Book picks similar to
Cry of the Taniwha by Des Hunt
mystery
new-zealand
young-adult
children-s
The Shifter
Janice Hardy - 2009
She is also a Taker—with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body. But unlike her sister, Tali, and the other Takers who become Healers' League apprentices, Nya's skill is flawed: She can't push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it into another person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If discovered, she'd be used as a human weapon against her own people. Rumors of another war make Nya's life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too far and exposes her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purposes. At first Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she's faced with some difficult choices. As her father used to say, principles are a bargain at any price; but how many will Nya have to sell to get Tali back alive?
Juggling With Mandarins
V.M. Jones - 2003
Pip is good at English, like his mother; but Pip′s father wants him to be a soccer star like Nick, Pip′s brother, and to win at any cost. When Pip′s English teacher challenges her students to learn how to juggle three balls, Pip is determined that he will do better than that. He sets his sights high and finally learns how to juggle not three balls, but five mandarins. Along the way, he also finds the courage to confront his father and express his anger and resentment - to publicly claim the right to be his own person and live his life on his own terms. Juggling with Mandarins is a novel about growing up. It asserts the importance of living life on your own terms, and of competing for enjoyment rather than reward. It explores the complex love-hate relationship between a father and son, and the sometimes painful process of realising that parents are, after all, only human.
TimeRiders
Alex Scarrow - 2010
They are recruited by an agency that no one knows exists, with only one purpose—to fix broken history. Because time travel is here, and there are those who would go back in time and change the past. That’s why the TimeRiders exist: to protect us. To stop time travel from destroying the world...