Young adult fiction from Australia

 

Mint condition. PB. 368pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Azra's dreams of finishing high school in Sydney and going to university are threatened by her uncle's plans to marry her off to an older cousin she has never met - will she have to choose between her family and her happiness?

'Reading Promising Azra prompted me to revisit stories I have heard too many times to count. Forced marriage is not bound to a certain culture or religion, it's an epidemic affecting children from many backgrounds. For real change to be possible, it’s important for us to hear these stories.’ Dr Eman Sharobeem Community Engagement Manager, SBS

Azra is sixteen, smart and knows how to get what she wants. She thinks. When she wins a place in a national science competition, she thinks her biggest problem is getting her parents' permission to go. But she doesn't know they're busy arranging her marriage to an older cousin she's never met. In Pakistan. In just three months' time.

Azra always thought she'd finish high school with her friends and then go on to study science, but now her dreams of university are suddenly overshadowed. Can she find a way to do what she wants, while keeping her parents happy?

Or does being a good daughter mean sacrificing her freedom?

A story of the cameleers who helped early Australian explorers

 

Rare book. Mint condition. PB. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Taj and the Great Camel Trek, by award-winning author Rosanne Hawke is an inspirational, gripping adventure and a tribute to the Afghan camel drivers who helped explore Australia.

South Australia, 1875: Twelve-year-old Taj and his camel Mustara are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. They are joining explorer Ernest Giles on his second attempt to cross the Australian desert where wild dogs, scorpions, poisonous snakes and a constant shortage of water mean they are never far from disaster.

As if things weren’t tough enough, Taj, raised in the ways of the Afghan people, is struggling to find his place in this new and exciting land.

About the author

Rosanne Hawke is a South Australian author of over thirty books. She lived in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates as an aid worker for ten years. Her books include Kelsey and the Quest of the Porcelain Doll, a CBCA Notable Book, and Taj and the Great Camel Trek, winner of the 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Children’s Literature and shortlisted for the 2012 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. She is the 2015 recipient of the Nance Donkin Award; an Asialink, Carclew, Varuna and May Gibbs Fellow; and a Bard of Cornwall. She has taught creative writing at Tabor Adelaide and writes in an old Cornish farmhouse with underground rooms, near Kapunda.

Growing up for girls

 

Mint condition. PB. 280pp. $15 including postage anywhere in Australia.

This book prepares girls for what to expect from puberty and offers advice on what they can do to cope with the emotional, psychological and physical changes and stay happy and confident as they go through their early teens. 

It covers all the topics that girls want to find out about, including moods and feelings, periods and how to survive them, what happens to boys, diet, eating disorders, exercise, body image, sex and relationships, contraception, sexual health, self-confidence, drink and drugs, exam stress, cyberbullying, and staying safe - both out and about and online. 

It guides young teenagers through this exciting and sometimes daunting stage as they start taking full responsibility for many aspects of their own lives for the first time.

Young adult fiction explores modern "white" slavery

 

Excellent condition. PB. 272pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.

He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution.

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family's debt, then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave.

Lakshmi's life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother's words "Simply to endure is to triumph" and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision - will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?

Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.