GRACE

Eleven-year-old Grace only knows one world – the world of her mum and dad and twin brothers, and the strict religious community they belong to. But when her dad is thrown out of the church for asking questions, Grace is torn. How can she stay in the church and keep her family together?

There is great potential for this book to be used to springboard lessons on tolerance, religion, different types of family and the concept of freedom. Like many of Morris’s book, this book would spark fantastic discussions about prejudice and how we treat those who are different from us. Morris Gleitzman’s stories are immensely popular with teachers and librarians because they are issue-based and because they promote discussion and criticism of a wide range of issues for kids. Morris’s books are also ideally suitable for the reluctant reader, and capture the important pre-pubescent age group. Morris has a high profile in the media, is a brilliant speaker at schools, and tours well. He is a wonderful self-promoter and a familiar face with those in the educational sector.

Morris Gleitzman is one of the most successful and best-loved children’s authors in Australia. He has written widely for both children and young adults, including the hugely successful young adult novel Two Weeks with the Queen, which became an international bestseller and was also adapted into a play. Other books to his credit include Belly Flop, Water Wings and Wicked!, a brilliant novel published in six parts, written in collaboration with Paul Jennings. Misery Guts received the 1992 Children’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book Award, and since then he has written a number of bestselling children’s books, including Worry Warts, Puppy Fat, Blabber Mouth, Sticky Beak, Bumface, Gift of the Gab, Adults Only, Boy Overboard, Girl Underground, Teacher’s Pet and Doubting Thomas. His three books featuring Limpy the cane toad, Toad Rage, Toad Heaven, Toad Away and now Toad Surprise (2008) have all been runaway successes, as have his latest two novels about microbes, Worm Story and Aristotle’s Nostril. In 2005 he wrote the highly successful and critically acclaimed Once, an Honour Book in the 2006 CBC Book of the Year Awards. Early in 2008, he published Then, the brilliant and moving sequel to Once.