authors, interviews

Cristy Burne on Into the Blue

Alphabet Soup
A woman in a white shirt with red spots stands holding a light globe over her head with two hands
The cover of a children's novel showing two children swimming wearing snorkels

Cristy Burne writes fiction and nonfiction and her books are bursting with adventure, friendship, family, nature, science and technology. Cristy has worked as a science communicator for nearly 20 years across six countries. She has been a science circus performer, garbage analyst, museum writer, and atom-smashing reporter at CERN, but her all-time favourite job is working with kids to embrace the intersection between science, technology and creativity.

Today we’re thrilled to be chatting with Cristy about her novel Into the Blue, illustrated by Amanda Burnett.

From the publisher:

Blair and his cousin embark on an adventurous day out, snorkelling on the wreck of the Omeo, but their excitement turns to panic when Blair loses his brother’s cherished GoPro camera on the seabed. No one knows about his mistake except his cousin, and she urges Blair to keep it a secret. But Blair’s lies quickly spiral out of control. Terrified to confess but wracked with guilt, Blair is left floundering in the deep.

I’ll take a wild guess that you’ve been snorkelling yourself! Where’s the best place you’ve been to snorkel?

I love snorkelling and I snorkelled a lot on the Omeo wreck to research this book. Many of my favourite places to snorkel are in Western Australia: Rottnest Island, Ningaloo Reef, Mettams Pool, Yanchep Lagoon and Penguin Island, to name a few. There are so many awesome places to explore!

I’ve also snorkelled and SCUBA dived a lot around Australia and the world. My Aussie favourites are Cocos Island and Christmas Island, plus the Whitsundays in Queensland. (I’ve never snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef … yet!)

My favourite dive spot ever is in Japan in the Ogasawara Islands, 1000 kilometres south of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean.

A photo of someone wearing a snorkel and goggles in murky water plus a book pasted on top.

Do you have a favourite underwater creature or element that you look out for when you go snorkelling?

I don’t like to chase underwater creatures. Instead, I like to float around like a piece of seaweed and wait for them to come to me. In this way I’ve been lucky to have seen dolphins, turtles, seals and even sharks go swimming past.

Even though I love seeing big things, my favourites are tiny things. My absolute number-one favourite thing is something that Blair also experiences in Into The Blue. It’s when you find yourself in the middle of a school of teeny-tiny fish that glitter and whirl like a magical cloud and it feels like you’re in another world. I love that feeling!

When you were growing up, did you ever get into trouble for touching/using something you weren’t supposed to?

No. Never. I was always very obedient and good.

Right?

Except for a b-u-n-c-h of times when I got into trouble. One time I remember, my mum had brought a doll’s pram home from my sisters’ kindy. She parked it in the garage and said, “Don’t touch it, Cristy.”

But that pram looked soooo interesting. And I was sure it was big enough to fit more than just dolls. In fact, I was sure that if I tried, I could fit into that pram!

So I snuck into the garage and climbed in.

And you know what? I did fit! It was awesome!

But when I tried to climb out, I couldn’t. I was jammed stuck.

I knew that if Mum found me, she’d be cross, so I had to get out. But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t budge from that pram.

In the end, I had to cry out for help. When Mum finally arrived in the garage, looking very confused, she found me bawling my eyes out and stuck. So, she did what all good parents would do (!?!), and she fetched her camera to take a photo of me stuck there. How lovely. Now we can always remember The Time Cristy Got Stuck In The Doll’s Pram.

Do you have a word prompt or scenario you’d like to challenge young writers to try?

I think a wonderful way to write is to go into the place that you’re writing about with a notebook and pen. Then, breathe deep and tune your senses into that place. Write down all your thoughts and ideas and similes and feelings about:

– what you can smell and hear

– interesting ways to describe what you see

– how the landscape makes you feel and what you feel in your body in those moments

– how things feel to touch: bark, sand, leaves, wind, the pen in your hand, everything.

The place you write in might be your school playground, or a nearby bushland, or even waiting at a bus stop to go to school. (If you do this activity, I’d love to hear how you went…you can contact me through my website: cristyburne.com/

What’s next for Cristy Burne?

So many things!!! I want to learn how to be a bike mechanic so I can look after my mountain bike better. I want to dig up my lawn so I can plant native plants for lizards and birds and creatures to live in. I’m planning a hiking adventure in the gorges of Kalbarri National Park.

And … I’m doing lots of school visits and festival tours to talk to readers and creators about Into The Blue, plus my new graphic novel with Rebel Challenger (called Ultra Violet: Down to Business).

PLUS, I’m working on not one, not two but THREE new secret projects. I love having lots of things to make and create and try. It’s always hard to make new things, because they never really turn out how I want them to, especially on the first try. But I love the challenge of trying to make something I’m really proud of.

And I’m really proud of my books.

Thank you so much for reading down this far, and thank you also for reading my books. I hope they make you laugh and get you excited for having your own adventures!

Into the Blue is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.

AWESOME EXTRAS:

Read some sample pages from Into the Blue!

Download a Ship to Shore activity from the publisher’s website [PDF]

Download the Teachers’ Notes [PDF]

Visit Cristy Burne’s website for more resources and to find out more about the author and her books.

Watch Cristy Burne’s slick promo video for Into the Blue. [YouTube]

The cover of a children's novel showing two children swimming wearing snorkels
Book reviews by Elizabeth, Book reviews by kids

Book Review: Maddy McAllister, Shipwreck Detective

Alphabet Soup

REVIEWED BY ELIZABETH, 11, NSW

Maddy McAllister: Shipwreck Detective (Aussie STEM stars series), story told by Deb Fitzpatrick, Wild Dingo Press, ISBN 9781925893823

Elizabeth received a review copy of this book.

Six-year-old Maddy McAllister, a shipwreck detective, started her adventure in Wangi Falls – her favourite place to cool down. But then her parents took an unexpected turn. Maddy and her sister Ally changed schools and moved to Pine Creek for their father’s job. It was 225 kilometres from Darwin where they used to live. Then she moved closer to her grandparents because her father found a different job in Perth, which meant Maddy and Ally, could spend more time with their grandparents. Maddy’s grandad was always by her side ever since they moved to Perth, every step of the way, encouraging her every day. He told her stories all the time when they went on fishing trips which her grandad called “on the high seas”.

One day, her grandad told her a story about a shipwreck which made her curious. A few days later, she heard on the radio that there was going to be a lecture about a different shipwreck discovery. Little did she know that this lecture would change her life.

My favourite person in this book was Maddy’s grandad because he was encouraging and supportive of Maddy in every way he could. I can relate to this book because Maddy faced what I faced when I was six years old, which was to leave close friends and transfer to a new school and new town.

This book is by Deb Fitzpatrick who also wrote Ajay Rane that I have written a review for as well. I think that this book Maddy McAllister is interesting and inspiring.

I recommend this book for age seven plus and rate this book 10 out of 10.

Maddy McAllister: Shipwreck Detective is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.

Elizabeth is a regular reviewer for Alphabet Soup. You can read more of her reviews here. To send us YOUR book review, check out our submission guidelines. Happy reading!

authors, interviews, teachers' resources

Tracey Dembo on This Book is a Time Machine

Alphabet Soup
The cover of a children's picture book: This Book is a Time Machine
A photo of Tracey Dembo standing in front of a colourful wall.

Tracey Dembo writes books encouraging big questions, daring dreams and wild imaginations. She’s the author of two picture books: An A to Z of Dreaming Differently, illustrated by Lucia Masciullo, and This Book is a Time Machine, illustrated by Lucinda Gifford. Today we’re excited to chat to Tracey about This Book is a Time Machine!

From the publisher:

Guess what? You are holding a real-life time machine!
You don’t believe me?
I’ll show you!
For a start, I wrote this blurb in the PAST.
Yet, you are reading it in the PRESENT.
And when you finish reading the blurb, it will be the FUTURE …

The author (you!) and the illustrator are both characters in This Book is a Time Machine. Did you meet Lucinda Gifford while she was working on the illustrations?

I actually didn’t meet Lucinda while working on the illustrations – the first time I met Lucinda was before that, during the Maurice Saxby Mentorship Program in 2022 (an incredible creative development program for children’s creators that I was fortunate enough to be part of).  Lucinda was a former mentee of this program, and we were fortunate to have lunch with her and to hear all about her creative journey and processes as part of the mentorship.  I was completely in awe of her, and it was so inspiring to listen to her experiences.  So, you can imagine how excited I was to hear that she had agreed to do the illustrations for This Book Is a Time Machine!  Once she had signed up, we met early in the process, via a video call with Tash, our publisher.  This is not necessarily the conventional way authors and illustrators collaborate on a book, but because we are both actual characters in the book (which is unusual), it was really important to make sure we were all on the same page and to work closely together.  It was a great experience to be able to work like this with such an incredible illustrator and creative team, including Tash and Kristy Lund-White (the designer).

If you climbed into a time machine, would you choose to go into the past or the future?

I would probably go backwards into the past and meet some of the incredible people who are no longer with us. Frida Kahlo and Albert Einstein would be two people who I would really love to meet.

This book features so many creatures, people and events escaping from their time in history – if you were dressing up as a character from This Book is a Time Machine for a Book Week parade, what would your costume be?

The cover of a children's picture book: This Book is a Time Machine

Although this is one book I could get away with not dressing up for (as I could go as myself), I would definitely go as the mummy.* 

I just love the different facial expressions of this character throughout the book (I’m pretty sure one of those expressions is how I look before I’ve had my morning coffee).

*Check out the mummy in the letter E on the book’s cover.

If we took a time machine into the future, what would we see Future Tracey working on?

Look, I would love to be able to say that Future Tracey would be working on an international best-seller, but I guess I would need to use my time machine to find out if this is true!

In the meantime, I am writing as much as I can in the hope that a future brilliant idea will come to me.

Do you have a tip for young writers who would like to try writing their own picture books?

My tip would be to keep on going and persisting, even when your work does not turn out how you want it to.  Making mistakes and mess and improving your craft is all part of the process and so it is really important not to give up.

This Book is a Time Machine is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.

AWESOME EXTRAS:

Watch the book trailer [YouTube]

Will the book make an impact? [You Tube]

Make your own Future Teller [PDF]

Visit the author’s website for more about her and her books

Visit the illustrator’s website for more about her and her books

Book reviews by kids

Book review: The First Summer of Callie McGee

Alphabet Soup
The cover of a children's novel, The First Summer of Callie McGee by A.L. Tait.

REVIEWED BY MIA, 11, WA

The First Summer of Callie McGee by A.L. Tait, Scholastic Australia Pty Ltd, ISBN 9781760260163

Mia received a review copy of this book.

The First Summer Of Callie McGee is a fantastic book written by A.L Tait.

In this book Callie and her family friends go on a traditional trip to Sawyers Point.

Callie’s character is a kind of nerdy goody-two-shoes. She is quiet, warm and kindhearted. Callie seems to be one of those girls though who wants to be a popular cool kid and thinks that she needs to have a cool name “CJ”. Callie’s real name is really Calliope-Jean!

Callie is constantly asking herself, what would CJ do? Callie finds herself in a variety of different situations where she must find her inner CJ.

Callie’s older friend Sasha is everything Callie dreams to be … she is cool, popular and pretty. When Sasha is told to go to the beach and watch all her cousins and the kids, instead she goes to hang out with a boy, Ned. Sasha puts Callie in charge but when one of the kids gets caught in a rip, Callie must once again think – what would CJ do?

Mitch’s parents and Callie’s parents are good friends, so Callie must deal with him and his cousin, Owen. The three of them find out there have been some robberies and a possible ghost sighting at Sawyers Point. Again, Callie had to find her inner CJ. Sasha goes missing one night and Callie, Mitch and Owen go out to find her.

Callie comes up against several situations where she must be brave or grown up and has to find her inner CJ. This book is definitely about the challenges of change and of growing up.

I recommend The First Summer of Callie McGee by A.L. Tait for ages 10+ because I think some of the concepts younger children wouldn’t understand.

I think this book is an amazing book that shows anyone can do or be anything.

The First Summer of Callie McGee is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookstore or local library.

This is Mia’s second book review for Alphabet Soup. You can read another of Mia’s reviews here. To send us YOUR book review, check out our submission guidelines. Happy reading!

poetry

WA school holiday event

Alphabet Soup
A flyer advertising a school holiday activity at Subiaco Library in April

Western Australian family-friendly event: Bring a picnic blanket and enjoy a morning of poetry and outdoor activities to  celebrate the release of Right Way Down, a brand new ⁠children’s poetry collection from WA authors. 

Poetry readings; games; activities; light snacks; and book sales from Dymocks Subiaco.
Some of the contributing authors will be there on the day for signings.

WHEN: Saturday April 6th, 10:30am
WHERE: Rankin Gardens, cnr Hamersley Rd and Rokeby Rd, Subiaco, WA
BOOKINGS: FREE but required, via eventbrite.

authors, interviews

Emily Gale and Nova Weetman on Outlaw Girls

Alphabet Soup

Emily Gale writes for children and for teenagers – you might know her novels I am out with Lanterns and The Other Side of Summer. Nova Weetman also writes for children and teenagers and you might have read some of her books, such as The Secrets We Keep and Sick Bay. Emily and Nova previously collaborated on Elsewhere Girls. Their latest book collaboration is Outlaw Girls, the second co-authored book by these authors. We’re thrilled to chat to them about Outlaw Girls today.

A head and shoulders photo of a woman with hair blowing in the wind
Emily Gale
A head and shoulders photo of a woman smiling broadly
Nova Weetman
The cover of a children's novel: Outlaw Girls

From the publisher:

Kate and Ruby live in the High Country in Victoria. They’re both daring, quick-thinking and prepared to break the rules, and they’re both brilliant horse riders –they’d probably be great friends. But they live in different times, 145 years apart.

Two authors, one novel. How do you go about writing a story when there are two writers?

Nova Weetman: Outlaw Girls is a blend of historical research and fiction, so for the research part we spent several months visiting the sites of our ‘real’ character Kate Kelly and learning all that we could about her. Because Kate was Ned Kelly’s sister there was a ton of material to read and study.

We each wrote one character: Emily wrote Kate and I wrote Ruby. Before we started writing the chapters, we had to develop our own characters as well as plotting the entire book as a partnership. I started the Ruby story, then I sent my chapters to Emily and she wrote some of the Kate story, and then we went back and forth like that all the way to the end, giving and receiving chapters. Then we did the editing to make sure it flowed well. It’s important that the main story works but also that each character has their own storyline with its own satisfying ending.

Ned Kelly is a familiar name for most Australians. Can you tell us a bit about how you went about your research for the character of his sister? Did you both collate information?

Emily Gale: We did loads of research, all different kinds. Nova already knew a bit about Kate Kelly but I didn’t so I was starting from scratch. I read or listened to a lot of books. I looked in the index of even more books to see if they mentioned Kate and I read all of those bits too. I watched all the Ned Kelly movies, listened to podcasts, read books about horses, watched YouTube videos about young people taking care of their horses or going riding, and read old newspapers from 1878 on the website Trove, where it’s easy to look up articles from the past.

Then I made a Google Doc of all my research and shared it with Nova so that she could add to it.

A fun part of the research was going on the train with Nova to The Kelly Gang areas in Victoria. We saw the old chimney which is all that is left of the house where Kate Kelly grew up, and we walked around Glenrowan where The Kelly Gang came to an end.

If you could time-slip to any time in history, what year would you choose?

Emily Gale: If I could guarantee that I could come home any time I would take a quick trip to ancient Italy, the first century AD, when the Romans had a time of not fighting anyone – it’s a period called Pax Romana. It would be very smelly, and I wouldn’t like to be a slave forced to participate in gladiatorial games, but I think it would be incredible to go that far back in time.

Nova Weetman: I’d like to take a whirlwind trip through important historical moments, watching them like an eagle from above and then time slipping into the next one once all the drama was complete. I’d meet Cleopatra, visit the Colosseum to watch a gladiatorial battle, and eat Marie-Antoiniette’s cake.

What you are both working on next?

Emily Gale: I am working on a new story which instead of going back in time goes forward a generation. I’m only halfway through it so I can’t say much more but it’s interesting and challenging to make myself think about the future instead of the past.

Nova Weetman: I have just delivered the first draft of a new middle grade novel that is much lighter than the books I usually write, and I’m also working on a middle grade graphic novel with illustrator Renee Treml.

Do you have a tip for young writers who’d like to collaborate on a story?

Emily Gale: It helps to plan your story a little bit first so that you both know where you’re going. But you don’t have to plan every detail and it’s amazing when a story takes you somewhere unexpected, so you should both stay open to that. Choose a story idea that you are both very passionate about and listen to each other’s ideas carefully. If there is something the other person has written or suggested that you don’t like, you must be careful about how you say this: be very kind to each other always and don’t forget to tell them the things that you love about their writing – encouraging each other will get the most out of collaborating.

Nova Weetman: I think you need to be in agreement about how long and how complicated the story is before you start. It’s important that you are both thinking about the same sort of genre and tone, and that one of you isn’t imagining a murder mystery while the other is writing a romance. Have some really honest discussions before you start so there are fewer surprises when you begin to write.

Outlaw Girls is out now! Ask for it at your favourite bookshop or local library.

AWESOME EXTRAS:

The cover of a children's novel: Outlaw Girls

Take a sneak peek inside the book (look for ‘Preview this book’ under the book photo on the publisher’s website)

Watch a video of the authors talking about Elsewhere Girls and Outlaw Girls [This link will take you to Facebook]

Download the Teachers’ Notes for Outlaw Girls

Visit Emily Gale’s website for more about her and her books

Visit Nova Weetman’s website for more about her and her books

authors, interviews

Peter Carnavas on Leo and Ralph

Alphabet Soup
The cover of a children's novel: Leo and Ralph by Peter Carnavas
A photo of Peter Carnavas

Peter Carnavas is the creator of over twenty books, many of which have been shortlisted or won awards. Peter’s books have been translated into many languages. He lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Today we’re chatting about Leo and Ralph, his latest novel.

From the publisher:

Leo and Ralph have been best friends ever since Ralph flew down from one of Jupiter’s moons. But now Leo’s older, and Mum and Dad think it’s time to say goodbye to Ralph. When the family moves to a small country town, they hope Leo might finally make a real friend. But someone like Ralph is hard to leave behind … 

Leo loves everything about space. What’s your favourite fact about space?

I discovered my favourite space facts from one of my favourite books: Stellarphant, by James Foley. At the back of his book, he shows all the different animals that have been into space — rabbits, tortoises, frogs and chicken eggs!

Can you share a memory of what you and your friends liked to do at lunchtime when you were Leo’s age?

It was either soccer or handball. I loved playing soccer, and lunchtime never seemed long enough — we always wanted to score just one more goal. In my mind, I was the greatest handball player in the school, but I don’t have any trophies to prove it. You’ll just have to take my word for it. 

Leo’s descriptions of Dundle are so effective we can picture the country town in our mind’s eye. Is Dundle based on a real town?

As I wrote about Dundle, I pictured a lovely country town called Clermont, in the central highlands of Queensland. I lived there for five years when I started teaching and I have great memories of the town and the community. Leo isn’t too sure about Dundle when he first arrives but he grows to love it, just like I did with Clermont. 

Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?

I won’t say too much, as the idea has only started growing, but I’m planning a novel about animals, and the main character is a stubborn, curious and very brave goat. 

Do you have a tip for young writers?

When you write stories, you’re in charge, so write the story you really want to write. There are some basic rules to remember — a main character that readers want to cheer for, and some big problems to create tension — but most of all, try to write the kinds of stories you love to read. 

AWESOME EXTRAS:

Watch the book trailer! [YouTube]

Download the Teachers’ Notes from the publisher’s website

Visit Peter Carnavas’s website for more about him and his books

authors, interviews

A.L. Tait on The First Summer of Callie McGee

Alphabet Soup

Allison Tait (A.L. Tait) is the internationally published bestselling author of adventure series The Mapmaker Chronicles, the Ateban Cipher novels, and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries. Today we’re chatting to A.L. Tait about her latest novel The First Summer of Callie McGee, a cosy mystery novel. 

Allison Tait sitting on the edge of a wall.
The cover of a children's novel, The First Summer of Callie McGee by A.L. Tait.

From the publisher:

It’s the last summer before Callie starts high school and she’s been dragged along to yet another ‘family friends’ holiday. Determined to change her nerdy reputation, Callie sets out to make waves but nothing is quite as she expects. Her usual ally, Sasha, has outgrown Callie; her nemesis, Mitch, has brought his cousin Owen along; and the boring south coast town of Sawyer’s Point has been rocked by a series of burglaries. Callie, Owen and Mitch decide to investigate the robberies, bringing them face to face with a local gang … and a possible ghost. But then Sasha goes missing …

You’ve published multiple fantasy novels, what was different about writing contemporary realism?

When you’re writing a story set in a fantasy world, you have to work incredibly hard to bring that world to life on the page with every tiny detail. You’re thinking about everything from what people wear and what they eat to how they buy things at the shops and how they travel from A to B – and then you have to make sure the reader understands all of that without resorting to long descriptive passages (boring!). 

In a contemporary world, your reader knows what a car is and what a double-storey brick house looks like, so that side of things is easier – but it’s still essential to build a world for the reader to immerse themselves in. 

The biggest challenge for me in the switch was the ‘real’ factor. In a fantasy novel, my characters can drink ale and fling themselves into rivers and readers know it’s not real, without having to be told not to try it themselves. In a contemporary novel, I felt like I had to take a lot more care about my character’s action. When Callie throws herself into a rip to rescue her younger friend Cody, for instance, I’ve already made it clear that she’s a strong swimmer and she’s been a Nipper, so she knows what to do.  

When your series The Mapmaker Chronicles began you talked about sketching a map of the books’ world. While you were writing The First Summer of Callie McGee, did you draw a map of Sawyer’s Point?

Sawyer’s Point is based on a real seaside village called Gerroa, about 20 minutes’ drive from my house. I’ve spent a lot of time there over the years (in a friend’s holiday house!) so I could see in my mind exactly where Callie and her friends were at any time. Having said that, I did move things around a bit – Sawyer’s Point has a surf club, but Gerroa does not.

Is Callie’s trying on of a new name based on your own childhood experiences – did you ever try out different nicknames for yourself when you were growing up?

I’ve always found names fascinating – what they say about us, how they fit us and, maybe, how we grow to fit them. And nicknames are even more interesting, because having one implies you have that easy sort of relationship with someone else. I didn’t try to change my name as a child (though I know people who did), and my nickname has always been Al.

Do you have a tip for kids who’d like to write a story based on a real place/setting?

Write what you know, but make it new. Choose a place that you know really well and then change one thing. That one thing might be bringing a new person (character) into that place (one of the best ways to describe a place is to show it through a new person’s eyes – even if it’s your class at school). It might be adding a mysterious statue that’s been there forever and then, one day, has vanished – or perhaps it’s never been there before and then, one day, appears out of nowhere. It might be putting a trapdoor in the floor that leads to a secret tunnel. 

Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?

I’m excited to be working on a new contemporary middle-grade novel, which will hopefully be out next year! It’s got all the things I love – a character with heart, adventure, and mystery. Watch this space!

Awesome extras:

The cover of a children's novel, The First Summer of Callie McGee by A.L. Tait.

Check out A.L. Tait’s ‘Writing Tips for Kids’ page.

Download the Teachers’ Notes for this book.

Read a review of the book by Mia, age 11

Visit A.L. Tait’s website for more about her and her books.

authors

Children’s Books at Perth Festival

Alphabet Soup

Rebecca M. Newman, Alphabet Soup’s managing editor and the co-editor of Right Way Down and Other Poems, will be at the Perth Festival Writers Weekend on Saturday 24 February 2024. You can catch Rebecca at two sessions.

For adults:

Presenters on the ‘Telling Tales’ panel at the 2024 Perth Festival Writers Weekend.
Presenters on the ‘Telling Tales’ panel at the 2024 Perth Festival Writers Weekend.
'Telling Tales' (panel session, 45 mins).
10am, 24 February 2024 at the State Library of WA. 
Price: Pay what you can. Suggested price, $24. Book tickets here!
Presented in association with Writing WA.

The creative minds of James Foley (Secret Agent Mole), Kylie Howarth (Crocs Stole My Socks) and Rebecca M Newman (Right Way Down) come together for an exhilarating conversation hosted by Writing WA Chair Lesley Reece AM. Join these writers and illustrators as they delve into the secrets of crafting engaging stories for young minds and celebrate the wonders of storytelling.

For children:

A flyer with two book covers and the text: Story Time with Tracey Dembo and Rebecca M Newman
Join Tracey Dembo & Rebecca M Newman for a live reading session at the State Library of WA
'Story Time with Tracey Dembo & Rebecca M. Newman'. (50 mins)
11am, 24 February 2024, Education Centre, State Library of WA.
Price: 'pay what you can' (even $0) but you will need to book to secure a spot. 
Book tickets here!
Presented in association with Writing WA.

Tracey Dembo and Rebecca M. Newman combine their picture book and poetry forces to bring you an exciting one hour live reading session for kids! This session is going to have everything from time machines to rockets, cricket, shoelaces, the alphabet, and dragon eggs.

View the full Writers Weekend festival program here.

See you at the library!

Book reviews by Gabriel, Book reviews by kids

Book review: Michelle Simmons, Quantum computing scientist

Alphabet Soup
Michelle Simmons: Quantum Computing Scientist, story told by Nova Weetman

REVIEWED BY GABRIELLE, 13, NSW

Michelle Simmons: Quantum computing scientist, told by Nova Weetman, Wild Dingo Press, ISBN 9781925893496

Gabrielle received a review copy of this book.

Michelle Simmons: Quantum Computing Scientist is penned by Nova Weetman, recording the life of the Australian of the Year for 2019. It unfolds the remarkable journey of a young girl who develops into the unconquerable English chess champion and discovers her passion for quantum computing, eventually leading to a groundbreaking achievement—the construction of the first silicon based quantum computer. Alongside her triumphs, the narrative delves into the challenges faced by her brother, Gary, who struggles with Behçet’s syndrome, a rare and deadly blood disease.

When Michelle developed the idea of using silicon to manufacture millions of micro transistors to the atomic level, skeptics among the English scientific community dismissed it. Despite the prevailing belief that increasing the production of silicon wouldn’t yield significant benefits, Michelle found support for her vision in Australia. A multi-million-dollar project was started, demanding years of careful planning to ensure each component met the stringent standards, given that even the slightest imperfection could lead to failure. Ultimately, the first silicon quantum computer emerged—a machine capable of completing calculations in hours that would take a computer years.

I would rate this book 4.5 out of 5 for its touching narrative and the valuable moral lesson it imparts—that with dedication and persistence, the seemingly impossible can be achieved.

I recommend this book for readers aged 10 and above, especially those with an interest in robotics and science.

Take a sneak peek inside the book!

Gabriel is a regular book reviewer at Alphabet Soup. You can read more of his reviews here. To send us YOUR book review, check out our submission guidelines. Happy reading!