Tomorrow When the War Began

Title: Tomorrow When the War Began
Author: John Marsden
First Published: 1993 by Pan Macmillan Publishers

Ellie and her friends Corrie, Homer, Robyn, Fi, Kevin and Lee all go on a camping trip. when they return they discover Australia is at war and all there families are being held captive.

i think this is a great book, it's beautifully written. I actually found myself admiring the writing and trying to absorb it to apply to my own as I read. my favourite sentence was
"The, light switched off, the patrol got back into formation and continued down the road like a dark crocodile."

it was very different to most adventure/war/action books, it was really centred around characters which i usually really enjoy, but i found it made the pace a too slow. in the action parts involving guns and bombs found that it wasn't very compelling, there was a lack of suspense, I even managed to put it down in the middle of a shooting and not read it for a week. over all though i think that the characters shone through and made it an incredible book, even if the action wasn't so good.

for some reason, I'm not sure why, i was expecting this book to be in 3rd person. At first i wasn't so sure about reading from Ellie's point of view,I felt i wasn't getting to know her in the same way i was getting to know the other characters. as i read on i became really glad that we could read Ellie's thought, they were so interesting and insightful and i loved knowing what was going through her head.

a brilliant book for action and realistic fiction lovers alike. i can't wait to go and see the movie and read all the other books.

So Much to Tell You

Title: So Much to Tell You
Author: John Marsden
First Published: 1987 by Walter McVitty Books

So Much to Tell You is the incredible diary of a 14 year old girl sent to boarding school and her family life explodeds. there is one thing making her diffferent from every other girl in the school, she doesn't speak.

slowly through her diary enteries we learn all about her, she didn't plain to put all her secrets into this diary but once she started she couldn't help herself. once she started she couldn't stop. over the course of the novel she slowly starts to be herself again, still silent, but with some patience and kindness from a few other people she starts getting there. slowly.

not only do we learn all about her feelings and her life, we get her insightful observations of the people around her, some of which no one but the silent girl would notice. i loved how she learnt that she wasn't the onlt person feeling things. through English, with her awesome teacher the girls learn that lots of other people are feeling things like they are. it was a great reminder for me.

my faveourite thing was that we didn't find out her name until the last page. i felt is very symbolic, like she had finally found herself in all the mess and put herself back together.

i think that everybody should read this book, it's reallu sticks with you, especiaaly because it is based on a true story. if you are not convinved it's written by the man who wrote Tomorrow When the War began. in my opinion it's even better.