Nights in the Sun (Colin Bowles, Bolinda, $24.95 cd, ISBN 1740947630) ****

I'm yet to be convinced of a widespread market for audio versions of YA novels, but this book is an ideal choice. As well as being usefully episodic and highly dramatic these tales of Broome in 1926 told by Tom Sawyer-like Sam will appeal to adolescents and also to listeners who loved the broadcasts of Hugh Lunn's Over the Top with Jim. Feckless 14-year-old Sam is king of the town of Broome because, in his peripatetic way, he engages with all levels of people, unusual in this class- and race-ridden society. His father is manager of the Sun Picture Theatre with Sam as usher leading patrons to their race-determined seats. His outlook is influenced by a steady diet of movie heroes-he falls in love with a new girl in town because she looks like Mary Pickford, and idolises her father, 'the new copper', because he seems as brave as Tom Mix. Of course, this is the perfect set up to contrast the clear values and outcomes of movies with the much muddier circumstances of the complicated town. The book opens with Sam meeting a Filipino crewman from a pearl lugger and his huge, intellectually disabled brother who are pushing the body of a Japanese diver in a cart. Each subsequent short chapter has a similar sharp incident that keeps the narrative whizzing along while the seeds of a tragedy build.

Kerry White's Australian Children's Books, a Bibliography vol. 3 was published this year by MUP

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2004, Thorpe-Bowker