John Larkin (1)

Kept me reading until the end. This is the story of a homeless girl who runs away from her aunt and uncle after her Uncle tries to abuse her. Her uncle is into some seriously shady business and so she steals a huge amount of cash from his home safe which she uses to hire a prostitute to pretend that she is her mother, so that she can enrol into another school in a different suburb. At night she sleeps on trains in rail yards or abandoned houses. Her story is told to a writer who meets her at a cafe. As she talks to him, she remembers more and more about her past that she had repressed. Mature readers - adult themes.… (altro)

Goon Town follows the adventures of four unlikely friends as they uncover a unique way to get ahead on their school project. After several attempts at getting along and trying to start their project, Dermot, Jade, Leon and Paige stumble across a time machine invented by the mysterious Professor Snodgrass who has recently disappeared and is nowhere to be seen. John Larkin presents the themes of friendship and growing up in a wonderfully humorous way that not only enables the reader to develop affection for the characters but also manages to capture that particular cruelty which only children can display. Although humour provides a great dimension to the book, at times the narrative style seems a little forced and this does detract somewhat from the great depiction of the relationships which begin to develop along the perilous quest. While the ideas and narrative are good, one feels that there was something a little more that Larkin may have wanted to get across in Goon Town. Nonetheless, Goon Town is a charming novel about friendship, understanding and acceptance that would be suitable for readers aged nine-plus.

Natalie Crawford is the children’s specialist at Dymocks Claremont, WA

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker

Book information
Title, subtitle Goon Town
Author John Larkin
Number of pages 192 pp
First Published 2008 Lindfield, NSW by Scholastic Australia
Book Type1 Novel
Genre Fantasy.Humour.School
Reading age 10 to 13


Annotation:
Leon, Dermott, Paige and Jade have been given the WORST homework assignment which is to study their town, Goon, during the Cretaceous period.
They take this a little too literally. Leon and Dermott are the class nerds, while Paige and Jade are the pretty clever girls. A total mismatch which somehow gets results when they find Professor Snodgrass’ time machine, the Wheel of Goon, a rotary hoist clothesline, that takes them back in time thus enabling them to do some face to dinosaur research.
A series of fake climaxes are a feature of this farce which is a story within a film script with a capricious author who includes unused scenes and alternative endings.
Larkin is a master wit and this novel has some fine moments but overall it doesn’t satisfy.

Themes in this book:
Dinosaurs. Homework. Inventions. Motion pictures. Television. Time travel. Writing.… (altro)