sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

10 New Reviews

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I’ve just finished updating Aussiereviews, and added ten new reviews. This time they’re all fiction – two picture books, four children’s books, one young adult and three adult fiction.

This was a great batch of books, very diverse but all good. I loved A Little Election from the team responsible for the Little Lunch series. It’s a playground look at the election process – cute, funny but also insightful. Danny Katz is a wonderfully funny writer. His column in the Saturday tv magazine is one of my must-reads.

Another goodie is The Hairy Legs Heist by Sue Whiting. I should have reviewed this one earlier – I actually read it several months ago, and was honoured to officially launch it at this year’s All Saints Festival. It’s a wonderful mystery for upper primary aged readers.

Murphlet 3 enjoyed Wombat and Fox and it is his review on the site. The other seven books are all well worth reading as well. I love being a reviewer!

Children’s Book of the Year Awards

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I’ve been looking at the visitor statistics for Aussiereviews and noticed a rise in visitor numbers this week. Yesterday I had over 1000 page views. I wondered briefly why the sudden rise – then remembered that next week is Bookweek, and that the winners of the Children’s Book of the Year Awards will be announced on Friday. The lead up to this always increases the number of people searching for reviews, especially of the short listed books. Whilst I haven’t reviewed every book on the shortlist, I have reviewed most of them, so if you are searching for reviews of the shortlisted books, you can use the search function at Aussiereviews and read my comments.

I do enjoy the awards process. It’s always interesting to see which books from the previous year the judges have identified as best – and then, of course, to see the ultimate winners. If I was choosing the winners, I think I would choose:
Older readers – Don’t call me Ishmael!
Younger Readers – The tuckshop kid
Early childhood – Amy & Louis
Picture Book – The Arrival
Eve Pownall – Queenie: one elephant’s story

Of course, these are just gut instincts based on my reactions to the books I have read – and I confess I haven’t read them all. Nor have I used the judging criteria used by the judges. Still, I’ll enjoy comparing my results with the real awards on Friday.

In the meantime, good luck to all the nominees.

Nine New Reviews

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I have just added nine new books to Aussiereviews – that makes a grand total of 43 new reviews this moth. I think that is the most ever in one month. The new nine were all reviewed by me, but there have also been reviews this month from other reviewers, which is why the total is so high.

My favourite in this new batch is Killer Mackenzie, by Eve Martin, a young adult novel set in the Outback. It’s a funny read, best suited to teenage girls. Here’s a taste for you:
We drove along Sturt Creek’s main street, Main Street. (No joke!) If that was the main street, I hated to think what the other streets were like – if there were any other streets. I saw a Swimming Pool sign, so that was something. Sturts Creek seemed to have only one of anything: one chemist, one bank, one doctor, one supermarket, one milk bar…Definitely not somewhere you’d ever come for a holiday, so what was I doing there?
If you want to read the review, you can do so here.

My review pile doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller – they arrive as quickly as I can review them – quicker sometimes. But lucky me! I never run out of good reading material.

Aussiereviews Update

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Have just added 11 new reviews to Aussiereviews, again all children’s and young adult titles. Though I didn’t review it, one of my favourites in this batch is Night of the Fifth Moon, a new fantasy title by Anna Ciddor. I didn’t review it for Aussiereveiws because I’ve recently done so for Reading Time magazine. Anyway, this is a wonderful fantasy offering.

For younger readers my favourite from the batch is The Aussie A to Z, a fun picture book by Heath McKenzie. There are so many Aussie icons on every page. I see something new every time I read it to Murphlet 6, who loves it, too.

Anyway, enjoy!

Aussiereviews Updated

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I’ve just updated Aussiereviews with thirteen new reviews, all children’s and young adult books. Probably my favourite in this batch was Dragon Moon, by Carole Wilkinson (Black Dog), the final title in the Dragonkeeper trilogy. I was at the launch of the first title at the CBCA conference in Hobart in 2004, and remember Gary Crew singing its praises. He said something along the lines that the book would be the making of Carole and of Black Dog (I hope I haven’t misremembered this). I agree with him. This whole trilogy has been just beautiful, and, though Black Dog do produce oodles of good books, these are the nest.

Murphlet three enjoyed the two Jackie French books – Rotters and Squatters and Gold, Graves and Glory – which he read while he was sick and subsequently reviewed for the site. He gets a buzz out of reviewing for me, and his mother gets a buzz out of having a son who shows writing talent and an interest in what I do.

My ftp has been slow uploading the new pages today so while I was waiting I went back and looked at some my older reviews – the very first ones I wrote for the site, actually­ ­­­­– and fixed some typos and broken links. It was pleasing for me to see that my reviewing skills have grown since I started the site. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since I’ve written over a thousand reviews over the years. When I started the site I had no idea just what it would evolve into, but I’m pretty proud of it.

I think if you can look at what you’re doing and feel proud of it, you’re doing okay.

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For quite some time I’ve been planning to write an article about the review process. So many authors have questions or misconceptions about how to get reviewed, how reviewers work and what they should use reviews for, that i thought it would be worth an article.

Anyway last night I sat down to write an article on the subject – and ended up writing till almost midnight, by which time I’d written not one, but three articles. The first explores how books get reviewed (from being sent out by a publisher through to the review being published), the second looks at who reviews are read by, and why they are read at all and the third discusses how an author can use a review – to promote their book and as a form of feedback on their writing.

I was surprised that I had so much to say on the topic – though I shouldn’t have been surprised, as it’s a subject close to my heart and I’m never short of something to say on ANY topic. I’ll submit the three as a series to a writers’ ezine, and hopefully they’ll prove helpful.

Of course the subject of reviews is a bit subjective. I attended the Re:views conference in Adelaide a couple of years ago where the subject of who reviews were for was a hot topic of discussion, which I’m not sure was resolved. Personally, my reviews are aimed at the general reading public – they’re not long or in depth enough for academic purposes, and they are readily accessible to anyone who can use a search engine, without the need to buy a special review publication. Most of my hits come from search engines, though I do get a lot of repeat visitors, and I seem to have a high proportion of hits from education servers, suggesting that teachers and/or teacher/librarians and, of course, students, are among my visitors.

Anyway, I hope my reviews are useful to the majority of visitors. The fact I get over 300 visitors a day suggests that aussiereviews IS a useful resource.

Back at my desk today is about marking assignments for my tutoring job, so I’d best get on with it.

https://sallymurphy.com.au/2007/07/537/

sallymurphy.com.au