Amy Stanley

Eighteen year old Salama volunteers as a nurse at her local hospital in Syria. For fifty years, the country has been under dictatorship, and the Free Syrian Army has taken to the streets to protect civilians.

Erin is a young girl who dares to dream. So when her favourite girl band Fusion announces that they’re holding a competition to find someone to be in their next music video, she is determined to prove to herself and others that she can win. Erin has more than one reason to do this. She has achondroplasia (the most common form of dwarfism), and so does her brother Joe. She wants to show him that this won’t get in the way of them achieving anything they want from life. But she has a lot of work to do if she’s going to win that prize.

The Dick, Kerr girls are back and ready for another round! This time, we follow the life of Martha, younger sister to Hettie and Freddie. When Martha is invited to join the Dick, Kerr Ladies Football team for training, she can hardly believe her luck. But soon the pressure of living up to their expectations creeps up on her, and she questions herself and her abilities. The local boys are treating her differently, and life at home is becoming more complicated. Growing up is proving to be more difficult than she could have ever imagined.

For as long as she can remember, Utterly has felt drawn to the sea. As a baby, she was found along the shores of the Autumn Isles by Andrewe Dark, her caretaker and the Watcher of Wildsea. Strange things happen there. At night, Utterly swears that she can hear the waves calling out her name. However no one seems to believe her when she talks about it. Or perhaps they simply don’t want to.

Thirteen-year-old Amari Peters has a problem. Her brother Quinton is missing, and has been for months. While the police seem convinced that he was involved in something illegal, she believes something happened to him at his job (which he never speaks about). After months of silence, late one night she discovers a ticking briefcase in his closet that may lead her to the one place that can answer all of her questions – the mysterious Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. But can she find the answers she needs to save her brother in time?

Author-illustrator George Butler’s debut was formed from a series of interviews with migrants and refugees, detailing their experiences of migration. These personal accounts were shared with the author during a number of travels to areas with high levels of migration between 2011 and 2018. The people that he met did not have the option to remain at home safely for a variety of reasons, with migration becoming a means of survival for many. These accounts discuss the events leading up to departure, the struggles of the journey and what must be left behind in the process of finding a new home.