In essence, the magic of Christmas and the magic of children’s stories are about the same thing – a conceptualisation of the child as the keeper of innocence and enchantment in a modern, secular world.

‘…if we pass this post and lantern either we shall find strange adventures or else some great change of our fortunes.’ --C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

In a climate change-affected dystopian setting, recognisable as the author’s home of New Zealand although not explicitly named, Snow is a young teenage girl whose stepmother wants her dead. To this end, she tasks a hunter with taking Snow into the forest near their mountain chateau, killing her and bringing back her heart as proof.… Continue reading Review: Snow by Gina Inverarity

Jessica Miller’s second novel, The Republic of Birds, is a meticulously written, profoundly feminist story of exile and power. It takes place against a landscape conjured out of Russian folklore and nineteenth and early twentieth century history, and draws its storybook magic from the tropes of middle grade fantasy even as it vigorously interrogates them.… Continue reading Review: The Republic of Birds by Jessica Miller

When it comes to promoting their books, children’s authors need a different set of skills to their adult author counterparts, and nowhere was this more apparent than at the opening weekend of Adelaide Writers’ Week 2020. Children’s authors, long shut out of core writers’ festival business, have increasingly been infiltrating Adelaide Writers’ Week. 2012 saw… Continue reading Access All Areas

How the blockbuster changed children's and YA publishing If you are an adult writing fiction for publication now, there’s a good chance you forged your literary dreams in a time when the publishing landscape looked different to the way it looks today. Whether you’ve caught up or not with the new paradigm may be the… Continue reading Age of Monsters

Caroline Magerl knows a lot about adventure. This October she is on a mini-adventure of sorts, working in Adelaide as a May Gibbs Fellow and anticipating the November release of Nop, her third picture book as writer-illustrator. It’s part of a literary and fine arts career that has taken the Queensland-based artist to London, New… Continue reading Literary Life: an interview with Caroline Magerl

Not far from any discussion about literature is someone waiting to elbow in with a ‘should’. Most common: everyone should read more because books are a gateway to knowledge (non-fiction) and empathy (fiction). There are numerous ‘shoulds’ about what to read, too. Lists abound: 100 books teens should read/men should read/you should have read by… Continue reading An Old Foolishness

What knowledge is worth having? Sixteen year old Adele asks herself this in crime writer Malla Nunn’s YA debut, after her room mate calls her ignorant. The insult smarts all the more because it comes from Lottie Diamond, who is what Adele calls a third-class girl. A bottom-shelf girl. A girl with whom someone like… Continue reading Review: When the Ground is Hard, by Malla Nunn

Harry Potter will be eleven forever. Despite the million or so words that follow the event of his eleventh birthday, in which he grows and masters spells and vanquishes his enemy, the real magic of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series—the storybook magic, that is—is contained within the first two acts of the very first book.… Continue reading The Fine Print