Book talk

Another excellent review for The Key to Rome!

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There’s an excellent new review, by Debra Williams, of The Key to Rome. The review was published on the popular Buzz Words site. This is what she said:

This is a first-class middle-grade historical adventure. It is set in Ancient Rome, in the province of Britannia, and the year is AD84. When motherless and only child Livia’s father dies, she is orphaned. On his death bed, her father gives her a mysterious key with instructions to find his brother, a former centurion, and give him the key.

12-year-old Livia sets out two days later, on her old horse, determined to find the estranged uncle, whom her father guaranteed would give her a home. The future journey was going to be neither smooth nor easy, with many pitfalls. Arriving at her uncle’s house, he has gone, and Livia is unable to find out where he is. Along the way, Livia is aided by a young runaway servant, Mato, who has a journey of his own to complete, after hearing of his mother’s illness. He also claims to know where her uncle is.

So begins a treacherous journey of danger, lies, deceit and mistrust. There are heart-stopping moments as the reader becomes absorbed in Livia’s quest, and the deadly cat-and-mouse games with various characters, Roman and otherwise.

Multi-award-winning author Sophie Masson has carefully crafted a believable and suspenseful adventure. Her details of the period have been thoroughly researched to create an intriguing historical mystery.

This book will appeal to readers 10+ years.

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Another great review for The Key to Rome!

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There’s another great review for The Key to Rome, which has just appeared on writer Sue Bursztynski’s Great Raven blog.

Here’s a short extract:

Here is another one of the talented Sophie Masson’s exciting historical adventures. Many of them have fantasy elements but this is a straight historical mystery, well researched and with a useful historical background and glossary at the back. 

The cover art and internals, including a map, are drawn by Lorena Carrington, a gifted Aussie artist who has worked with Sophie Masson before. 

Livia is a strong leading character who refuses to give up, even when the quest for her uncle looks as if it might be useless. She weaves together the clues to lead her in the right direction. 

This novel, aimed at ages about nine to twelve, reads like a Rosemary Sutcliff adventure, perfect for young readers who enjoy history and are inspired by strong characters their own age. It’s also not a bad place to start children on historical fiction.

You can read the whole review here.

Advance review for The Key to Rome

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The Key to Rome, by Sophie Masson, our Eagle Books title for 2023, has received an excellent first review from Heather Zubek in the West Australian yesterday. Here’s what she said:

A dying man’s promise, a mysterious key, and a dangerous journey in ancient times; The Key to Rome is a story that will keep you reading until way past your bedtime. Set in the Roman Province of Britannia in AD84, the story sees 12-year-old Livia keeping a promise to her dying father to deliver a key to her estranged uncle. Along her perilous journey, Livia meets Mato, a boy who needs to see his dying mother before it’s too late. Together the two travellers make their way through ancient lands where they learn that the key may hold a dreadful secret. Multi award-winning author Sophie Masson has created a thrilling historical adventure that not only excites but teaches us about the troubled times in which the story is set. For ages 9+.

A great start for the novel, which is officially released next Monday, May 1, and is available in all good bookshops across Australia.

Trailer for The Key to Rome

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We are proud to present a great little trailer for our upcoming Eagle Books title, The Key to Rome, an exciting historical mystery novel by award-winning author Sophie Masson. The book, which is out in May, is set in a tumultuous period in Roman Britain, and is for middle-grade readers. It includes a map(created by illustrator Lorena Carrington, who also created the cover and internal illustrations) and a glossary.

Enjoy the trailer, may it whet readers’ appetite for this fabulous novel!

A great new review for Wanderer

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A great new review of Victor Kelleher’s Wanderer has just been published on the excellent site, Kids’ Book Review. Here’s a very short extract:

If I were to use the vernacular, I’d say it’s been a long time between drinks Victor, but it was certainly worth it. 

Multi-award winner, Victor Kelleher, has crafted his first middle grade novel in fifteen years with this gripping and absorbing post-apocalyptic narrative. If you think Waterworld for kids, you might get a little sense of the setting…

You can read the rest of the review here.

A lovely new review for Wanderer on Read Plus!

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We are delighted to see this fabulous review by Carolyn Hull, of Victor Kelleher’s gorgeous novel Wanderer, published today on the excellent Read Plus site.

Here’s a short extract:

I loved this! It is a wonderful adventure in a world that is damaged. Wanderer is a compelling tale, scary and often thought-provoking……This book is powerfully written, there is tension and drama all the way through the wandering, and moments of violence are ever present and pervasive. In some ways I reflected that this book is like a strange mating of the Brotherband series by John Flanagan and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It explores the adventure of a quest, with the drama of a world that has lost its connection to literature. Along the way there are references to other ‘stories’ and other books, with a reference to Golding’s Lord of the Flies as a notable connection to the thematic exploration of brutality in society, and The Hobbit as a literature example of a quest to protect something precious. 

You can read the whole review here.

Interview with Victor Kelleher in Buzz Words

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There’s a great interview with Victor Kelleher in the latest issue of the digital magazine Buzz Words, and with their kind permission, we are republishing it here. Enjoy! And do consider subscribing to Buzz Words, it’s a great mag, filled with news, views and reviews from the Australian children’s book world!

INTERVIEW

With Victor Kelleher

My life began in a poor part of London where I had, at best, a scanty education. In my mid-teens, I went to Central Africa. At sixteen I was working on the mines in Zambia, on the old Congo border. At twenty I was at university, and there I stayed (at various unis in fact) for most of my twenties. I accumulated five degrees, including a doctorate in English Literature, and finished up as a uni lecturer.

In my mid-thirties my wife and I left Africa – reluctantly – mainly to protect our young son from war and violence. I took up an academic post in New Zealand, then moved to Australia, where I taught for some years at the University of New England. It was in New Zealand that I began to write, motivated at first by home sickness for Africa. In my mid- forties I gave up my associate professorship and devoted myself full time to writing fiction.

That decision left me free to live and travel wherever I pleased, and although my wife and I kept a base here in Oz, we roamed all over the place. (As a former uni teacher, and sculptor/painter, my wife was as free as I was.) I must admit that our kids (we’d adopted a baby girl by then) tagged along and took their chances. As they’ve both gone on to get multiple degrees and make successful careers, I don’t think we did them any great harm!

In my mid-sixties my life changed again. I gave up writing and went back to my very first love, which was the study of philosophy. I concentrated on the philosophy of science. The gypsy life continued, of course, but with the addition of a Kindle full of technical books!

Then, early in my eighties, I was hit by a yearning to write fiction again. My upcoming novel, Wanderer, (Eagle Books) is the very first fruit of this shift. Inevitably, other books must follow, because I suddenly find myself beset by a wealth of things I simply MUST write about. Now, settled (kind of!) in Battery Point in old Hobart, my wife and I work on. We do so very happily.

How many books have you published during your writing career?

Which was the best-selling for you? How many book awards did you pick up?

More than a dozen adult novels, over 20 YA novels, two novellas, a few picture books, and 15 books for littlies. These last really tested me but were great fun. (I’d still like to write a concluding story for my Gibblewort series, for instance.) There are also many books I contributed stories to.

My bestselling book here in Australia is Taronga (Penguin). Other books, like Master of the Grove (Penguin) and Del-Del (Walker Books/Random House) may have outsold it worldwide.

I’m not sure because I don’t keep count.

I’ve picked up lots of awards over the years: Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award, two Australian Children’s Honour Awards, the Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award, the Australian Peace Prize, and so on; plus, plenty of state awards, especially from Western Australia, where they’ve been very kind to me; some children’s choice awards; and then there are all the short listings, including one for the Carnegie Medal. Again, I just don’t keep a record of these things.

Were all your books published by the same company? Did you have a particular editor who was very helpful?

I’ve been published by many companies, but by Penguin/Random most of all. Others include Faber and Faber, Heinemann, Walker Books, University of Queensland Press, Hachette, Allen and Unwin, Harper Collins, Lothian Books, Word Weavers Press, etc. Again, I don’t keep records of these things.

Yes, I do have a favourite editor: Rosie Fitzgibbon at UQP. She was great at her job, and a truly lovely person. She’s dead now, alas, and I miss her still.

It seems a long time since you last had a YA or children’s book published: what was that book? Why has there been such a delay in publication?

I’m not sure about my last publication. It was either a long short story-cum-novella published in Tales from the Tower (Allen and Unwin), or an adult novel, The Other (Harper Collins). As I explained earlier, I took a long break from writing to concentrate on other important aspects of my life.

Your latest book will be published by Christmas Press in 2022: can you tell us about it?

At its simplest, Wanderer involves two young people, Dane, and Lana, who wander the sea world in a kayak. Their quest is to save books from extinction. The world they travel through is my version of how the future might look once our planet starts the slow process of healing itself. It’s a place where the animal kingdom has finally turned against us, following generations of maltreatment; where the worst kinds of human beings persist, despite all that’s happened; where books and the power of story have been horribly devalued; and where goodness and truth remain in peril. There is an upside to all of this though: my two young heroes demonstrate how trust, honesty, and courage are still amongst our greatest treasures; and the novel holds true to the idea that the world itself, in its re-emerging beauty, is still worth fighting for.

How did you get it picked up by Sophie Masson?

My agent offered it to Sophie, and I’m glad to say she took it straight away.

Can you name five children’s books which you would recommend to Buzz Word readers? Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson. (An oldie, but a goodie)

Lord of the Flies, William Golding (Faber and Faber) (A wonderful book for all ages. Timeless.) The Mouse and His Child, Russell Hoban (Allen and Unwin) (An amazing book. Nothing else quite like it.) Red Shift, Alan Garner (Collins) (In my view, the best book yet on the mysterious disappearance of the ninth Roman Legion. Oh, and see if you can crack the code on the flyleaf.) The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery (Gallimard was the original French publisher. Don’t know who published the translation.) (I had to include this, because it was the first book I read in French, and it taught me more about the language than any other.)

You’ll have noticed that these are all fairly old titles. I’ve allowed them to squeeze out recent titles because these are some of the texts that inspired me when I started and was struggling to write well.

Can you tell us some interesting things about yourself?

Here are two things, one sad, one not so: When I was young, I dreamed of becoming a great long- distance runner. I duly trained and trained, but it didn’t happen. So, I upped my distances until I was running well over 100 kms a week. I thought that would make me super fit and strong, the way it has many other runners. Wrong! I just became super tired. The truth? I didn’t have the inbuilt strength and stamina and sheer talent for a great distance runner. A real sadness for me at the time.

On a happier note, (!), I enjoy playing blues harmonica. I even took lessons in it years ago, and there was a time when I practised hard. These days, one of my favourite things is to open YouTube and accompany some of the great blues musicians. It just goes to show that you don’t have to be famous to play with the best!

How can readers learn more about you?

Google me, I suppose. The horrid truth is, I’m quite a private person.

Fabulous first review of Children of the Wild!

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Michael Grey’s amazing novel, Children of the Wild, has just received its first review, and it’s fabulous! It’s on the influential book site Read Plus, and the reviewer is Carolyn Hull. Here’s a short extract:

This is an exciting and impressive first novel. There are waves of dramatic moments within a dystopian or speculative-style fantasy set in an unidentified world that has declined beyond imagination. Sometimes it has the feel of a ‘Hunger Games’ survival tale with bows and arrows, set within a world-gone-wrong, and sometimes it is more Sci-fi with coming-of-age overtones.

You can read the full review here.