THE SPANGLED DRONGO

Twelve-year-old Sam has soccer fever...

He lives with eccentric Auntie Amshara and Ronaldo his dog. His best friend is Goose, Captain of the local soccer team, until soccer crazed Jessica Bowles moves in next door. Sam soon discovers that there's more to life than just soccer.
In this warmly reassuring verse novel for younger readers, Steven Herrick continues to capture the extraordinary within a young person's everyday life.


Steven Herrick is one of Australia's most popular and widely heard children's authors. Many of his fourteen books for children and young adults have been on the CBCA Children's Book of the Year Awards shortlist, including Love, Ghosts and Nose Hair (1997), A Place like This (1999), The Simple Gift (2001), and Tom Jones Saves the World (2003). Do-wrong Ron (2004) and By the River (2005) were named Honour Books. Steven's first novel, Rhyming Boy, was published in 2008. At school his favourite subject was soccer, and he dreamed of football glory while he worked at various jobs. For the past twenty-five years he's been a full-time writer and regularly performs his work in schools throughout the world. He lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner and two sons.