Anne Farrell’s Shadow Summer (Hodder) has never had the attention it deserves. It tells of a young girl’s personal traumas and is, in fact, a realistic case study in temporary but genuine mental disturbance. Anne Farrell’s books are set on a Tasmanian dairy farm, and in the Arthur Ransome manner, are full of homely, everyday detail, natural dialogue and unforced· situa­tions. • Her earlier books The Gift-Wrapped Pony, The Calf on Shale Hill, and Eight Days at Gurara, are also worth reading, especially since they deal with the same characters and location. Anne Farrell is a writer who deserves to be better known.

Max Fatchen writes action-packed old-style lusty adventure yams with clear­cut villains and worthy young heroes who always triumph in the end. Chase Through the Night (Methuen) tells of three bank robbers holed up in a north Queensland town with their hostages. Their get-away attempt is thwarted by an old blind Aboriginal who invokes ancient and unknown forces. A similar device is used in The Spirit Wind (Methuen), a tum of the century story of a Scandinavian boy who jumps ship in Australian waters, and is pursued by the vicious and vindictive mate, the formid­able Heinrich the Bull. The River Kings (Magnet) is set in the same period and tells of a boy who runs away from a harsh step-father to work on a Murray River boat.

Alan Marshall’s quest-saga fantasy Whispering in the Wind (Puffin) deserves to be much better known. In it Peter and an old man named Crooked Mick set off to search for the last surviving Beautiful Princess. It is all in the old European fairy-tale tradition, but set in Australia and so the giant is a Jarrah Giant, the kangaroo is magic (he can pull anything out of his pouch) and the castle is guarded by a Bunyip. It is all carried along at a splendid romp due to Alan Marshall’s exuberant style and sense of humour.

David Martin’s somewhat exotic and sometimes extravagant children’s nov­els offer unusual characters: and settings, lot of action and much to think about They tend to be abou,t disadvantaged minority groups. Hughie (Nelson/Macmillan pb.) is an Aboriginal boy living in a Walgett-type town; The Chinese Boy (Hodder) lives at Kiandra in the gold-rush days of the 1860s and suffers in the Lambing Flats riots at the book’s climax; The Man in the Red Turban (Hutchinson) is one of those Depression-days itinerant Indian hawkers, plying his wares along the Overis and Murray Valleys. The Cabbie’s Daughter (Hodder) is my own favourite. Set in Beechworth in 1902, this picar­esque novel describes the ups and downs of a girl who has to cope with a cruel world in having to hold her family together, her father being a drunken no-hoper and her mother having died in the first chapter. It is not as grim as it sounds for there is lots of humorous incident.

Christobel Mattingley’s New Patches for Old (Penguin) is a sympathetic account of the difficulties faced by an English teenage immigrant girl in adapting to Australian life, Younger readers might find The Jetty or Battle for the Galah Trees more rewarding.

Elyne Mitchell’s ‘Brumby’ stories such as the earlier The Silver Brumby or the more recent Snowy River Brumby (Hutchinson) are stories about wild horses and are full of the writer’s love of these often beautiful animals and the heady exhilaration she feels for her Australian Alps settings.

Lilith Norman’s first book Climb a Lonely Hill (Fontana Lions) remains her simplest and best. Her story of the survival of two children stranded in outback Australia is a much more admirable achievement than the better known Walkabout and doesn’t have the objectionable racism inherent in that book.

Margaret Paice is an under-valued author. She never wins the prizes or even comes close, and yet her books have the right ingredient for appeal to this age group, for they have strong story lines, always adventurous. Accuracy of background detail is important to her and she faces modern problems head-on. Run to the Mountains (Fontana Lions) tells of a sixteen year old girl’s journey across Australia to meet a father she hasn’t seen for ten years. The inland cattle station setting has its own appeal, but the main interest is the thematic one of personality conflict. Shadow of Wings (Fontana Lions) is set in a small Queensland sugar town in 1933. Its hero determined to become a pilot rather than become a drifter like his father.

Ruth Park’s distinguished new children’s novel, Playing Beatie Bow (Nelson) is too good to miss. Her accomplished style and imaginative ideas are a gift to young readers. The modern heroine of this novel is transported back in time to The Rocks (Sydney) area of the previous century. Come Danger, Come Darkness (Hodder) is set in the penal settlement days at Norfolk Island and is equally as absorbing. Callie’s Castle is also first class.

Mary Patchett’s The Brumby (Penguin) is not one of those jolly pony club stories. It is a powerful novel about the men and animals of the Australian bush, while the material of Ajax the Warrior (Penguin) is nothing but autobiography selectively presented in episodic form. Given her interesting and adventurous childhood on a cattle station, the result makes absorbing reading. There are lots more books by the same author.

Joan Phipson’s The Cats (Piccolo) is a hair-raising novel which starts to build up its tension on page one and never lets up. It tells of the feral-cat terror awaiting two budding teenage criminals who kidnap another two boys and take them into the bush as hostages. The Boundary Riders (Penguin) remains as good as ever – a lot-in-the-bush story, which explores the notions of leadership and of civilisation itself.

Noreen Shelley’s Faces in a Looking Glass (Oxford) is a story of a fourteen-year-old girl’s developing awareness of the truths of other people and herself, provoked by her encounter with an angry woman who ill-treats a baby.

Ivan Southall’s earlier disaster novel such as Ash Road, Hill’s End or To the Wild Sky (Penguin), if over-long, are probably more enjoyable than the personal agonising of more recent books such as Bread and Honey or Josh (Penguin).

Colin Thiele is well known to children through two of his books having been made into popular films – Storm Boy and Blue Fin (Rigby). His first effort at writing for children Sun on the Stubble (Rigby) is one of the most successful of modern Australian children’s books and has been reprinted annually. However, no reader should allow himself to miss out on Uncle Gustav’s Ghosts (Rigby), a collection of hilarious stories worthy of Steele Rudd or James Thurber. Being episodic and funny, it is ideal for classroom use. It is one of those books the young will need little urging to finish once introduced to it. There is more fun again in Shadow on the Hills (Rigby) but other deeper emotions are stirred, for some dark aspects of life are introduced. Thiele is never happier than when reproducing the fractured syntax of his Barossa-Deutsch forbears: ‘I vill tonight dis cheeky beggar a lesson learn; he vill t’ink a t’underclap has been by the d’t’roat got.

Mary White is a comparative newcomer but an interesting one. Her most recent book Mind Wave (Methuen) is an attempt as modern fantasy of a sort, for it depends on accepting the possibility of a Sydney girl being in telepathic contact with a boy in England (in Berkhampstead, where the author used to live) Dominic (Puffin) is the story of a creative-minded boy who lives with an unconventional mother. He has never seen his father and, as the novel progresss, is shoked and hurt to discover the truth about him. Breakup is also worth a look.

Patricia Wrightson is Australia’s finest writer for children. The degree of intellect, wit, dedication, imagination and sheer craftmanship in her work is surpassed by no other. No serious reader, child or adult, can afford to miss the experience of I Own the Racecourse! or Down to Earth (Penguin) which, for all their simplicity, are metaphysical examinations of the nature of reality, Rocks of Honey (Penguin) is a superb account of the problems of an Aboriginal boy forced to reconcile and bridge two culture. The Nargun and the Stars (Penguin) is soon to be seen as a film, a fact which should lead more children to experience the book. I wish the same could be said for The Feather Star (Hutchinson) a book which I feel is an absolutely ideal teenage novel – one which should be snapped up by some paperback publisher and promoted.