australia

While her physician-parents are working in Africa, eleven-year-old Zelda is living with her grandfather, eighty-year-old Holocaust-survivor Felix Salinger, in Australia, when a disaster leads them both to deal with unresolved feelings about the first Zelda, Felix's childhood friend.

"Engaging images accompany information about ghost stories in Australia. The combination of high-interest subject matter and light text is intended for students in grades 2 through 7"--Provided by publisher.

"It is 2011. You want nothing more than to be a journalist in Somalia like your aunty. But the truth can be dangerous--and when you and your little sister are left alone, you find yourself facing life-and-death choices at every turn. Can you escape a terrorist organisation and find a safe place to call home? You'll be asked to cross a desert on foot, hide below deck in a leaky boat, and put your life in the hands of people smugglers. At every turn, the choice is yours. How far will you go for freedom?"--OCLC.

The dragon Temeraire and Captain Will Laurence, having been convicted of treason and sent to the prison colony at New South Wales, is asked by Captain Bligh to help him regain his office, which was taken away from him when the government was overthrown, and, as the dragon and the rider journey through the forbidding Blue Mountains, they struggle to protect the two remaining dragon eggs they carry with them and find the missing third.

"Wen Zhou is a first-generation daughter of Chinese migrant parents. She has high expectations from her parents to succeed in school, especially her father, whose strict rules leave her feeling trapped. She dreams of creating a future for herself more satisfying than the one her parents expect her to lead. Then she befriends a boy named Henry who is also a first generation immigrant. He is the smartest boy at school despite struggling with his English and understands her in a way nobody has lately. Both of them dream of escaping and together they come up with a plan to take an entrance exam for a selective school far from home. But when tragedy strikes, it will take all of Wen's resilience and tiger strength to get herself and Henry through the storm that follows"--Provided by publisher.

Get to know Australia-- its land, animals, people, and way of life.

Saroo Brierley discusses his life as an adopted boy living in Tasmania and his time spent finding his birth family in India.

Presents information about the little blue penguin species including information on its size in comparison to other penguins, its habitat, and its diet.

Lech Blaine was just seventeen when he was in a crash that killed his best friends and changed his life. On an evening in 2009, seven teenage boys piled into a car to go to a party. They never arrived. The driver, who was not drunk or high, made a routine error and then overcorrected. The vehicle flew off the road. One passenger died on impact. Others were flung from the car. Lech walked away uninjured. In the aftermath, two more died in hospital and one was left disabled, in an incident that convulsed their rural community. Crippled by guilt, Lech turned to social media, cultivating a persona as the ultimate 'grateful survivor'. Over time, he spiralled into risk-taking and depression. His public bravado fell away as he tried to accept how an accident, one wretched error of youth and inexperience, had changed the trajectory of so many lives. How do we grieve in an age of social media? How does tragedy shape a community? And how does a boy on the cusp of manhood develop a sense of self when his world has exploded?.