Grace the Amazing (Aleesah Darlison, Wombat Books)

This tender middle-grade novel by well-established children’s author Aleesah Darlison (who wrote the popular junior series League of Llamas) explores friendship, coming to terms with death, and finding the courage to express what you feel. Eleven-year-old Grace always says what she thinks. She loves magic, animals and making art, but she is also ‘antisocial’, has ‘anger management issues’, forgets to pack her lunch, and is perplexed when her schoolmates tease her for donning a magician’s outfit on casual clothes day. Grace’s best and only friend is Pamela, her school art teacher. When Grace discovers that Pamela is dying of cancer, her world falls apart. Luckily for Pamela, Grace is a magician who will simply use magic to cure her! Of course, magic doesn’t work miracles the way Grace hopes. Instead, she will have to summon magic from within (as well as courage) to confront the reality of the situation and find a way to be there for Pamela in her final weeks. Darlison manages to strike just the right tone for a book that depicts a child’s first experience of death: it is both emotive and genuinely funny, with a charismatic cast of characters and a loveably candid protagonist in Grace. Grace’s lively and snarky narration would make this a great book to read aloud with kids aged 8+ at bedtime or in classrooms.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Charlotte Callander is a freelance writer and an educator at Melbourne Museum. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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