FICTION for years 7-9 RESOURCES
Across the Risen Sea by Bren MacDibble
'It's one of them days when everything is off. A hot sweaty night in Rusty Bus means we kids is all grouchy-tired. Me and my best friend, Jaguar, is trying to cool down by taking turns at dipping in the sea pool. Him standing on the sea wall made from car frames and rocks on lookout for crocs, me swimming, then we'll swap places. We's always doing things as a team, him and me. We's gonna be the best fisher people and the best salvagers on the whole of the inland sea one day.'
Neoma and Jag and their small community are 'living gentle lives' on high ground surrounded by the risen sea that has caused widespread devastation. When strangers from the Valley of the Sun arrive unannounced, the friends find themselves drawn into a web of secrecy and lies that endangers the way of life of their entire community.
Soon daring, loyal Neoma must set off on a solo mission across the risen sea, determined to rescue her best friend and find the truth that will save her village. Across the Risen Sea is another thrilling adventure for young readers from the bestselling author of How to Bee and The Dog Runner.
The Dog Runner by Bren MacDibble
Ella and her brother Emery are alone in a city that's starving to death. If they are going to survive, they must get away, upcountry, to find Emery's mum. But how can two kids travel such big distances across a dry, barren, and dangerous landscape? Well, when you've got five big doggos and a dry-land dogsled, the answer is you go mushing. But when Emery is injured, Ella must find a way to navigate them through rough terrain, and even rougher encounters with desperate people...
Choose Your Own Ever After: Change of Heart by Nova Weetman
A contemporary pick-a-path series about life, first crushes and friendship, that lets the reader choose how the story goes!
Mackenzie loves her life in the city. She’s in a band with her bestie, she’s just met a cute boy called Toby, and she doesn’t mind moving between her parents’ places each week. But then her mum decides to move away, and everything changes …
1. When Mack moves to the country with her mum, she starts hanging out with music-mad Laura … and drifting apart from her old best friend, Immy. Are they destined to lose their friendship, especially when Mack’s old band is playing without her?
2. When Mack decides to live with her dad in the city, she has to put up with his control-freak girlfriend moving in too! But maybe the upcoming Battle of the Bands competition – and getting to know the adorable Toby – will be enough of a distraction …
Follow your heart right to the end, or go back and choose all over again.
The Secrets We Keep by Nova Weetman
I don't know if you've ever seen a house burn, but it's not like anything else …
Clem Timmins lost everything when her house burned down – her clothes, her stuff ... and her mum. She has to move to a tiny flat with her dad, and to make things worse, she’s starting at a new school where she doesn’t know anyone.
When Clem meets Ellie, she thinks she’s found a friend, but will a little white lie about what happened to her mum ruin their burgeoning friendship? How can Clem tell Ellie the truth, when she can’t face it herself?
The Way of Dog by Zana Fraillon
Be strong. Be fierce. Life is more than a concrete floor.
Scruffity is born into the harsh, grey world of a puppy farm. Taken from his mamma and locked in a concrete cage, what he yearns for most is Family. To belong is The Way of Dog. But no one wants him.
Just as his chances of adoption grow dangerously thin, Scruffity is set free by a boy as unwanted and lonely as
he is.
Outside, Scruffity learns all about The Way of Dog – it is to run, to dig, to howl and, biggest of all, to love. But when tragedy strikes, Scruffity is suddenly all alone.
How does a dog find his way home when he never had one to begin with?
Waiting for the Storks by Katrina Nannestad
I don't want to remember the truck, or the night I was taken, or the family I left behind. I am not a sad Polish girl. I am a good and happy German girl.
I am. I am. I am.
It's the Second World War and Himmler's Lebensborn Program is in full flight when eight-year-old Zofia Ulinski is kidnapped by the Germans. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, just like the other Polish children taken from their families and robbed of their names, their language, their heritage.
But when Zofia is adopted into a wealthy and loving German family, it is easier, it is safer to bury her past, deep down, so everything is forgotten. Until the Polish boy arrives.
And the past comes back to haunt her.
Dragon Skin by Karen Foxlee
How to save a dragon:
Assemble Equipment. Water, Weet-Bix, sugar, syringe, sticky-tape, scissors.
Believe in everything.
Pip never wants to go home. She likes to sit at the waterhole at dusk and remember Mika, her best friend. At home her mother’s not the same since her boyfriend moved in. They don’t laugh anymore and Pip has to go to bed early, turn off her light and pretend she doesn’t exist. When she finds a half-dead creature at the waterhole, everything changes. She knows she has to save this small dragon and return it to where it comes from. But how?
A story about surviving and saving those you love.
Cop and Robber by Tristan Bancks
If your mum was a cop and your dad was a crim who needed your help to commit a crime, would you do it to save him? At what cost?
Nash Hall's dad is a criminal who just can't seem to go straight. He wants Nash to help him commit a robbery. A big one. The trouble is, Nash's mum is a cop. And the robbery is at Nash's school. But Dad owes a lot of money to some very dangerous people and if Nash doesn't help him do the job, it could cost both their lives.
The Bookseller’s Apprentice by Amelia Mellor
Return to Amelia Mellor’s magical Melbourne in the prequel to best-seller The Grandest Bookshop in the World.
Twelve-year-old Billy Pyke has a talent for sorting things out, whether it’s his chaotic family home or the busy book stall at Paddy’s Market. In 1871, the market is the loud, smelly, marvellous heart of Melbourne, and Billy is delighted to work at the book stall there for the eccentric Mr Cole. When his new friend Kezia warns him of a sinister magician called the Obscurosmith, Billy can’t believe her stories of magical deals gone horribly wrong – until he sees them happening. And the night that the Obscurosmith crosses a terrifying and dangerous line, Billy realises something: if he wants the Obscurosmith stopped, he’ll have to do it himself.
Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief by Katrina Nannestad
Wood splinters and Mama screams and the nearest soldier seizes her roughly by the arms. My sister pokes her bruised face out from beneath the table and shouts, 'Run, Sasha! Run!'
So I run. I run like a rabbit.
It's spring, 1942. The sky is blue, the air is warm and sweet with the scent of flowers.
And then everything is gone.
The flowers, the proud geese, the pretty wooden houses, the friendly neighbours. Only Sasha remains.
But one small boy, alone in war-torn Russia, cannot survive.
One small boy without a family cannot survive.
One small boy without his home cannot survive.
What that small boy needs is an army.