The Prize for Young Adult Fiction: Shortlist 2006

Theodora's Gift

Ursula Dubosarsky
(Viking/Penguin Books Australia)

This novel of dislocation, of middle-class life where chaos is synonymous with living, where the Holocaust is glimpsed in an Australian landscape, achieves both a lightness and depth which is enriching for the reader. Dubosarsky’s voice gives the story a fairytale quality suggesting the mystery of ordinary things, and creates in Theodora a naive poise and isolation which makes her both moving and gently comic. This novel will reveal most to readers much older than its 14-year-old protagonist and its vision will reveal to them ways to nest in a storm.

The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B Hartley

Martine Murray
(Allen & Unwin)

This engaging novel from a unique and visionary voice in Australian literature centres on a girl’s torn allegiances when her close friend Kite joins the Flying Fruit Fly circus leaving her and their fledgling troupe, The Acrobrats, behind. Cedar has the ability to keep the Acrobrats inspired but is that where her heart is? Or could she be flying high with Kite in a real circus? The story celebrates the lives of ordinary people living kind, ordinary lives and trying to make the best of them. The setting is inner city, the families alternative and traditional, and the ethnic mix rich and vulnerable.

Martine Murray’s use of imagery is illuminating, as is her gentle exploration of characters and their effect on, and responsibility to, each other. But what lifts the novel is its voice - young and energetic, rebellious and wise, finding love but full of doubt. It is this voice which makes this thoughtful, witty novel accessible to a wide audience of readers.

Losing It

Lizzie Wilcock
(Scholastic Australia)

In an assured first novel, Wilcock presents with acute insight ‘good girl’ Gabbie moving reluctantly from the certainties of childhood within her daggy but ‘perfect’ family to a far less idealistic, more mature understanding of her world, and dealing with events she can’t control. Told in fresh and vivid adolescent cadences and vernacular, the narrative initially focuses on the vagaries of family life, year eight, friendship and first love. Gradually it shifts to darker territory as Gabbie has to deal with adult perfidy, abuse, her own frailties and the small but important moral choices that define us. Simultaneously frank and confronting, funny and uplifting, Losing It both captures with clarity, and speaks to 14-year-old sensibilities.