Dim's Write Stuff

Charlie lives in a regional Australian town with a colourful past. Charlie also has synaesthesia. To describe her as supersensative is not quite right. She just senses things differently, intensely. Days of the weeks have colours. People have auras and sounds have scents.  She's accustomed to her unique ways of perceiving the world, it is after all all she has ever known. But when Japanese exchange student, Kenichi is relegated to her dead brother's bedroom for part of her new school term, Charlie's senses intensify to the point she begins to suffer flashbacks accompanied by violent and unpredictable visceral reactions.  Despite Charlie's determined stance to keep Kenichi, aka Ken, at arm's length (loving the Japanese culture is her mum's jam not hers), they soon come to realise they are inextricably linked not only to each other but to unravelling a puzzling mystery surrounding the infamous Cowra Breakout.  Sandy Fussell has a natural flow and rhythm to her st...

Katrina Nannestad has well and truly cemented her position as one of Australia’s most accomplished historical fiction writers with her latest novel, Silver Linings . Most of us are aware that clouds have them, silver linings that is, but what exactly do they mean and do they really exist? Nettie Sweeney sure thinks so. Nettie’s story, set in the 1950s, reads as a middle grade novel yet champions Nettie Sweeney as the young protagonist who has just started primary school. Nettie’s tender years, beguiling naivety and childlike foibles are neatly offset however by the fact that she is the fourth daughter of a farming family with the ability to write and think beyond her years. Couple this with the assured determination of a person set on visiting the moon and you’ve got a character exploding with charm, wit and wonder. In short, Nettie is larger-than-life adorbs! Nettie’s singular desire is for a mother to love and cuddle having lost hers at birth. Her dreams come true in the shape o...

Despite having no interest in history as a school kid, my exposure to the past has increased in my adult years thanks to a deepening love for narrative non-fiction. Weaving historical events, facts and figures into an engaging narrative with larger-than-life characters is (for me and many kids) one surefire way of infusing history and those who peopled our past into meaningful context. Novels do this with ease. Here are a few recently released picture books that manage to portray the past in captivating words and pictures for younger readers. Shearer by Neridah McMullin and Michael Tomkins Jack Howe was a tower above men and legend among shearers in the late 1800s. Not only was his sheer physical prowess awe-inspiring but his I-can-do attitude enabled him to beat and set a new hand-shearing record that remains unbeaten. This is his story set in Jack’s day when the wool industry was experiencing a boon like no other before the advent of mechanical sheep shearing. Howe is portrayed with...

To throw the reader immediately into the action is a writing pre-requisite we authors often hear or try to adhere to. Doing so creates an immediacy that snags attention in the snap of just a few lines. Accomplished children’s writer of historical fiction, Pamela Rushby, achieves all this and more in each and every one of her novels. The Mud Puddlers is no exception. Oozing with atmosphere, animated characters and a fascinating glimpse into London’s not so distant history, this middle grade fiction beckons kids to believe in the possibility of time slipping. Twelve-year-old Nina is relegated to spend a year in London while her parents head to Antarctica on a research mission. Although she and Aunt Bee are close, Nina succumbs to a state of insubordinate gloom. Nothing Aunt Bee does or says can shake Nina out of her blue funk resentment at being left behind. Not even the adventure of living on her aunt’s converted barge on the river Thames is enough to enthuse. Nor the fact that her a...

A recalcitrant goat, a gung-ho orphaned boy. An exiled self-doubting monk and a battle-scared girl who would be queen. These are just some of the extraordinary characters that people The Beatryce Prophecy . Bubbling with medieval barbarities at a time when misguided kings and ruthless ambition collide with common decency and humanity, this tale embraces an astonishing number of ideas all deftly woven into one rich reading experience thanks to DiCamillo’s sure hand. Beatryce is found blooded and battered in the stalls of Brother Edik’s monastery. She is feverish and unresponsive. The monastery’s arch nemesis, Answelica, an irascible goat who prefers to bite first and consider later, stands guard. She answers to no one but when Brother Edik announces to the goat that he must tend to Beatryce, a reluctant acquiescence occurs on Answelica’s part. And so then begins an incongruous relationship the deepens with time and necessity. Beatryce is nursed back to health but presents a new dan...