2017 Reading Challenge continues...

Earlier this year, Nella posted her personal reading list for the year with some alternative and varied selection criteria. She continues to challenge and encourage us to read outside our comfort zones and broaden our horizons. If you can't identify a title for each category then read on for some tasters from Nella's selections. There are some excellent leads for  further great reads from early childhood through to older teens to cap off the year. Are you up to the challenge?

First book in a series	Aussie outback		YA with no romance
Green cover	Set in Tasmania		Mental Health
On your TBR pile	Award winner		Truly frightening
Would make a great movie		400 + pages

Investigate the original range of genres on the 2017 Reading Challenge - A Personal List post.

First book in a series

Six of Crows Leigh Bardugo Orion

Nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017. I have a love-hate relationship with series books; thankfully this is part of a duology although I may be tempted by the other books set in the Grishaverse.

Criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams - but he can't pull it off alone. Chapters are told from the differing POV of all six heist team members.

Aussie outback

Mrs White and the Red Desert Josie Boyle & Maggie Prewett  Magabala Books

When a group of desert children invite their school teacher, Mrs White, home for dinner to show her why their homework is always grubby, no-one expects what is to come!

YA with no romance

You Don’t Even Know Sue Lawson Black Dog (2013)

Alex is the misfit of a bullying family. He prefers water-polo to rowing; he loves his little sister Mia. Through random flashbacks, we learn how and why Alex  is in hospital recovering from an accident. Heartbreakingly real.

Green cover

Florette Anna Walker Viking

Mae moves from a house with a garden into a city apartment surrounded by cobblestones. Outside Florette, a florist shop, Mae finds a tiny plant growing from a crack between the path and the front wall of the shop. Mae takes it home, plants it in a jar. This is the beginning of Mae’s new garden.

Set in Tasmania

Gaolbird: The True Story of William Swallow Convict & Pirate Simon Barnard Text Publishing

Fantastic story that deserves to be told - truth really is stranger than fiction. William Walker aka William Swallow was an English convict taken to ‘the far end of the earth’, Van Diemen’s Land, in the 1820s...three times.  Illustrated in exaggerated cartoon style.

Mental Health

Girl in Pieces Kathleen Glasgow HarperCollins

Gritty debut novel about the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression

On your TBR pile

Everything Leads to You Nina LaCour Penguin Random House

Emi Price is a talented young set designer; she finds a mysterious letter at an estate sale, and it sends her chasing down the loose ends of a movie icon’s hidden life. And along the way, she finds Ava.

Award winner 

Winner Aurealis Awards - Best Children's Fiction 2016

When the Lyrebird Calls Kim Kane Allen & Unwin

While helping her grandmother, Madeleine finds a pair of shoes in a hidden compartment. Wearing these shoes while a lyrebird calls in an old grotto she timeslips to Lyrebird Muse, the grand home of the Williamson family just prior to the Federation of Australia.

Truly frightening

Forgetting Foster Dianne Touchell Allen & Unwin

Forget monsters and aliens.  True fear is found in everyday events. A powerful story of a seven-year-old boy whose father develops Alzheimer’s disease.  Everything in Foster’s life changes, his father starts forgetting things and his mother stops laughing.

Would make a great movie

Mr Romanov’s garden in the sky Robert Newton Penguin 

Lexie lives in a ‘Commission’ apartment, with her junkie mother. Lexie remembers better times with her father —games of pretend camping, taken seriously with map reading and with Lexie given the choice of location (which is always Surfers Paradise). Other residents include the Creeper, an elderly man with a rooftop garden (Mr Romanov) and know-it-all Davey Goodman. The three travel to Surfers Paradise pursued by police.  Sentimental and compelling

400 + pages

Windfall Jennifer E Smith Pan Macmillan

At 416 pages, this just meets the criteria.  Jennifer E Smith’s YA novels (she also writes middle grade books) are heart-warming and generally about first love.  Alice buys her best friend Teddy a lottery ticket for his 18^th birthday. He wins. A story of loss, death and Alice’s need to live up to her perceptions of her parents’ selflessness. 

Nella Pickup
Avid reader (and inspiration to us all to...keep on reading)

From the editor: Why not share your alternative suggestions. Under the First in a Series category I have recently read Tokens and Omens by Jeri Baird and am eagerly awaiting the sequel - out next month.