Tag Archives: Australia

357N: Boy Commits Suicide Because Of Parent’s Abuse After Getting Best Girl Friend Pregnant

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I need help finding a book I read in high-school. The details I remember are:
The lead was female high-school aged. The book was based in Australia, she was good/best friends with a boy and I think they would catch up at a particular spot like a barn. I think he ends up going to private school and is good at sports or swimming. His mother’s meek and his dad is aggressive. They end up having sex and then I think the abuse from his father becomes too much and he kills himself. The girl ends up pregnant and her grandmother tried to help her by giving her an awful drink (think I remember it being described as tasting like Marmite) but it doesn’t work. She has the baby and the boy’s parents find out and the boy’s mother tries to help her somehow. I think they all end up in Sydney. I can’t remember how it ends. For some reason the name Sophie keeps popping in to my head but I don’t remember if that was an author or one of the characters or nothing.
Let me know if you think of anything it could be.

344O: Children’s picture book about girl who dances with shadows

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Looking for a children’s picture book about a girl who lives in a village (likely indigenous, maybe based on cliff dwellers?). The villagers see scary shadows on the walls of the cliff they live at the bottom of and thinks they are monsters. Eventually the girl climbs to the top of the cliff (maybe with a grass? ladder) and discovers that the shadows weren’t monsters, but friendly (people or animals, can’t remember.) I read this book as a kid around 2000, my grandparents had bought it, so likely published between like 1990 and early 2000s. They’d traveled to Australia and American Southwest, and I think book was purchased one of those places. It was a hardcover with full color illustrations. Tried googling key words but can’t find it so far, help!

336I: Confused Bird of Paradise

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We are looking for a book that we had when we were children. We think it might have been published in Australia, as it was a gift from family there, and must have been published before 2004. We can’t remember the title but it was about a bird of paradise. We think that the book started when he falls out of his nest or something and then asks lots of animals one by one what animal he is, until one animal tells him that he is a bird of paradise, and we think the last page was a double page spread of a picture of a bird of paradise.
We have been trying to find this book for years and had no success, so if you think you might know it I would really appreciate your help!

330O: Stone Forest

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I thought this was in the title, but have had no luck. Set in Western Australia, for some reason a teen ends up surviving on their own (maybe a girl) and before rescued burns wood for a fire which actually turns out to be the petrified remains of shipwrecked sailors from the Batavia or other Dutch (maybe) craft involved in spice trade to Indonesia. I really just remember that the key protagonist thinks she’s hallucinating when spirits appear in the smoke. Can’t remember why he/she is alone, maybe family break down or similar. Presume “stone forest” refers to Bungle-Bungles of the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia. Fairly modern, so maybe published in the 1980’s?