Review:
Audrey goes to town by Christine Harris
Little Hare Books, 2008.
(Age 8-12) The adventures of Audrey take a twist when her family
relocates to Beltana, a town in South Australia's Flinder's Ranges, for
a month. Here they board with Mrs Patterson, known in the town as
Patterson's curse, a noxious weed. But Audrey's inquisitive nature and
endearing ability to put people on their back foot, undermines the
prickly nature of the woman at every turn.
Mrs Patterson takes on Audrey as a project, wanting to teach her
manners, how to knit and behave like a lady. Audrey in turn wants to
find her good side, and beguilingly does so as she talks the older
woman into wearing a yellow ribbon and coming along to the Beltana
dance. Ann James' perfect illustrations keep us guessing until the very
last chapter about what Mrs Patterson looks like, and her sly little
glance at Audrey is enough to make any reader's heart melt.
Christine Harris' ability to make places and people come alive is
nowhere more evident than in this, the second of the series, Audrey of
the outback. Younger readers will readily see with Audrey's eyes, her
new home, the dusty wide streets, the houses, the people who live
there. She innocently compares her house with that of Mrs Patterson,
revelling in the different rooms, the windows, the linoleum and the
table, but soon longs for the dirt floors and glassless windows of her
home. Beltana now is little more than a ruin, but Christine Harris
fills the place with life, revealing it in its useful days before the
railway bypassed it. And along the way, readers will learn many of the
expressions and words no longer in use, and fittingly, there is a
glossary of 'interesting words' to help people remember them.
Fran Knight
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