Storm Child - Ele Fountain

Maya is clearly happy with her life.  Although her family are struggling to make ends meet, she has a good group of friends and loves Penrose Bay. However, after her dad is involved in a fishing accident, her parents decide that things are just getting too much and decide to close up the house and move to the other end of the world. They have plans to make a new start in paradise but will everything workout as they expected it to?

Everything changes for Maya and the upheaval must be incredibly difficult for her, especially after her dad's accident. As well as getting used to a new home on the other side of the world, she has to get used to home schooling and not having friends around her, and she misses surfing, the thing she enjoys most.  She can't even call her friends back home because of the time difference. Meeting Kalani gives her a life-line but they are two very different people with different lives. 

Ele is always good at weaving environmental messages into her books, and Storm Girl is no exception. The descriptions of the island sound idyllic at first: wonderful sunshine, outside living, beautiful scenery, living on fresh fruit and fish... it sounds wonderful; however, as you move through the book, you learn that this isn't the case. .. readers will understand the impact that waste can have and how far rubbish can travel. Ele writes this deftly into the plot but in a way that will impact the reader. 

Storm Girl is another brilliant book from Ele. Family, friendship and finding your way weave together perfectly with environmental messages in a book that will make a perfect summer read when it publishes on the 4th July.