Welcome to our Middle Grade collection, where you'll find fun and beautiful titles by Australian authors ready to ignite young imaginations...
This timely and compassionate story is about a child and father setting out to build a cubbyhouse under streaming sunshine.
Until clouds snake in on a hazing horizon… skies swell, a clouding storm brews and finally breaks and swirls into pouring rains and eventually subsides. All the while, the cubby grows wackier, with the rustiest of riches that rattle and rule! T
his is all a metaphor for the father’s mental ill health that gently aligns with the building of the cubby and changing emotions and weather. Mental ill health can be a challenge to understand because we can’t ‘see’ anything wrong or broken with the brain.
Dr. Schott's warm-hearted story with full colour illustrations helps give some understanding through the eyes of a child building a cubby with its father.
The chapter book is ideal for 5-12 year olds, with accompanying resources for teachers, carers and families to draw upon.
We first met Mia in Black Cockatoo, as she navigated her way through culture, Country and familial ties.
Dirrarn follows Mia as she finds herself at boarding school and the challenges of living thousands of kilometres away from home, family, and the big sky country she loves. Mia along with her best friend, Naya, negotiate new friends, new ways of thinking and new ways of being in a different world.
As Mia wrestles with all that is unfamiliar, she soon must learn to stand in her truth when confronted with unending challenges.
Black Cockatoo is a vignette that follows Mia, a young Aboriginal girl as she explores the fragile connections of family and culture.
Mia is a 13-year-old girl from a remote community in the Kimberley. She is saddened by the loss of her brother as he distances himself from the family.
She feels powerless to change the things she sees around her, until one day she rescues her totem animal, the dirran black cockatoo, and soon discovers her own inner strength.
It’s 1998 and Clara and her parents are staying at the Mount Buffalo Chalet for the centenary celebrations.
It couldn’t be more different from their last visit—there were four of them then and they were a family. Now they are three separate people, orbiting around each other while trying to navigate their overwhelming grief.
Without her twin brother, Clara doesn't really know who she is. Then she meets Alice, a girl who lives within the fern-filled valleys below Mount Buffalo. Surprisingly, Clara discovers she is Guide Alice, a rebel of her time, an adventurous non-conformist who spent much of her life boldly leading people along rugged trails between granite tors and misty mountain peaks.
When Clara and Alice come face-to-face with danger on the mountain, Clara must rediscover the courage she has always had and become the girl she was always meant to be...
This was meant to be Alice's year to shine, but things are already going wrong…
At school, she's given young environmental activist Greta Thunberg as her pen pal for a fictional writing assignment. Why couldn't Alice get someone easy to write to, like a pop star?
Then she's put in charge of taking the Harmony Day Food Fair online, which seems impossible, especially when she is teamed up with the most annoying boy in her school. As if she didn't have enough on her plate, Alice gets kicked out of her bedroom by her grandmother coming to stay. And no matter what Alice does, she'll never be able to live up to her infuriating big sister's achievements, right?
Through her letters to Greta, Alice finds herself opening up about her life. And as Alice approaches the hard questions by wondering, 'What would Greta do?', she starts to believe that she can make a difference - a big one.
Toby’s family is no ordinary family.
They are magical, talented, and special. His father is a surgeon. His older sister is a lawyer. But his dad is also a renowned wizard, as is his uncle, and his sister can influence people. His mum was special too, but she had to leave…
Toby isn’t any of those things. The only special thing he can do is pretty useless. Toby can talk with cats.
When Toby and his sister rescue a family of abandoned cats on the side of the road and Toby spots a mysterious silver bangle in the gutter, everything changes.
It’s the start of 2020 and Harper is excited about her final year at Riverlark Primary.
But one by one things go wrong. When Harper’s best friends are made school captains they are consumed by their roles, while no one’s interested in her role of library captain. Her parents take overseas jobs as nurses in a war zone, and Harper is bundled off to stay with her grandmother, who she hardly knows. And then the pandemic arrives.
Harper’s goodbye year is turning out to be nothing like she’d hoped it would be. And strange things are happening: she wakes in the night in odd places, an old army badge keeps turning up—and she meets a ghost. Who is haunting her? And why is he here? Will he help Harper find a way to be happy with her goodbye year?
The Goodbye Year explores all the trickiness and confusion of the end of primary school and a new stage of life that looms with all its uncertainties and possibilities.
Do you hear that? You’re Cliff now, and your life is going to get better, I promise...
When eleven-year-old Matt finds Cliff, a hurt, neglected dog abandoned in the bush, he knows the brave little pup needs saving. He wants to help. But can he?
Lately, Matt has had way more bad days than good days. The pieces of his life just don’t seem to fit together any more and he doesn’t understand why. He's finding it impossible to concentrate at school and has lost interest in the activities he used to love. Plus, he’s tired all the time. ​Matt's too afraid to share what's really going on in his own head with anyone.
His friends and family will never understand . . . maybe it's not only Cliff who needs saving.
Friends Are What Happen When You're Making Other Plans...
Everything is changing for 11-year-old Alex and, as an autistic person, change can be terrifying. With the first day of high school only a couple of months away, Alex is sure that having a friend by his side will help.
So, he's devised a plan - impress the kids at school by winning a trophy at the PAWS Dog Show with his trusty sidekick, Kevin.
This should be a walk in the park . . . right?
The Very Clever Bee is a non-fiction reference book for children that covers key aspects of the life and role of the European honeybee (Apis mellifera) and its great value to humankind and life on planet earth.
Although the book has been written with middle grade children in mind, children of all ages and adults alike will find beautiful illustrations, diagrams and pearls of information in the form of ‘fact boxes’. The book is peppered with quotes from great minds such as Aristotle, Karl Von Frisch, literature giants Victor Hugo, Jonathan Swift and the most famous honey lover of all and much beloved by children, Winnie-the-Pooh.
Hopefully, the knowledge gleaned from The Very Clever Bee will lead to an understanding of how vital the bee is to ensuring a safe food supply for all life on earth. And children will learn to respect bees rather than fear them.
10-year-old Freya Patel thinks it is RUBBISH her family are living on her Gran’s farm in Australia for a year, leaving everything she knows behind in London.
Emma Lloyd is excited to have a girl her own age come to live next door. She’s lived on her family dairy farm her whole life. Can such different girls be friends?
When Maisie the cow gets in trouble, they must join forces to save her newborn calf!
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Bernice Peppercorn’s imagination fills her mind and her notebooks with adventure and intrigue.
She sees crimes where there are none and races to the local police station daily to fulfil her civic duty. When a real robbery is committed in town, Bernice dives into detective mode and stumbles across vital clues that could find the thieves.
No one believes her except Ike, a one-legged fisherman who lives down at the wharf. Bernice Takes a Plunge is an exciting and humorous adventure for readers aged 7-12.
The most fundamental of all rights is an asylum seeker's right to freedom.
Zallah and her mother have escaped their war torn country and are looking for safety in Australia. Instead of freedom they find themselves in a refugee detention centre. Zallah struggles with the reason for this punishment. A True Person is a moving story which highlights the bond between Mother and Daughter in times of adversity.
For Zallah there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we celebrate with her as she realises what it means to be A True Person.
Loysa was a young girl growing up in a poor family who survived by rice farming.
On the day a new water buffalo was born, her life changed. The young calf was gangly, legs much too long and a body much to thin.
He was called Payat. Loysa had plans for this new member of the family. In her mind, he was not meant for working in the fields.
This is Loysa'a story.
Little Lorie Had a Farm is a book about an Australian girl who meets different animals around her family's farmhouse.
Written for children aged 3-6, it contains ten stories full of imagination, excitement and well-presented educational information about the most popular Australian animals: kangaroos, wombats, emus, cockatoos, and others.
Calder Cove, a quiet seaside village... Or is it?
When a strange medieval castle appears out of nowhere, the town's folk are thrown into utter turmoil. Time reveals that the building is a school - one where children are locked away, a cursed ring is stolen, a boy vanishes and a golden door materializes inside an empty room.
Is the village and its people doomed?
Another year and the strange school looms over Calder Cove still.
Despite protests from parents and some offspring, it puts out a call for potential pupils to walk through the gates. This year the headmaster issues a dire warning ... one that is ignored.
Subsequently a portal to another dimension is opened, trapping five students inside. The only way out involves the retrieval of a much-coveted magical sword.
Will everyone escape, or will they fall victim to those who reside there?
It is the third year since the strange castle, known to the residents of Calder Cove as Merlin's School, appeared in the seaside town.
They are still viewing it with trepidation, more so this year as things that had been accepted - though odd - suddenly become dark and dire when a teacher is killed. Students are now more than ever reluctant to enter the confines of the building, but their choices are removed by an enchantment that draws the selected few in.
Will they find out who the murderer is? Or will the the murderer find them first?
Would you like to see your book here? Simply fill out our submission form on the For Authors page and we'll proudly add your title to our library!
