Six Degrees of Separation: Billie B Brown to Beatie Bow

In our new online series,


Billie B Brown:

Billie is easily the most popular Australian girl character of recent years for new readers. Adored by girls from 5 and up, these are simple chapter books that work very well to build confidence. In The Birthday Mix-Up, Billie is really excited about her party but then she starts to worry that her friends won’t enjoy it … or worse, that they won’t even show up!


Lulu Bell:

Another birthday mix-up takes place in a story featuring new-girl-on-the-block, Lulu Bell in The Birthday Unicorn. Like Billie, Lulu loves her family, friends, animals and adventures. The text is just a little more difficult in these so they’re a good next step.


Willow, Quinn, Krystal and Ellabeth:

Speaking of unicorns, here’s an 8-book series for over-7s featuring four adventurous girls whose motto is ‘We Ride As One!’ The girls each care for a unicorn, so this is a great series for horse-lovers. In Willow’s Challenge Willow must confront her past when the Unicorn Riders are summoned to the town of Arlen.


Alice-Miranda:

Horse-lovers will enjoy getting into the popular Alice-Miranda series with Alice-Miranda On Holiday. Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones has trouble on her hands with a very naughty pony, among other things, in a story that takes place after she’s survived her first term at boarding-school.


Judy

:

Via the boarding-school theme we’ve arrived at a classic. For 10s and over, Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians features mischievous but misunderstood Judy, one of the seven Woolcot children. Judy’s antics result in her being sent away to boarding school in the Blue Mountains, in a story set in Sydney in the 1880s.


Beatie Bow

:

Also set in Sydney in the 1880s is Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow, a brilliant time-slip story about a confused and fearful girl who finds some of the answers she’s looking for when she is swept back in time and lives with the Bow family during a period when Sydney’s “Rocks” area was a slum. If this is a classic you’ve missed out on, I highly recommend it for adults as well as younger readers (I read it for the first time last year).

And there we have it: Billie to Beatie via a few all-Australian stepping-stones…


Emily Gale