Brotherband: The Outcasts

Author: John Flanagan:
Short-listed for the Children's Book Council of Australia 2012 Book of the Year

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Following the successful international best-seller Ranger’s Apprentice, John Flanagan’s new series Brotherband will be appreciated by younger and older readers.

Flanagan deals with issues such as bullying and being ostracised. Brotherband is about boys who are seen as losers but battle on to achieve their goals.

When I was twelve years old we moved to a small country town. It has been many years but I still remember the pain when the most popular students chose their teams for softball from the most popular kids to the least popular and no one wanted me! Being thought of as worthless does enormous damage to children. In Brotherband eight boys face the same pain.

John Flanagan creates a world of seafaring adventures, treacherous pirates and epic battles. In Skandia, there is only one way to become a warrior. When boys turn sixteen they are grouped together and chosen for teams called brotherbands. They must endure three months of gruelling training in seamanship, weapons and battle tactics. When Hal Mikkelson finds himself the unwilling leader of a brotherband made up of misfits and outcasts, he must step up to the challenge. His team consists of such boys as the thief, the huge blind boy and the boy who mimics animals. Hal himself is an outcast as his mother is not Scandian. The "Heron" brotherband might not have the strength and numbers of the other teams, but use their strange skills, inventiveness, ingenuity and courage to succeed.

Flanagan will get readers thinking about bullying issues while enjoying a great story. The boys may have fewer in their team and they may be picked on by the other teams but they go about winning points with good humour and against the odds. The story also tells young readers not to give up when things are tough. This is certainly the case when we see the boys sailing away from Scandia ready for the adventures and challenges of the second book The Invaders.

Anne Montgomery
Odell Learning Resources Centre

When We Were Two

Author: Robert Newton  

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It is 1914. Brothers Dan and Eddie can no longer cope with home life in a country town in New South Wales.  Even their dog, Bess, has suffered since their mother left home and headed for the coast. Dan decides to leave and Eddie follows: dog and all, they start to walk over the mountains to Port Macquarie. Dan will have to be responsible for their journey into the unknown.

There are no streetlights in the small towns they will pass through. The roads are dirt tracks. There are no cars, only horses and carts.  The characters they meet on the roads have their own reasons for travelling: not all are reputable. One group have a single ambition – to join up to fight in The Great War. These would-be soldiers protect the lads.  The brothers left home as boys wanting  to change their difficult circumstances. They arrive having matured through their experiences and comradeship.

This story will touch your heart... suitable for Year 5 and up.

Reviewed by Gayle Davidson  
Odell Learning Resources Centre

Past the Shallows

Author: Favel Parrett

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Beyond the shallows, as we all know, you get into deep water. A family ekes out an existence diving for abalone in the south of Tasmania. Harry, the smallest boy of the family is protected… he has not been forced to go on the boat because of his sea-sickness, and his older brother Miles protects him from their sometimes violent father. The sea is everywhere, but it seems the land is not necessarily safer.

This first novel has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award this year, and it is a sad but familiar story. We slowly discover through emerging memories the events of the past that have shaped the unhappy present. There are many glimpses of the familiar for Australian readers: familiar show bags, familiar rural scenes, familiar guarded comments  from the adults who surround the family.

The narrator’s role is passed deftly but abruptly between three boys, so the twin narratives of history and the present are formed from fragments. As the book progresses these start to make a complete story but it is still up to the reader to assemble the whole. The author does an excellent job of conveying the different degrees of innocence and perspective of the two boys.

There is little graphical “adult” material apart from some swearing. The issues and themes, however, and tragedies that befall the characters, means this is more of an older teens or adult read.

Andrew Lack
Head of the Odell Learning Resources Centre