Books For New Beginnings

Australian books for children and teens and the adults who love them

I love fresh starts but they throw me around. I start new things with a certain wildness until the possibility for failure creeps up on me. Before I know it I’m in that familiar battle with myself: quit / don’t you dare quit / quit! / you can’t quit! This can even apply to mornings (anything could happen today!) versus afternoons (ugh, when will this day be over, I need a biscuit).

Starting this newsletter, and hearing the inevitable door-knock of doom — hello, Emily, I know you’re in there, we need to talk — has made me think about all the young people in Australia who are about to undergo a new beginning in the coming weeks. And thinking about them has been very good for giving me perspective. So what if my newsletter fails: little kids are about to start Big School, pre-teens are about to become the Lilliputians of high school, and many graduated year twelves have just placed a huge bet by selecting a university course. We begin at five years old, we begin again at twelve, and at ei…