Sonya Hartnett, Author . Candlewick $7.99 (261p) ISBN 978-0-76
In a starred review, PW
wrote, "Set in the harsh mining outback of Australia during the Depression, this startling coming-of-age story combines the narrator's grindingly realistic account of a family mired in poverty with a more surreal tale of her younger brother, gifted with an uncanny ability to dig through the earth and create his own subterranean world." Ages 14-up. (Sept.)
Set in the harsh mining outback of Australia during the Depression, Hartnett's (Sleeping Dogs) startling coming-of-age story combines narrator Harper Continue reading »
Hartnett (Thursday's Child) again captures the ineffable fragility of childhood in this keenly observed tale set in 1977 in her native Australia. Adrian has Continue reading »
Living in a bypassed Australian town with people "sunk by the dislocation" wrought by a new highway, hardworking 23-year-old Satchel O'Rye is coping as well as he can with his Continue reading »
Hartnett's (Surrender
) latest offering, set in France during the Great War, is at once delicately told and deeply resonant. When two sisters, eight-year-old Continue reading »
Hartnett (Surrender
) introduces an unlikely protagonist for a one-of-a-kind love story. When 75-year-old Matilda Victoria Adelaide, or Maddy, comes home to find Continue reading »
Hartnett eviscerates modern suburban life in this blistering story of broken families, buried secrets, and foundering lives. Plum Coyle is almost 14 and terrifically insecure, with two older Continue reading »
The eeriness that underscores Hartnett's Wilful Blue is even more prevalent in this grittier novel, also set in rural Australia. From the very beginning, readers will sense an unnatural aura Continue reading »
Readers drawn to stories about suffering young artists will find torment aplenty in this woeful tale of a friendship cut short by suicide. Seven talented young men are commissioned to paint, sculpt Continue reading »
This somber yet not hopeless fable set during WWII offers a haunting portrait of families, human and otherwise, torn apart. Two Romany boys, 12-year-old Andrej and nine-year-old Tomas, flee with Continue reading »
Lindgren Award?winner Hartnett has been writing for younger and younger readers in recent years, but whether her audience is teenagers (Butterfly), middle-graders (The Midnight Zoo), or now Continue reading »
When the affluent Jensons move into town, it?s difficult for the neighborhood children to see past the allure of the fancy toys, bikes, and aboveground pool that sons Colt and Bastian have. Syd Continue reading »
Onoseta’s devastatingly vulnerable debut, told nonlinearly in two teen Nigerian girls’ dual perspectives, portrays a tempestuous sisterhood amid colorism, familial trauma, and Continue reading »
Humor and heartfelt emotion reign supreme in a quirky narrative that centers the importance of family, blood or blended. Twelve-year-old Adela Ramírez, who’s of Mexican descent, Continue reading »
“Sal loved the water. He liked to imagine it moving under his feet.” With junk from his mother’s garage and pickings from local businesses, he starts building. In the family’s Continue reading »
Rick, a lumpy gray rock with googly eyes and a sweet smile, has been sitting on Room 214’s Nature Finds shelf “for as long as he can remember” while on-the-move human students, Continue reading »