Hold Still


Nina LaCour - 2009
    . . in words and illustrations, Ingrid left behind a painful farewell in her journal for Caitlin. Now Caitlin is left alone, by loss and by choice, struggling to find renewed hope in the wake of her best friend’s suicide. With the help of family and newfound friends, Caitlin will encounter first love, broaden her horizons, and start to realize that true friendship didn’t die with Ingrid. And the journal which once seemed only to chronicle Ingrid’s descent into depression, becomes the tool by which Caitlin once again reaches out to all those who loved Ingrid—and Caitlin herself.

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart


Holly Ringland - 2018
    She is taken in by her estranged grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. But Alice also learns that there are secrets within secrets about her past. Under the watchful eye of June and The Flowers, women who run the farm, Alice grows up. But an unexpected betrayal sends her reeling, and she flees to the dramatically beautiful central Australian desert. Alice thinks she has found solace, until she falls in love with Dylan, a charismatic and ultimately dangerous man.The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is a story about stories: those we inherit, those we select to define us, and those we decide to hide. It is a novel about the secrets we keep and how they haunt us, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. Spanning twenty years, set between the lush sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, Alice must go on a journey to discover that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.

The Last Time We Say Goodbye


Cynthia Hand - 2015
    When she had a family that was whole. A boyfriend she loved. Friends who didn't look at her like she might break down at any moment.Now she's just the girl whose brother killed himself. And it feels like that's all she'll ever be.As Lex starts to put her life back together, she tries to block out what happened the night Tyler died. But there's a secret she hasn't told anyone-a text Tyler sent, that could have changed everything.Lex's brother is gone. But Lex is about to discover that a ghost doesn't have to be real to keep you from moving on.

Bindi


Kirli Saunders - 2020
    She’s not really into maths but LOVES art class and playing hockey. Her absolute FAVOURITE thing is adventuring outside with friends or her horse, Nell.A new year starts like normal—school, family, hockey, dancing. But this year hasn’t gone to plan! There’s a big art assignment, a drought, a broken wrist AND the biggest bushfires her town has ever seen!Bindi is a verse novel for mid-upper primary students. Written ‘for those who plant trees’, Bindi explores climate, bushfires, and healing. Written from the point of view of 11-year-old, Bindi and her friends on Gundungurra Country.

Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined


Danielle Younge-Ullman - 2017
    Life was beautiful and bright, and every day soared with music. Now Ingrid is on a summertime wilderness survival trek for at-risk teens: addicts, runaways, and her. She’s fighting to survive crushing humiliations, physical challenges that push her to her limits, and mind games that threaten to break her. Then When the curtain fell on Margot-Sophia’s singing career, they buried the past and settled into a small, painfully normal life. But Ingrid longed to let the music soar again. She wanted it so much that, for a while, nothing else mattered. Now Ingrid is never going to make it through this summer if she can’t figure out why she’s here . . . and why the music really stopped.

The White Girl


Tony Birch - 2019
    After her daughter disappeared and left her with her granddaughter Sissy to raise on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families. When a new policeman arrives in town, determined to enforce the law, Odette must risk everything to save Sissy and protect everything she loves.In The White Girl, Miles-Franklin-shortlisted author Tony Birch shines a spotlight on the 1960s and the devastating government policy of taking Indigenous children from their families.

Becoming Kirrali Lewis


Jane Harrison - 2015
    Sure, she was an Aboriginal girl adopted into a white family, but she was cool with that. She knew where she was headed - to a law degree - even if she didn't know 'who she was'. But when Kirrali moves to the city to start university, a whole lot of life-changing events spark an awakening that no one sees coming, least of all herself.Story flashbacks to the 1960s, where her birth mother is desperately trying to escape conservative parents, give meaning to Kirrali's own search for identity nearly twenty years later. And then she meets her father...

Jodie's Journey


Colin Thiele - 1990
    For her, the whole world seemed to sing with joy. The sky seemed brighter and the sunshine more golden. When Jodie Carpenter won the Greenvale Junior Show Jumping Championship there were tears of happiness in her eyes. She was not to know that she was about to be cruelly struck down by a crippling disease, and the hurdles ahead of her would be more challenging than those she had just overcome.

How to Bee


Bren MacDibble - 2017
    In a world where real bees are extinct, the quickest, bravest kids climb the fruit trees and pollinate the flowers by hand.Will Peony's grit and quick thinking be enough to keep her safe?A story about family, loyalty, kindness and bravery, set against an all-too possible future where climate change has forever changed the way we live.

How to Make Friends with the Dark


Kathleen Glasgow - 2019
    It’s dark in your house, dark in your room, and dark in your heart. You feel like the darkness is going to split you apart.That’s how it feels for Tiger. It’s always been Tiger and her mother against the world. Then, on a day like any other, Tiger’s mother dies. And now it’s Tiger, alone.Here is how you learn to make friends with the dark.

Finding Audrey


Sophie Kinsella - 2015
    she can't even take off her dark glasses inside the house.Then her brother's friend Linus stumbles into her life. With his friendly, orange-slice smile and his funny notes, he starts to entice Audrey out again - well, Starbucks is a start. And with Linus at her side, Audrey feels like she can do the things she'd thought were too scary. Suddenly, finding her way back to the real world seems achievable.

Neverland


Margot McGovern - 2018
    Now seventeen, Kit doesn’t remember the incident, and she doesn’t want to. In fact, her only clear memories from before her parents’ death are of the fantastical stories of pirates and mermaids that she and her dad invented about the small island where she grew up, a place she calls Neverland. Following Kit’s parents’ deaths, her uncle and guardian, Doc, transformed the island into a boarding school for mentally ill teenagers and sent Kit away to school on the mainland. But when Kit tries and fails to end her life, Doc brings her home to the island and places her in the care of his colleague, Dr Hannah Ward. Resisting her treatment, Kit instead pulls her friends deeper into her world of make-believe. It’s only when Kit and her new boyfriend, Rohan, take the fantasy too far and land themselves in very real danger that her faith in Neverland is shaken, and Kit must find a way back to reality.

100 Remarkable Feats of Xander Maze


Clayton Zane Comber - 2021
    But can his list of 100 Remarkable Feats really save his nanna?Xander Maze loves lists, and his grandmother is #1 in his list of People I Love Most in the World. But now that Nanna has stage 4 cancer, can a new list of 100 Remarkable Feats really save her life?Particularly when his list contains difficult things like #2 Make a Friend and #3 Make a Best Friend.Funny, moving and with a protagonist you can't help but fall in love with, 100 Remarkable Feats of Xander Mazeis#1 Heartbreaking#2 Heartwarmingand a book about defying the odds, not accepting the unacceptable, and one boy's unconditional love for his nanna.

The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver


E. Lockhart - 2005
    She knows it’s unusual, but give her a break—she’s had a rough 10 days. In the past 10 days she: lost her boyfriend (#13 on the list), lost her best friend (Kim), lost all her other friends (Nora, Cricket), did something suspicious with a boy (#10), did something advanced with a boy (#15), had an argument with a boy (#14), drank her first beer (someone handed it to her), got caught by her mom (ag!), had a panic attack (scary), lost a lacrosse game (she’s the goalie), failed a math test (she’ll make it up), hurt Meghan’s feelings (even though they aren’t really friends), became a social outcast (no one to sit with at lunch) and had graffiti written about her in the girls’ bathroom (who knows what was in the boys’!?!). But don’t worry—Ruby lives to tell the tale. And make more lists.

Mahalia


Joanne Horniman - 2001
    He loved her freckled, luminous, magical body. He loved her free spirit. He loved the future he saw when he found out Emmy was pregnant. And he loved her answer when her parents protested their decision to keep the baby: " We'll just love it, okay?" Full of emotion and insight, "Mahalia" is the story of one teenage boy's struggle to be a better father than he knows how. " A poignant and memorable love story of a young father and his daughter." -- "School Library Journal" " A starkly candid and sensitive portrait of teenage parenthood." -- "The Horn Book Magazine" "A Children's Peace Literature Prize Recommended Book Children's Book Council of Australia Awards' Shortlist"