It was a sunny, light-aired day, and we walked quickly down the street strewn with gumnuts. I remember taking several deep breaths, as if to reassure myself that whatever had happened to my strong, smiling uncle, I was still alive and was going to keep on living, and that life and breath were very good things. Discoveries from the past, hopes for the future ? and the decisions we make on a knife edge that clarify our own sense of self. These elements inform Ursula Dubosarsky's multi-award-winning novels and are in sharp, bright evidence in these eleven beautifully crafted short stories, by turns poignant, funny, reflective and joyful ? nearly always mercurial ? collected together for the first time. The most graceful, most original writer for young people in Australia-probably the world (Sonya Hartnett). AUTHOR: Ursula Dubosarsky is one of Australia's most beloved and acclaimed authors. She has written more than sixty books ? picture books, non- fiction, play scripts, early readers, and novels for adolescents. Her books have been published widely throughout the English-speaking world and translated into fifteen languages. Ursula was the Australian Children's Laureate from 2020-2021. She has won nine state literary awards in Australia, the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award, and has been nominated internationally for both the Astrid Lindgren (multiple times) and Hans Christian Andersen awards. Adelaide's Windmill Theatre's production, Plop!, based on Ursula's picture book The Terrible Plop (illustrated by Andrew Joyner), toured Australia as well as New York, New Jersey and Pittsburgh in the United States. Her picture book The March of the Ants (illustrated by Tohby Riddle) provided a thematic thread for the State Library of New South Wales' major exhibition, 'Imagine? the Wonder of Picture Books'. And her reimagining of Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant has been performed, to great acclaim, as The Giant's Garden at the 2025 Adelaide Arts Festival.
