Written for younger teens, "Detention" was quite a fast-paced read dealing with some serious issues, specifically Australia's handling of asylum seekers. However, the story wasn't political. Instead, it focused on Sima, a refugee from Afghanistan who separated from her parents when they escaped the detention centre, and Dan, a boy living it rough who finds Sima hiding in the school's toilet block. Set over the course of six hours. and told from both Sima's and Dan's points of view, Detention was an emotional, suspenseful and engaging read. ( )

Told over a period of 7 hours from when Sima (a refugee about to be sent back to Afghanistan from Australia) breaks free of a detention center and tries to hide in a school, this alternates between Sima and a boy called Dan who lives in a caravan park. When the school is put into lockdown, Dan thinks it is because he has rescued a beaten dog from the highway and tied it up behind the bike shed. He soon discovers that he is not the cause of giant AFP agents/swat teams going all around the school and it is really Sima and her fellow escapees that the cops are looking for. Worried about the dog dehydrating on the hot Summer morning, he convinces a policeman and his teacher that he is busting to go to the toilet, in the hope of getting some water to the dog. However, he discovers Sima trying to struggle her way out of a window in the boy's toilets. What happens next will surprise everyone.

I loved the chapters with the lock down scenes from the classroom. They are very funny and could be read aloud to a class.Page 56 - p61. ( )