Kirsty MurrayCritiques

From Cockburn Libraries (Australia): "'Can I please, please, please have a dog?' asked Billy. 'Would you walk it every day and wash it if it got dirty?' 'I would, I promise!' said Billy. Billy wants a dog. He really really really wants one. Billy's parents aren't so sure. So one morning, Billy takes matters into his own paws."

This is what a collection of feminist short stories should look like.

based on a true story

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2003/hc46.htm

The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie by Kirsty Murray

This book was published in 2014, so it is more recent than most of the children’s timeslip novels which I read. Nevertheless, it certainly feels as if it belongs with the classics of this genre of literature, which includes such wonderful stories as Tom’s Midnight Garden and When Marnie Was There.

Lucy is eleven years old and lives in Australia with her parents and brother and sister. When her older sister, Claire, is injured in an accident while studying in Paris, their mother rushes to Europe to be with Claire in hospital. Since her father has important work to attend to, Lucy is taken to stay with her great aunt who lives in a house in an isolated valley in the Australian bush. Lucy has only vague memories of her aunt, and she is not at all happy about having to live with her, especially as the period will include the Christmas holiday. But soon she discovers that the murals painted on the dining room walls, each of which depict a different season in the valley, are no ordinary paintings. On successive nights when her aunt is asleep, Lucy finds that the murals allow her to enter a magical place where she meets her ancestors and plays an important part in shaping the history of her family.

The author unites past and present using clever plot devices, and the Australian bush is vividly described in all its beauty and unforgiving ruggedness. The same river that flows through the valley in both the past and present times symbolizes the relentless flow of time, and is inextricably intertwined with this powerful story of family relationships and the continuity of life. This is magical realism in a most poignant and compelling form.

Absolutely stunning collection of short stories, short comic stories, and one play, written as collaborations between Indian and Australian authors and artists in response to rash of violence against young women. The stories all touch on feminist themes (though "Cool" felt a little out of place, though I liked it still!) with strong female protagonists and are so vivid, at times I forgot which ones were the comics and which were the written stories. I lost myself in the whole collection. Time to go back and re-read my favorites, which include:

-"Little Red Suit"
-"Cooking Time"
-"Cast Out"
-"Cat Calls"
-"Appetite"
-"Mirror Perfect"
-"What a Stone Can Feel"
-"Memory Lace"

But seriously, they're all pretty great.

*******

Counting as my indie press for the Read Harder challenge.

A very different book based on a true story. During the turn of the 20th Century, troops of children would travel the world singing and performing shows dressed as adults. This is the story of one such tour that ended in disaster and scandal. Thirteen year old Poesy Swift is thrilled to audition and be selected to be part of the Lilliputian's theatre tour of Asia. She will be away from her family for up to 2 years but the pay is significant and will help her family make ends meet. The other main character is 15 year old Tilly Sweetrick who has been with the company in previous years and knows everything that is happening.
This is a story about what happens when adolescents are not given proper parental care and education and instead become cogs in an industry to make money. Instead of having guidance through the emotional changes Poesy experiences as she turns from a naive little girl into a young woman, she is left to guess what is really happening behind the scenes and her innocence is her undoing. For example, one of the 18 year old performers is sleeping with the married director, and the director is not paying the child's chaperone or his stage hands, etc. etc. It all ends up in a rather messy court case held in India.
Bit of a different look at history for older readers due to the "Coming of Age" of the main characters -i.e. groped by old men like benefactors of the tour and courted by "stage door Johnnys" that only want one thing.

Read this book as only one of two Kirsty Murray books that have not read. In this one she veers away from historical fiction and ventures into the world of dystopian science fiction. The two main characters are Bo, a girl who lives in a hidden desert tunnel surrounded by technology and Callum, a boy from the colony who has been stolen by a biker circus to be their trained acrobat. They live in a world where there are only men and children ( only boys) are made in a laboratory. This is a world of ruin and decay where society is fractured into different tribes all intent to survive. Callum escapes and is taken in by Bo who has no knowledge of the outside world except for the fairy stories told to her by her now dead grandfather. Callum is shocked to discover that Bo is a near extinct girl but determined to travel back to the Colony to be with his fathers. The two set off accompanied only be Bo's pet roboraptor Mr P.

This is an interesting book that seems to take a darker turn towards the end as Bo discovers what happens to girls if they are discovered. There is hinted at rape and sexual assault of the girls and thus this book lends itself to be read by older readers. It reminded me a lot of the "mad Max" series together with the Parick Ness "Noughts and Crosses" series.½

Ruby and her younger brother Banjo search for puddles after a rain storm in this sweet Australian picture-book. Taking off with their mother and dog, they head for the park, where they finally find what they're seeking, having great fun jumping and splashing. When they finally arrive home again, muddy and wet, the siblings enjoy a warm bath while it begins to rain again. Perhaps tomorrow will be another day for puddle hunting...

Although there really isn't much to Puddle Hunters, story-wise, the simple text from Kirsty Murray conveys the pleasure that Ruby and Banjo (and their mother and canine companion) derive from their outdoor tramping in a newly wet wold. The artwork from Karen Blair, which looks to be done in watercolor, ably captures that sense of fun to be found out in the natural world, after a rain storm. Recommended to all young rain lovers and puddle jumpers.

Set in Adelaide and the Barossa Valley. On Armistice Day 1918 Tiney Flynn turns seventeen and it feels as though her life is just beginning. Her brother and his friends are coming home from the Great War and her sisters are falling in love. But Tiney and her family find that building peace is far more complicated than they could ever have imagined. Tiney's year will hold a world of new experience, from tragedy to undreamt-of joy, from seances to masked balls and riots in the streets. At the end of a war and the dawn of the jazz age, Tiney Flynn will face her greatest fears and begin a journey that will change her destiny. The story of [the sisters'] struggles to come to terms with grief, anxiety, and unbearable loss at the same time as trying to forge some kind of realistic future is tough and believable and ultimately heartwarming.½

In the future girl's have gone extinct. So everyone thinks. Callum is the main charachter along side Bo. They are a really good pair together. This story shows how trust can be imperative to survival and it is good to have help from others in the darkest of times. I really love this book and think its a good story for anyone who wants to read about an unusual love story and friedship.

In the future, there are no women and no functioning government. Groups of bandits roam the land, and Callum is stolen from his dads. Escaping, he is found by a young girl, and together they try to make their way to a safe place.½

Review by Crisetta MacLeod

Kirsty Murray has convincingly described an Australian dystopia in which Avian flu mutated and wiped out almost all females. Bo was protected in an outback hideaway by her grandfather. She rescues Callum, abducted from his two fathers by outback ferals. The two are on the run together. Murray writes engagingly about Callum’s response to seeing Bo naked, the first female he has ever encountered. They head to Vulture’s Gate (Sydney) to rediscover Callum’s fathers, who he believes will nurture them. When they reach the city, it is in ruins, and the society Callum remembers has degenerated.

There is the familiar trope of a corrupt ruling class, exploiting drone boys, born in vitro, who are the workforce. Two communities are attempting to bring down the upper class; the Festers, a group of rescued boys, discarded from the workforce, and Gaia, suicidal religious zealots planning to rid the world of destructive mankind. Callum is horrified to find his surviving father is a member. Meanwhile, Bo is imprisoned with the few remaining girls, kept to harvest their eggs. Predictably, Callum and Bo prevail, and escape by sea with the girls to make a fresh start. One male only? Watch this space!

For Callum, a colony boy, Vulture's Gate represents hope. After being stolen from his home in the outback by savage Outstationers and sold on as an attraction in a freak show, forced to perform in a circus for cruel masters, Callum escapes and returns to his outback home only to find his fathers gone, and his home destroyed. The only message left for him, his fathers are waiting for him in Vulture's Gate.

Bo is a girl living alone in the outback. She has been alone for the last six months, hunting, foraging and surviving. When one day she rescues a boy on the outskirts of her lands, she finds her once isolated home now set upon by dangerous Outstationers. With her home destroyed and all her family gone she feels lost, but with this boy she finds a friendship and something worth holding on to.

As Callum and Bo travel together across a harsh and desolate land, they are learning that the world they grew up in, and everything they were taught to believe, is not the world that exists before them. Callum always believed girls were extinct; he had been brought up sheltered from the ugliness that exists in the world. Bo, although taught to read, hunt and put together technology, is naive to the world beyond her lands; ignorant to what it is to be a girl.

But it is at Vulture's Gate that Callum and Bo discover the harsh truth of what has happened to the world. There, their dreams are crushed and their futures are left uncurtain, as each comes face to face with the horrors of what it means to live and survive in Vulture's Gate. But once inside are they able to escape?

Vulture's Gate is a provocative and well written story that raises questions of gender and society. In Callum and Bo the male and female perspectives are given, and in the story each sex blames the existence of the other all the ills that have befallen them and the world around them. Society is ruled by dictators with their drones and test-tube babies. Beyond that are the anarchists, religious extremists and Festers with their gambolling, bombs and human trafficking. But underlying all that is the theme of hope presented in the fairytales told by Bo.

First of a fantastic series of four books starting in Ireland and following characters as they move to Australia. Fantastic read aloud for grade 5/6 classes.

first line: "Gus lay listening in the dark."

I'm partial to books about the circus (sideshows, carnivals, freaks, etc.), so of course I enjoyed Zarconi's Magic Flying Fish, about a boy who travels with his grandparents' small Australian circus. There are a few stories within the main plot, and common themes are family relationships and the consequences of choices.

On a side note, I love the humorous hand-drawn map inside each cover, and all the unfamiliar Australian terms (e.g. willy-nilly = dust storm...icy-pole = Popsicle).½

4th and final in the quartet of novels that began with Bridie’s Fire. In this one Maeve is best friends with 2 girls, a great dancer and is hoping to go with her Mum to Hong Kong later in the year. She has a new baby halfbrother and father (she never knew her Irish Dad) and life is perfect until her mother is suddenly killed in a car accident. (This was a big shock to me reading this book- I didn’t see it coming!) Her Chinese grandparents try to take her away but in the end she lives at boarding school so she can still see her friends and her halfbrother. She discovers her father’s identity and as luck would have it gets to meet him on a camp to Ireland. Nice neat end to a great series.
p.3-6 with the Ouija board at the sleepover.{I have read this to a class and the students fought over the 2 copies I had as they wanted to know what happened next!]

First half of this novel is quite shocking as Colm and other orphans from England are sent to WA in the 1950s. Here in a series of terrible boys ‘ homes, he is bashed and witnesses the death of another boy. He decides to run away and runs into Paddy (Billy Dare) who is now the old caretaker of the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum that’s empty. After falling ill, Paddy calls the doctor who threatens to turn Colm in, and so the two set off across Australia for 2 years – visiting outback towns, fixing the dingo fence and trying to protect the “stolen children”. Eventually Colm is passed on to Blue Delaney (Paddy’s daughter) for care.p.106 –110 up to “cried” When the children are stolen.

Begins in Ireland in 1840s. Bride loses her father, mother and baby brother to the great potato famine. Then she & her remaining brother are separated in the terrible Workhouse. Finally she emigrates to Australia where she pretends she is a boy after enduring the advances of her new mistresses’ husband. She & her friend Gilbert run away to the goldfields and she dreams of bringing her brother to Australia. Finally she becomes part of a troop of actors because she can sew very well. p.24-26 ‘hands’ and thenp.30 ‘as they..’ to bay’.The hunger catches up with the family.

Patrick Delaney endures a hard life as he carries all the hopes of his family to be a priest. At the seminary, there are daily beatings and worse and after confronting his uncle over his mother’s death, he stows away on a ship that wrecks itself on the shores of Australia. He is soon on the run again, joins a circus, is homeless and eventually takes the name Billy Dare after someone he meets. (Bridie from Bridie’s Fire who is now an elderly lady) p.53-56 Paddy confronts his uncle after his mother’s death. Similar novels :A Prayer for Blue Delaney by Kirsty Murray Bridie’s Fire by Kirsty Murray