'Jackie French has a passion for history, and an enviable ability to weave the fascinating minutiae of everyday life into a good story.' - Magpies Magazine Read moreĪ Waltz for Matilda, written by the well known Australian author Jackie French is set from 1894 to 1915. Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this is the untold story behind Australia's early years as an emerging nation. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams.ĭrawing on the well-known poem by A.B. Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war and jubilation, this is the story of one girl's journey towards independence. In front of his terrified daughter, he makes a stand against them, defiant to the last.

Her father has turned swaggie and he's wanted by the troopers. But drought grips the land, and the shearers are on strike. In 1894, twelve-year-old Matilda flees the city slums to find her unknown father and his farm. 'Once a jolly swagman camped by a BillabongĪnd he sang as he watched and waited till his Billy boiled It's absolutely engrossing.The story behind Banjo Paterson's iconic Australian song. 'I've been telling all my friends to read this book, and to give it to their kids to read. 'If every Australian history class in the country could be taught by Jackie French, we'd have an entire generation of kids with an enormous thirst for knowledge about our early European settlement and a whole lot more compassion for those who already called this country home.' - Sunday Tasmanian Irresistible for history buffs of any age.' - Good Reading Magazine, five stars ' is one of few masters who can embed historic characters in rattling good tales, and her meticulous research is seamlessly inserted so that you live the detail rather than learn it. Honour Book - CBCA 2012 (Younger Reader's Book of the Year) No less incredible is the enduring love between the gentleman surgeon and the convict girl who was saved from the death penalty and became a great lady in her own right. This true story follows the brothers as they make their way in the world - one as a sailor, serving in the Royal Navy, the other a hero of the Battle of Waterloo.

And yet he is haunted by the memories of the Cadigal warriors who will one day come to claim him as one of their own. Nanberry is clever and uses his unique gifts as an interpreter to bridge the two worlds he lives in.With his white brother, Andrew, he witnesses the struggles of the colonists to keep their precarious grip on a hostile wilderness. It's 1789, and as the new colony in Sydney Cove is established, Surgeon John White defies convention and adopts Nanberry, an Aboriginal boy, to raise as his son. The amazing story of Australia's first surgeon and the boy he adopted.

A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French