Jackie French’s min-world in Somewhere around the Corner is drawn in
a manner that appears to powerfully portray life in the make-shift shanty towns
around Sydney during the Great Depression.
Her twist in the plot that links a street protest in the 1990s with one
in 1932 is a clever tool to draw the reader from a contemporary (almost) to a
tumultuous era in Australian history. A
common thread is woven between the introduction and conclusion … but I won’t
spoil the surprise!
The mini-worlds in Paul Jennings’ Unreal short stories are, by contrast, a
quirky blend of rather unusual … often weird and containing behaviours that may
be considered ‘naughty’… plots, settings and characters, merged with experiences
that children would be very familiar with.
E.g. Fear of giving talks in front of the class, bullies, family
tensions. The first-person narrative is
written in language akin to that spoken by children, and would be easy for them
to identify with. The stories may be
useful to make books more attractive to the reluctant reader.
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