Home Fires
Fiona Lowe
Published by Bolinda/HarperCollins Audio
Read by Rebecca Macauley

Audiobooks are best listened to when walking. They’re pretty good when driving too, but especially great when walking. Today I walked the ‘long block’ around my neighbourhood so I could finish Home Fires. I had to know how it ended.

Fiona Lowe has a way with characters. In Home Fires, she writes from four unique points of view. Each one believable and each one relatable. I was brought to tears on more than one occasion as I learned about each woman’s personal struggle after fires ripped through their home town of Myrtle. The story is set two years post fires with added perspective through the use of flashbacks. Four women’s stories are told and each woman shows enviable strength in the face of tragedy.

Julie, a community leader and well established CWA member is mourning the loss of her son Hugo and her best friend Heather. She doesn’t think that her husband or daughter could take any more bad news and so she keeps the newly discovered lump in her breast a secret.
The fires devastated the town on the day of Claire’s wedding.  Instead of the memorable day she had planned, it became the anniversary of her parent’s death. Now she doesn’t think she can face having children of her own. She worries that if she tells her fiancé Matt, he will leave her.

Sophie is trying to keep her family from sinking. They lost their newly built dream home and are now living out of a shed with the cost of rebuilding blown far from their budget. Her husband has lost his job. He won’t talk to her, let alone touch her and her dreams of being a stay-at-home mum seem completely out of reach.

Bec, a poster wife for the well-known building company tries to support her severely burnt husband who is lauded for being a hero on the day of the fires. Nobody knows how controlling and possessive he really is, and Bec works hard to keep up appearances.
The women form a sub-branch of the CWA in an effort to rebuild the town and ‘Put Myrtle on the map’. What begins as a way to escape their domestic worries becomes a blossoming friendship filled with support and love. Together, they help each other to overcome the obstacles that the fires created.

This is a must read (or listen to) novel.

The Power of Positive Pranking
Nat Amoore
Puffin Books 2020

Green Peas rule number 3 ‘Pranks for the greater good’. Meet Zeke, Cookie and Casey, the three young activists who know how to get people’s attention. Casey, the ring leader of the secret Green Peas group, is a spunky, intelligent (and sometimes sarcastic) go-getter. Nothing will stop her from standing up for what she believes in. That includes the loss of her mother and the hereditary Ostosclerosis that has left her grandfather deaf and her father partially deaf. With her tech savvy, Ninja like sidekick Zeke, and her artistic, uber-cool friend Cookie, the three create pranks that will demand adults’ attention when polite talking will not.
 
The story begins with a series of different alarms all pinging and singing at the same time during school assembly. The grand finale is a dropdown sign that reads ‘Wake up! Dinosaurs thought they had time too. Save our planet now.’ The team take on an even bigger audience when the Mayor comes to visit, ready to announce her plans to move Watterson into the future. Then things take a serious turn when they discover that the mayor is planning to tear down Brennan Park. Casey will not let the park that her mother loved, that her mother fought for, be taken away and replaced by concrete apartments. So, the Green Peas come up with a prank that will trump all pranks.
 
Nat Amoore received accolades for her number 1 Bestselling Debut Aussie Children’s Fiction in 2019 before releasing The Power of Positive Pranking in 2020. Amoore’s tale of friendship, love, passion and diversity illustrates to readers that difference is in fact normal and the environment is a big concern for many kids. Through her story, she illustrates how passion can give children the power they need to make sustainable changes to our planet.

​A fabulous and fun read for Year five and up!