Robin KleinRecensioni

This book was part of my class's reading time in Grade 2. Two decades on and I still remember how uncomfortable and sad this book made me feel. Shelley is horrible to begin with and she treats Ben appallingly. I remember being torn between understanding and not quite understanding how she could be so mean. This book deals with some very important issues surrounding disabilities and the way we treat ourselves and others. And it's relevant even more so today. The friendship that develops between them is sweet but it is hard won and it really makes you feel for the struggles Ben suffers. I can't say I liked this book, but even as an 8 year old I remember thinking it was important. 4 stars.

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“It was as though he’d been marooned on a desert island, and someone had come along and rescued him in a little boat. Promised to take him to safety. Only that person proved to know nothing about navigation, had taken him instead into rough wild seas . . . ”

This is a well-written, sensitive, and affecting Australian novel about an unlikely friendship between a timid eleven-year-old boy and a troubled twenty-year-old girl. It’s the summer holidays, and Seymour has been banished to the tiny home of the aging Thelma, a woman his mother knows from church. According to Seymour, his mum delights in self-generated drama and her victim status. Currently she’s concocted a story that Seymour’s drinking, gambling ne’er-do-well father, from whom she’s estranged, wants to abduct her son. Engaged in packing up her flat in preparation for a move and a new job situation, she places Seymour with Thelma for a few weeks. He has been ordered to stay indoors all day in the sizzling heat and upgrade his schoolwork while Thelma is at work. Although he’s a compliant, obedient sort, Seymour is so bored he climbs the back gate and goes out into Victoria Road, a bustling street with many shops. To escape some boys who harass him, he rushes through an open gate into another backyard along the same alleyway that Thelma’s property backs onto. There, the lively—and to Seymour—gorgeous Angie Easterbrook is sunbathing. At the girl’s bidding, Seymour quickly makes himself useful in her filthy little flat: preparing coffee and selecting earrings for her while she showers. And so their friendship begins.

Over the next several days, Seymour is Angie’s constant companion, and the two go on outings: to see the mansion-lined street where Angie eventually plans to live with her boyfriend Jas, to the park, the racetrack, and to a strained lunch meeting with Angie’s mother at the Easterbrook home in the suburbs. Angie talks non-stop to Seymour. She has big plans for a flower shop or perhaps a business that sells handicrafts and gifts. She goes about dressed in gaudy, outlandish outfits, each of which she has a name for—“Susan-Jane” for a pink, girly number, for example, and “Neptunia” for a dress that shimmers with the colours of the sea. Several times Seymour accompanies Angie to a “hospital” where the girl is in a program to receive special medication. It’s for “gastro” issues, she tells him, and the naïve boy, bedazzled by her and thrilled at having any friend at all, takes her at her word. But Angie’s periodic “flu” episodes, her dead-to-the-world sleeps, the disorder and squalor she lives in, her shiftiness, and her obvious estrangement from her parents, younger siblings, and best friend all point the reader to her addiction. It seems likely that what she is receiving in her “program” is methadone. (Author Robin Klein provides Angie’s backstory by sprinkling the narrative with letters from Angie’s family and friends, extracts about plans and debts Angie’s diary, one of the girl’s pitiful job applications—which testifies only to her unreliability as an employee, and other documentary “evidence” of the chaos of the young woman’s life.)

In the end, Seymour’s friendship with Angie represents his coming of age. The bats are “released from the compartments of his mind” assailing “his whole being with their black fluttering” and “all the elaborate pretences he’d so carefully built” are no longer useful. The person Seymour has placed his trust in is not trustworthy and cannot navigate her own life, never mind help him with his. The boy makes a decision to act to help his friend, and the reader follows along with interest to see how it goes.

In spite of the serious subject matter, Klein’s book has many light touches. Her characterization is strong, and the author’s depiction of Angie’s family’s difficulties in coping with the girl are realistically portrayed. While Klein doesn’t provide a “happy” ending exactly, she does end on a note of hopefulness.

Recommended for readers 12 and up, who like character-driven novels.½

I was trying to think of the author of this book the other day and I saw it in my school's library!

So glad. I've been wanting to review this book. I really liked this book when I read it in high school. I thought it was a pretty important book. It discussed drug use (without explicit examples, only references) in an age-appropriate way. I was a little bit older than I needed to be to read it, so I didn't enjoy it as much, but I thought it was really accessible.

I liked the characters, I liked the narrative voice despite the young age of the narrator. I thought this novel was well-structured and provides kids with an accessible book to read about and discuss drugs, drug use and its effects in a safe, contained environment.

I think this is one of Robin Klein's earlier books, and you can tell that her writing style is not as evolved. I enjoyed this, though, and think it's a solid effort for a novel. 3.5 stars from me. c:

The Sky in Silver Lace is the third book about the Melling sisters. Like Dresses of Red and Gold, it is very episodic, more like a collection of sequential short stories, and the season is a thematic thread tying them together.

Even taking into account that the story is set during winter, I thought it was surprisingly bleak. The girls have moved to the city with their mother; their accommodation is temporary, money is tight, their mother is stressed and their father is absent. There are small triumphs and moments of hope - particularly at the end - but I was left feeling like their happiness was fragile, even if the girls themselves didn't realise that.

And now I am sad that there isn't a fourth book about the Melling girls and spring, because I think it is needed.

The banks of a lake ought to be picturesque, she thought, deciding that all her trudging hadn't been worth the effort. Even the sand was greyish, strewn with ugly purple shells and rank seaweed. You couldn't paddle, either, even if it had been warm enough to do so. The water was quite deep close to the bank and didn't look inviting at all. It just lurked there, almost motionless, like fog.

This is a sequel to All in the Blue Unclouded Weather, a book I may or may not have read as a child. (That title is familiar but the characters were not.)

It is about three sisters, living in a country town during the 1940s. (Heather is 14, Cathy turns 12 and, at a guess, Vivienne is nine or ten).

It's very episodic, more like a collection of sequential short stories, than an actual novel. The historical details are interesting, and the book does a good job of capturing the girls' perspectives and motivations and significant experiences. However, the descriptions of the season - autumn - were my favourite part.

When Nurse Durbach had whirled away to tackle a dozen other jobs, Vivienne had gazed out at the lawn, carpeted gloriously with fallen leaves. Some had blown against the window panes, attaching themselves like a frieze of red and gold paper decorations. [...] Some spiralled down to join the window-pane frieze, others drifted out across the lawn, some clung stubbornly to their stalks even when tugged by a strong gust of wind. There seemed to be some unfathomable pattern in the sequence of their falling. Autumn leaves would make beautiful dresses, she thought idly, if they could only be preserved and stitched together. Such garments would be breathtaking - a rich gold and red fabric that would rustle at the wearer's every movement.

Came Back to Show You I Could Fly is a coming of age story. It proves that you can over come anything you want and that you can gain more and more self respect and confidence.

Robin Klein is an author I remember from my younger years, spending hours between my school's library and the local one. I remember that I read a few of her books, the only problem being that aside from Hating Alison Ashley, I couldn't remember any of the titles of the ones I read and when I look at Klein's list of MG/YA works I'm not sure if the titles seem familiar because I read them or just because I saw them on the shelves a lot. So when I came across (as I do!) Came Back To Show You I Could Fly in one of my secondhand store haunts for a dollar, I thought why not?

Seymour is eleven years old and stuck with a friend of his mother's for the summer holidays. While escaping some unfriendly kids in the neighbourhood, Seymour finds himself in the yard of 20-year-old Angela, by whom he is immediately captivated. She brings colour into his dull, boring world just by her presence. But there's a lot more going on in Angie's world than Seymour realises.

This novel shows a different view of drug addiction from the eyes of a naive young boy. Seymour is smitten by Angie but he also notices her mood swings, her strange sleeping habits where she seems 'sick', her tense relationship with her family and her erratic personality. It takes Seymour a little while to realise what's really going on in Angie's world and when he does, his personal development is outstanding. He shows the courage needed to confront someone who uses drugs as Angie does, and then the progress made in his own life, read in Postscript, is heart warming. Its as if his friendship with Angie, even as unstable as she was, gave him the courage to be a more active participant in his own life. Remarkable.

3.5 stars½

What happens when three teenage girls are alone in a 100 year old house, with a dark past?

I first read this book when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old, and had stolen it from my older sister. And boy, did it scare the pants off me! Robin Klein really does have an amazing talent for descriptive writing, which captivates the audience.

It's a book that I pull out every two years or so, and each time I do the familiar chills run up my spine, even though I know what the conclusion is. That this book can still evoke such a response is a credit to Robin's writing.

Storywise, it concerns Patricia a lonely and social awkward teenager who is invited to spend a weekend with the schools most popular duo in a fleeting moment of gratitude. She's clearly not welcome, however can't do anything about this situation as the house they're staying is is miles away in the bush.

What develops is a thriller of a tale with elements of horror, psychological warfare and self-examination. The backstories for the main characters really make this book come alive, and it's something that can be related to by teens today. It's a quick read, and you need to keep in mind that it's YA, but the story, characters, and feeling will stick with you for a while.

I'm not sure if it's included in each edition, but the book that I have depicted the plans of the actual house which really aided the story.

I did not enjoy this book, but I give it two stars because it wasn't horrible but I didn't like it either.

The Crookbook was so much awesome fun! Bugging me to no end that I can't find the cover anywhere online though. I think I might own this... if that is the case, I'll scan it in when I'm back home!

The Crookbook was so much awesome fun! Bugging me to no end that I can't find the cover anywhere online though. I think I might own this... if that is the case, I'll scan it in when I'm back home!

Good teenage fiction

Hating Alison Ashley
Robin Klein

‘Hating Alison Ashley’ is a fantastic book by Robin Klein. It starts with Erica Yurken, a sixth grader who knows she is predestined to be an actress. She feels superior to the rest of her school and dreams to herself all the time about being on stage with the lights, the glittering dress, the fancy shoes; Erica knows it’s hers for the taking.
Then, one day, Alison Ashley shows up.
Alison Ashley is beautiful, smart, rich, well-mannered, and in every single way, perfect. With a bossy older sister, a hermit brother, and a little sister that acts like a horse and takes up most of the shared bedroom, Erica doesn’t need any more trouble. So she decides she has to get back at Alison for showing her up all the time, and school camp seems the perfect place for doing just that.
A hilarious, Australian story that will capture the attention of readers aged nine to sixteen.-
This brilliantly-written book is entertaining from the first sentence to the last and is perfect to curl up with and read from beginning to end.
Some other books by Robin Klein are…

· All in the blue unclouded weather
· Dresses of red and gold
· Laurie loved me best
· The sky in silver lace

I would rate this book five stars out of five.

simple language, evokes well the clarity and passion of young minds, good classroom and shopping centre settings, evokes the adult well... a real discussable between parent and child... would work as reading together parent and child or independent reading...for both parent and child

I just love this little book! The delightful and charming story of Emily and her pet Stegosaurus, "Thing." When Emily finds a pet rock at the park she never knew she would end up sharing her life and flat with a TV-watching "Thing." But life is not without it's problems, like how do you hide a green stegosaurus and green stegosaurus footprints from your landlady, Mrs McIlvray? "Thing" is very lovable and provides his own solutions!

Unbelievably, I managed to live the first thirty years of my life without ever reading this book. Since it is a classic of Australian children's literature, I thought I'd better read it before I give it out at the xmas fair. I'm not sorry I did. This was a great story of what it is like to be jealous of someone and embarrassed about your own family. Definitely worth the read.

Yurk is jealous of Alison, who is elegant, poised, well dressed, has healthy lunches and lives in a nice house. Even as she hates Alison, Yurk strives to be like her. Until she finds something about Alison that she is not jealous of. A great book for tweens and teens.

Children's mind, candid and humorous.

"Fang", "The Butcher's Apprentice", "Monday Blues" and more - all kid's classics (many of which I had committed to memory). Illustrations by Ann James were excellent., too. I just don't think I'll ever love an author more than I loved Robin Klein as a kid...½

Genre Bildungsroman
Reading age 12 to 15

Awards:
Human Rights Medal for Literature, Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, 1989. CBCA Book of the Year Award, Older Readers, 1990. COOL Award winner (Secondary Readers) 1992

Annotation:
Seymour is a lonely little boy, a victim of his mother's paranoia. When he is sent to stay with a fussy guardian he meets the dazzling Angie. Theirs is an unusual friendship but each help the other-Angie prompts confidence in Seymour and in turn Seymour helps Angie confront the truth about her addiction and circumstances.

An inspiring story of a drug addict named Angie who takes under her wing a young boy named Seymour to build up his confidence while discovering in herself a will to live. A great story.

When Emily Forbes finds a rock in a nearby park, she has no idea that it is the egg of a prehistoric creature. She calls it Thing. When it hatches, Emily and her mother find themselves with a playful, apple-green, prehistoric, vegetarian TV addict. Winner of the Junior Book of the Year 1983.