an original mythology that draws on the power of African ancestor legends.

THE THOUSAND STEPS
(Book 1 in the Elevation Trilogy)
by Helen Brain
Human & Rousseau/NB Publishers South Africa, May 2022 | Catalyst Press USA, January 2020

On the brink of execution, 16 year old Ebba den Eeden is unexpectedly “elevated” from the bunker deep in South Africa’s Table Mountain where she has lived all her life, believing—as do all the other teenagers who toil daily to make their food and power the bunker—that the world « Above » is uninhabitable due to a nuclear holocaust. Instead, she is heiress to a massive fortune―one that everyone wants to control. While dealing with the machinations of the High Priest, his handsome son Hal, and the rules and regulations of a society and religion she doesn’t understand, she must also try to save her three friends, still stuck in the bunker and facing execution any day.

Helen Brain was born in Australia in 1960 and raised in Durban, South Africa. After school, she studied music at the University of Cape Town. Before settling to a life writing and teaching writing online, she was a freelance journalist and editor, a screenprinter and crafter, and taught English, music, and Ancient Greek. A mother to three sons and grandmother to one grandson, Brain lives in Muizenberg, South Africa with her husband.

LION NEEDS A SHOT de Hyewon Yum

A lion family navigates their fears of going to the doctor in this adorable, hilariously relatable companion to Lion Needs a Haircut.

LION NEEDS A SHOT
by Hyewon Yum
Abrams Books for Young Readers, May 2022

Little lion Luka is NOT worried about a visit to the doctor. He’s NOT scared of getting a shot. And he’s definitely NOT a little lion anymore. R-O-A-R! His younger sister, Lulu, might be nervous for her first checkup—but no need to worry, big brother is here to set a brave example. Step by step, he walks her through what will happen, offering encouragement and holding her hand. But when it’s his turn, on second thought, maybe he doesn’t need to see Dr. Brown today; he’s feeling perfectly fine, after all…
This witty, tender story follows two siblings sharing a universal experience together, giving each other courage and realizing that a trip to the doctor’s office isn’t so bad.

Hyewon Yum is the author and illustrator of Lion Needs a Haircut; Grandpa Across the Ocean; Last Night, a Fiction Honorable Mention for the Bologna Ragazzi Award and winner of the Golden Kite Award; There Are No Scary Wolves, winner of the Society of illustrators’ Founder’s Award; The Twins’ Blanket, a Junior Library Guild selection; Mom, It’s My First Day of Kindergarten!, which won the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award and was selected as a Kirkus Best Book of the Year; and Saturday is Swimming Day, which earned her a Charlotte Zolotow Honor. Yum lives in Brooklyn, New York.

THE ATTACK de Catherine Jinks

Bruising classroom dynamics, manipulative parents and carers, and horrendous small-town politics form the backdrop to a nail-biting thriller in which the tensions of ten years ago start to play themselves out, building to a violent climax in the present day.

THE ATTACK
by Catherine Jinks
Text Publishing Australia, September 2021

Robyn Ayres works as the camp caretaker on Finch Island, a former leper colony off the coast of Queensland. Her current clients are a group of ex-military men who run a tough-love program for troubled teens. The latest crop looks like the usual mix of bad boys and sad boys. Then Robyn takes a second look at a kid called Darren. Last time she saw him his name was Aaron, and Robyn was his primary school teacher. And she was somehow at the centre of a vicious small-town custody battle involving his terrifying grandmother.
Robyn escaped the past once. Now it’s back—and this time there’s no way out.

Catherine Jinks’ books for adults, young adults and children have been published in a dozen countries and have won numerous awards, including a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the CBCA Book of the Year Award (four times). She lives in the Blue Mountains in Australia.

BODIES OF LIGHT de Jennifer Down

A single human life turned into an epic story, a hugely readable book that traverses the darkest territory and fulfils fiction’s promise to immerse us in the realities of another identity.

BODIES OF LIGHT
by Jennifer Down
Text Publishing Australia, October 2021

BODIES OF LIGHT tracks the life of Maggie: from her childhood shuttled from one abusive care home to another; to domestic happiness that ends in tragedy; to the arms of a passionate woman in New Zealand; and to a new existence in the USA—only for her to find that she can’t leave her old self behind so easily. This is the story of a life in full, detailed, wrenching, sensuous and compelling. It’s about trauma and heartbreak, memory and loss, the refusal to do anything but survive, no matter the odds.

Jennifer Down is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in publications including the Age, Saturday Paper, Australian Book Review and Literary Hub. She was named a Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist of the Year in both 2017 and 2018. Our Magic Hour, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript, the 2017 Voss Literary Prize and a 2017 NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Her second book, Pulse Points, was the winner of the 2018 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, and was shortlisted for a 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary Award and a 2018 Queensland Literary Award. She lives in Melbourne.