What a way to start the year. Karen Foxlee has written a beautifully moving story for children that should become an Australian classic.

It has a timelessness to it, and the setting could be any isolated country town in Australia (although Foxlee confesses that it is inspired by Mt. Isa).You can smell the eucalypt, hear the cockatoos and feel the summer heat.

Pip’s home life is no longer safe, since her mum’s boyfriend moved in. ‘Matt liked Pip in her room with the light off and the door closed so he could have her mum all to himself. He didn’t like any competition. Competition made him angry.’ In fact, a lot of things make Matt angry, and Pip’s mum has lost herself in trying to placate this angry man.

Sitting near her favourite waterhole at dusk, remembering her best friend Mika, Pip sees something that doesn’t belong. Something that she immediately knows needs her help to survive. So she takes ‘Little Fella’ home and hides him in her closet. Pip feels ‘protective of him, motherly, and that inflating pain ballooned inside her chest and the tears welled in her eyes’. As she learns to trust some new friends, the story behind Mika’s disappearance is revealed.

This novel has all the elements needed to create a perfect book: there is suspense and magic; sorrow and loss; friendship and adventure; and a baby dragon to draw all these elements together.

Highly recommended for readers aged 10-14 years old.

This is such a beautifully written story - and very hard to place in any one specific genre. I found it achingly sad as so many of the characters are looking for someone they have lost, or who they haven’t even met, but feel the empty space where they should be. But one of the strongest elements in the story is the landscape. It plays a huge part in creating, on the one hand,the overarching sense of claustrophobia and impending doom, and on the other, a magical place where some characters find escape and peace. Although not promoted as YA fiction, it’s about 2 girls on the brink of adulthood, so would be a fabulous book to recommend to a YA who would enjoy a more “literary” read than the average YA fare. I loved it!