Goon Town (John Larkin, Scholastic, $14.99 pb, ISBN 9781741690170, February 2008) ***

Goon Town follows the adventures of four unlikely friends as they uncover a unique way to get ahead on their school project. After several attempts at getting along and trying to start their project, Dermot, Jade, Leon and Paige stumble across a time machine invented by the mysterious Professor Snodgrass who has recently disappeared and is nowhere to be seen. John Larkin presents the themes of friendship and growing up in a wonderfully humorous way that not only enables the reader to develop affection for the characters but also manages to capture that particular cruelty which only children can display. Although humour provides a great dimension to the book, at times the narrative style seems a little forced and this does detract somewhat from the great depiction of the relationships which begin to develop along the perilous quest. While the ideas and narrative are good, one feels that there was something a little more that Larkin may have wanted to get across in Goon Town. Nonetheless, Goon Town is a charming novel about friendship, understanding and acceptance that would be suitable for readers aged nine-plus.

Natalie Crawford is the children’s specialist at Dymocks Claremont, WA

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker