FRANKENPHONE

12-year-old girlboss Esther Foot needs a phone to run her business. Instead, she finds a phone that knows her business. Esther's plans are being thwarted at every turn. First of all, her cousins have been moved to the big city against their will. Secondly, annoying, try-hard, gullible Jack seems determined to become her new stepdad. Thirdly, Linga Longa – the beautiful beach house of their family's dreams – is being put up for sale. Esther needs cold hard cash – to save Linga Longa, and rescue her cousends. To do that, she needs to start a business. And to do that, she needs a mobile phone. But the phone she happens upon has mutant powers. It can read minds – and send messages on its own. And the mysterious agency behind the phone is determined to get it back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jessica LimC is an Australian journalist, photographer, and writer of funny, heartfelt kidlit. Her first job was a bit of a Becky Bloomwood affair, writing a humorous column as ‘Shopgirl' to cover the local retail sector (a job she scored from an internship because she wore a different pair of shoes to work each day). After Shopgirl, Jessica and her shoes did a neat side-step into photography, starting a family portrait business, contributing fashion editorials to newspapers and magazines, and writing for fun – something, incidentally, that she would like to keep doing for a long time yet.