Sunny Side Up (Marion Roberts, Allen & Unwin, $15.95 pb, ISBN 9781741752366, January 2008) ****

Sunny lives very happily with her mum and her dog Willow in suburban Melbourne and spends time at weekends with Dad and his new wife. She and best friend Claud operate a Wood Fired Pizza delivery business on Friday nights called Pizza-a-go-girl and her life is pretty good. Change begins when Mum insists that her boyfriend Carl and his kids help decorate the Christmas tree—a job that was always Sunny’s own. Then her world is turned upside down when Carl moves in with his two children, Dad’s wife is expecting a baby and her best friend’s behaviour inexplicably changes. Along the way she receives a request to meet her grandmother. Mum extracts a
promise that she won’t do so, since she hasn’t spoken to her mother for years. How Sunny manages to sort her life out and find out what is important to her makes for an amusing and satisfying read which will delight young readers. Unlike many stories of blended families full of angst, this is a wonderful, warm tale. Sunny is excited about the new baby, she and the step-siblings learn to get along and, despite all the difficulties, the characters are likeable AND actually like each other! Sunny’s black and white photos, which illustrate the book, will amuse the readers and add to their enjoyment of the story.

Sandy Campbell is a past president of the CBCA (NSW branch) and has worked in the publishing industry for more than 20 years

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