BOOKS
Dust by Christine Bongers
Call Number: F BON
ISBN: 9781741664461
Publication Date: 2009
Dust is a coming of age novel set against the cultural backdrop of 1970's Australia and the particular social and environmental climate of rural Queensland at that time. Told by 12 year old Cecelia Maria, it covers the events of several months in late 1972 and early 1973 as Cecelia battles the injustices of being the only girl in a large Catholic family, the difficulties of living and working on the land during an extended period of drought, and the schoolyard politics of the local primary and high school. Dust is a novel of transition: from drought to flood, from childhood to adolescence, from innocence to maturity, and from ignorance to hard-won wisdom.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
Call Number: F BRA
ISBN: 9780385729338
Publication Date: 2001
Best friends Lena, Tibby, Bridget and Carmen are preparing to spend their first summer apart. When the girls discover a second hand pair of jeans look great on all of them they promise to rotate the magical jeans, dubbed 'the travelling pants', amongst them and at the summer's end record their favourite adventure while wearing the pants. The concept of transitioning in to a new phase of life is explored in this novel. The challenges they face grow more difficult, and growing up requires them to find greater maturity, wisdom, and courage than ever before.
Butterflies by Susanne Gervay
Call Number: SF GER
ISBN: 0207198500
Publication Date: 2001
Katherine is almost eighteen, she is facing all the normal angst of a young adult with end of year exams, school, friendships, relationships and home life. However she was severely burned when she was three and has endured much pain and trauma and long terms in hospital with surgery to try and correct her disfigurement. All she really wants is to be normal, like everyone else. This novel explores the concept of transitions through focusing on how the trauma of being burned impacts a child’s development and growth as well as influences a family’s life.
Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden
Call Number: F MAR
ISBN: 9780439829106
Publication Date: 2006
This novel follows the journey of eight high school friends in a remote country town whose lives are suddenly and violently upended by a war that no one saw coming. Cut off from their families, these eight teenagers must learn to escape, survive and fight back against a hostile military force. One of the main themes associated with this book is the transition from innocence to experience, which is seen as the characters change from innocent teenagers to hardened soldiers.
Holes by Louis Sachar
Call Number: F SAC
ISBN: 9780440414803
Publication Date: 2007
Stanley Yelnats has had awful luck his whole life. So Stanley is not too surprised when he is sent to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility for a crime he did not commit. At the correctional facility life becomes much more of a challenge for Stanley but soon he makes friends, finds treasure and develops a new sense of self. It is through following Stanley’s journey as he faces hardships at the correctional facility that Louis Sachar explores the concept of transition and how it helps shape us.
The Red Tree by Shaun Tan
Call Number: F TAN
ISBN: 0734401728
Publication Date: 2002
A small child awakes to find blackened leaves falling from her bedroom ceiling, threatening to quietly overwhelm her. 'Sometimes you wake up with nothing to look forward to...' As she wanders around a world that is complex, puzzling and alienating, she is overtaken by a myriad of feelings. Just as it seems all hope is lost, the girl returns to her bedroom to find that a tiny red seedling has grown to fill the room with warm light. As a kind of fable, The Red Tree seeks to remind us that, though some bad feelings are inevitable, they are always tempered by hope. It is through looking at a little girls journey from anxiety, depression and loneliness to self discovery that this picture book explores the concept of transitions.
Grief Girl : my true story by Erin Vincent
Call Number: SN 155.9 VIN
ISBN: 9780330422987
Publication Date: 2007
It's just another October day until Erin’s parents are hit by a speeding tow truck. Mom dies instantly. Dad dies one month later, after doctors assure Erin he’s going to make it. Now Erin and her sister are left to raise their baby brother—and each other. This gripping memoir focuses on Erin and her sibling’s transition in to a new phase in their lives where they go from being naive children in a happy family to orphans burdened with the responsibility of coping on their own and dealing with the grief of losing their parents.
Ender’s Game by Scott Orson Card
Call Number: F CAR (Yellow Dot)
ISBN: 9780356501888
Publication Date: 1977 (this edition 2011)
Set in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperiled mankind after two conflicts with the ‘buggers’, an insectoid alien species. In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, children, including the novel's protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are trained from a very young age through increasingly difficult games including some in zero gravity, where Ender's tacticalgenius is revealed.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Call Number: SF COL
ISBN: 1407109081
Publication Date: 2009
The Hunger Games universe is a dystopia set in "Panem", a country consisting of the wealthy Capitol and twelve districts in varying states of poverty. Every year, children are chosen to participate in a compulsory annual televised death match called The Hunger Games. It follows young characters Katniss Everdeen and PeetaMellark as they battle through a deadly battle royal and face the results of their every action.
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Call Number: SF MEY
ISBN: 0141340134
Publication Date: 2012
Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the centre of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
48 Shades of Brown by Nick Earls
Call Number: SF EAR (Audio Book)
ISBN: 1741636019
Publication Date: 2002
In his final year at school, and with his parents overseas, Dan is forced to grow up fast when he moves in with his 22-year-old aunt Jacq and her eccentric friend Naomi. His story is light-hearted and funny, with a definite twist of insanity.
Scatterheartby Lili Wilkinson
Call Number: F WIL (Yellow Dot)
ISBN: 1742031293
Publication Date: 2010
Hanna Cheshire is rich and spoilt. She has servants to wait on her hand and foot — and Thomas, a passionate young tutor who fills her head with stories.Then one day her father disappears, and she is left to fend for herself. Alone and penniless, she is sentenced to transportation for a crime she didn't commit.Once Hannah considered Thomas beneath her: a servant, a commoner. Now she thinks of him more and more.
But will she ever see him again?
The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants by Ann Brashares
Call Number: SF BRA
ISBN: 1741660769
Publication Date: 2005
Four teenage girls — Carmen, Tibby, Bridget, and Lena — are best friends from Bethesda, Maryland, who are about to separate for the summer for the first time in their lives. Lena is spending the summer in Greece with her grandparents; Tibby is staying at home; Bridget is going to soccer camp in Mexico; and Carmen is visiting her father in South Carolina. On one of their final days they went shopping together, the girls find a seemingly ordinary pair of jeans that fit them all perfectly and flatter their figures, despite their very different measurements. The girls dub them the Traveling Pants and decide to share them equally over the course of the summer. They part the next day, and the film focuses on each girl's journey separately.
Girl, Missing by Sophie McKenzie
Call Number: F MCK
ISBN: 085707413X
Publication Date: 2006
The main character is 14-year-old Lauren Matthews, who lives in London with her adoptive parents,Lydia and Dave,and their son, Rory. Lauren is doing an essay for homework which is called 'Who Am I?'. It suddenly strikes Lauren that she doesn't know her true background. Eager to find out about her past, Lauren goes on a website called missing-Children.com, and finds an American girl named Martha Lauren Purditt, who went missing less than two months before Lauren was adopted.
Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman
Call Number: F GLA (Audio Book & Yellow Dot)
ISBN: 1741635039 or 0330271830
Publication Date: 1989 or 2001
Colin Mudford, a 12-year old Australian, is sent to stay with his uncle and his aunt who live in London while his brother is being treated for cancer. In England, Colin decides to meet the Queen by trying to sneak into Buckingham Palace because he wants to ask her for good doctors. Colin was caught by the police for trying to do that. He also tried to sneak into the best cancer hospital in London and was again, kicked out
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
Call Number: F AND (Yellow Dot)
ISBN: 0747598061
Publication Date: 2010
If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl?As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight… for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom.
No safe Place by Deborah Ellis
Call Number: F ELL (Yellow Dot)
ISBN: 1742374107
Publication Date: 2011
Orphaned and plagued with the grief of losing everyone he loves, 15-year-old Abdul has made a long, fraught journey from his war-torn home in Baghdad, only to end up in The Jungle - a squalid, makeshift migrant community in Calais.
Desperate to escape, he takes a spot in a small, overloaded England-bound boat that’s full of other illegal migrants
FILMS
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Duration: 99 minutes
Rated: PG
Cameron falls for the most beautiful girl in school. However, she is forbidden to date until the most hated girl in school, her ill-tempered older sister, goes out too. This film focuses on social issues such as dating, individualism and trust and how theseissues influence the main characters and enable them to grow and develop a better sense of self.
(PD/H/PE has a copy)
E.T. (1982)
Duration: 115 minutes
Rated: PG
A lost little alien, three million light years away from home. A lonely ten-year-old boy willing to take him home. Two lives are changed by a timeless adventure and a friendship that knows no earthly bounds.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2009)
Duration: 90 minutes
Rated: M
Bored and restless in his new home, Bruno, an innocent and naïve eight-year old, ignores his mother and sets off on an adventure in the woods. Soon he meets a young boy, and a surprising friendship develops.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Duration: 90 minutes
Rated: G
Whenever Worthing wants to leave his dull country life behind, he makes a visit to the city posing as his fictitious brother Earnest.
The Count of Monte Cristo (1934)
Duration: 126 minutes
Rated: M
Dantes is falsely accused of treason by his best friend Fernand and imprisoned on the island prison of Chateau d'If for 14 years, where he plots revenge against those who betrayed him. With the help of another prisoner, he escapes the island and proceeds to transform himself into the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo as part of his plan to exact revenge. Through Dantes's transition from sailor to prisoner to master of revenge this novel explores how changes in life can challenge, confront and transform an individual as well as others. Not necessarily for the better.
Holes (2003)
Duration: 118 minutes
Rated: PG
Stanley Yelnats has had awful luck his whole life. So Stanley is not too surprised when he is sent to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Correctional Facility for a crime he did not commit. At the correctional facility life becomes much more of a challenge for Stanley but soon he makes friends, finds treasure and develops a new sense of self. It is through following Stanley’s journey as he faces hardships at the correctional facility that we are able to explore the concept of transition and how it helps shape an individual.
The Club
Duration: 95 minutes
Rated: M
This movie is about a struggling Aussie rules football club who buys a talented young footballer for a record sum. Originally a play by David Williamson.
Babe
Duration: 92 minutes
Rated: G
This movie has strong characters Farmer Hoggett, Fly the sheepdog other farmyard animals and Babe the pig. Babe becomes a ‘sheepdog’ in this classic Australian film.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Duration: 104 minutes
Rated: PG
In the early 1900s, Miranda (Anne Lambert) attends a girls’ boarding school in Australia. One Valentine's Day, the school's typically strict headmistress treats the girls to a picnic field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it,…More Miranda and several other girls venture off. It's not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers have disappeared mysteriously.
Muriel’s Wedding
Duration: 101 minutes
Rated: M 15+
Muriel finds life in Porpoise Spit, Australia dull and spends her days alone in her room listening to Abba music and dreaming of her wedding day. Slight problem, Muriel has never had a date. Then she steals some money to go on a tropical vacation, meets a wacky friend, changes her name to Mariel, and turns her world upside down.
Whale Rider
Duration: 97 minutes
Rated: PG 13+
A contemporary story of love, rejection and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfil a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.
Oliver Twist
Duration: 100 minutes
Rated: M
The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then apprenticed with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London where he meets theArtful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets, which is led by the elderly criminal Fagin. Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens's unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid–nineteenth century.
Bend it like Beckham (2002)
Duration: 101 minutes
Rated: M
Jess an 18 year old smart and beautiful can bend a ball better than any boy she knows. She is set on playing for a top women’s team but there’s one problem: her strict parents want her to settle down with a nice Indian boy and learn how to cook!
Everything about this film relates to her transition into a footballer.
Pygmalion (1938)
Duration: 90 minutes
Rated: PG
This movie is about Snobbish Professor Higgins has a wager with his friend Colonel Pickering that with the right instruction he can pass off cockney ‘gutter snipe’ Eliza Doolittle as a ‘lady’ among high society.
PLAYS
Away by Michael Gow
Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler