The Prize for Young Adult Fiction: Winner 2006

Judges report

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.