Young Adut Fiction

Australian Writer 

Clare Strahan

Cracked

Allen & Unwin   2014  $19.99pb  308pp

ISBN 978 1 7433 1603 0

Themes: Dealing with emotions/ Family life/ First love/ Friendship/ High school life/   

Clare Strahan -Image Allen & Unwin

Being fifteen, attending a school you hate, seeing your much loved dog getting old, having a weirdo mother and a missing father and finally being arrested for vandalism doesn’t add up to a cool year for Clover. It’s no wonder she feels she is about to crack into small shards and be trampled into the ground.  A first novel, this is a poignant, often funny and essentially truthful story of a teenager’s bid to make sense of the seemingly crazy world she inhabits. It is a story in which so many readers will recognise themselves.     

 Year 9 up/ Age 13 up

Note: Publishers quite often send me great material asking me not to blog anything about it until the publication date. What I usually do is to read the book (as I did with this one), make some notes and then tag the file to alert me just before the right date. Unfortunately in the way of computers sometimes the file just vanishes with the tag attached. That is why this book, which was published earlier in the year, is only appearing here now.    Let’s hope it hasn’t sold out because I know so many readers (especially girls) who would love it and learn from it.

HELP!!

While I have your attention – does anyone out there know much about the set up of blogs? I am being driven mad by the line spacing on mine. In the draft it looks perfect – single-spaced as I want – but 8 times out of 10, I ‘publish’ and there it goes again – double spaced in the bib details and spoiling the whole look of it.  The more I fiddle with it – the worse it gets. It is just a very simple blog  - maybe that is the trouble.
Computer gurus I find, though willing enough to try, are not experts in the set up of blogs and their consequent troubles.
What will it do when I push 'publish' for this entry I woder?