A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French, ISBN 9780732290214

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In 1894 twelve-year-old Matilda flees the city slums to find her unknown father and his farm. But as drought bites deep her father has turned swaggie, member of the Shearers' Union. He's wanted by the troopers for burning down a shearing shed, and his daughter has to watch as the terrifying events by the billabong unfold. You'll never take me alive, said he.
With the enigmatic brown-skinned Auntie Love, eccentric shearers, and the autocratic Mr Drinkwater, Matilda fights to live her father's dream: to breed the best sheep in the district, while a nation is created from a collection of colonies at the bottom of the world.
Set against drought, flood, bushfire, war and jubilation, this is a story rooted in the words of our most famous national song, Waltzing Matilda. It is a love-song to a land and to a nation, told from the points of view of those who had no vote in 1901: the women, the Indigenous people, the Chinese market-gardeners, the Afghan traders. It is the story of how we became Australia.
Ages 10-14

RRP: $19.99

About the Author: Jackie French

Jackie French wrote her first children's novel, Rainstones, living in a shed with a wallaby called Fred, a black snake called Gladys and a wombat called Smudge. (It was described by the editor at HarperCollins as the messiest, worst spelt manuscript they'd ever received . . . but has been deeply loved by tens of thousands of readers since.)
The messiness was mostly due to Smudge the wombat, who had a particular hatred for Jackie's typewriter (an old one she'd found at the dump) and left his droppings nightly on the keyboard. But the spelling was due to she fact that she's dyslexic, and can't focus on single words to see if they're spelt properly or not.
Jackie was born Sydney in 1953, grew up in Brisbane, graduated from the University of Queensland and moved to her present home in the NSW bush in her early twenties. She and her husband and son live in a house made of stone from the creek, with a wombat named Pudge, a mob of larriken lyrebirds, a frequently drunk goanna, a rambling garden and a waterwheel that provides their power when it's too cloudy for the solar panels.
In the past ten years she has published over sixty books on farming, gardening and pest control, as well as her award-winning children's fiction. She writes for all age groups, from the Hairy Charlie books for the under sixes through 'chapter books' like A Wombat Named Bosco, The Warrior and Annie's Pouch for six to twelve year olds, to novels and short stories for ten to fourteen year olds. These include Walking the Boundaries, Beyond the Boundaries, Somewhere Around the Corner, Alien Games, Mind's Eye, The Secret Beach, Rainstones, Summerland, The Book of Unicorns and Dancing with Ben Hall, as well as the picture book Mermaids (with Bernard Rosa) for all ages.
Somewhere Around the Corner was named the Honour Book in the 1995 CBC awards for younger readers. Her other books have been shortlisted for many other awards including the CBC Award (1992), NSW Premier's Award (1991), Royal Blind Society Talking Book of the Year (1994), Wilderness Society Award (1993) and a Human Rights Award (1994), and she has been a recipient of two Commonwealth Literary Awards. Her work has also been translated into French and German.

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