I Can Jump Puddles
10 best books like I Can Jump Puddles (Alan Marshall): A Fortunate Life, My Brilliant Career, My Place, The Harp in the South, My Brother Jack, They're a Weird Mob, Seven Little Australians, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, The Magic Pudding
| Author | Albert B. Facey |
| ISBN | 0140081674 |
This is the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss...
| Author | Miles Franklin |
| ISBN | 1600963781 |
"My Brilliant Career" is the story of Sybylla, a headstrong young girl growing up in early 20th century Australia. Sybylla rejects the opportunity to marry a wealthy young man in order to maintain her independence. As a consequence she must take a job as a governess to a local family to which her father...
| Author | Sally Morgan |
| ISBN | 0949206318 |
Looking at the views and experiences of three generations of indigenous Australians, this autobiography unearths political and societal issues contained within Australia's indigenous culture. Sally Morgan traveled to her grandmother’s birthplace, starting a search for information about...
| Author | Ruth Park |
| ISBN | 0140008535 |
Since it was first published in 1948, this compassionate novel has become a favourite with generations of Australian readers.
The Harp in the South is a nostalgic and moving portrait of the eventful family life of the Darcys of Number Twelve-and-a-Half Plymouth Street in Surry Hills, a Sydney...
| Author | George Johnston |
| ISBN | 0207187320 |
3.5 stars
It was only after I finished reading My Brother Jack by George Johnston that I discovered it had been the winner of the 1964 Miles Franklin award. To win, novels must be of the highest literary merit and present Australian life in any of its phases There is no question in my mind that this was...
| Author | Nino Culotta |
| ISBN | 0947116923 |
Giovanni 'Nino' Culotta is an Italian immigrant, who comes to Australia as a journalist, employed by an Italian publishing house, to write articles about Australians and their way of life for those Italians that might want to emigrate to Australia.
In order to learn about real Australians,...
| Author | Ethel Turner |
| ISBN | 1428041451 |
19th century Australia: Captain Woolcot, having lost his wife tragically young, remarried a much younger young woman to provide his six children with a new mother. Together, they had another child, making seven. The Captain felt it was necessary to run the family with army discipline, but his rules...
| Author | Thomas Keneally |
| ISBN | 0207197164 |
The extraordinary Booker Prize shortlisted story of a black man's revenge against an unjust and intolerant society. Thomas Keneally was born in Sydney Australia in 1935. He studied to be a Catholic priest but abandoned his vocation to take up teaching and writing. He is the author of numerous works...
| Author | Ray Lawler |
| ISBN | 0573615950 |
Ray LawlerCharacters:3 male, 4 female
Interior Set
This compelling Australian play was a success in London and was hailed by critics in New York for its vigor, integrity, and realistic portrayal of two itinerant cane cutters: Barney, a swaggering little scrapper, and Roo, a big...
| Author | Norman Lindsay |
| ISBN | 0140300988 |
"Gentlemen," said the Judge, "I must remind you that we require a Review!"
"We don't needs no Review," replied Sam rudely, "We just needs to get away from them rascally Puddin'-thieves." And he pointed to the Wombat and the Possum, lurking in the comment thread, who looked up with a guilty start.
"Ignore...
| Author | Jeannie Gunn |
| ISBN | 1406500232 |
I had already read this book many years ago but somehow I had forgotten how sad the ending is! To have so much for just fourteen months and then have to return to Melbourne alone to pick up the pieces of her former life. It must have been really hard.
Anyway, I enjoyed this memoir from 1902, when Australia...
| Author | Marcus Clarke |
| ISBN | 1406512036 |
“We convicts have the advantage over you gentlemen. You are afraid of death; we pray for it. It is the best thing that can happen to us. Die! They were going to hang me once. I wish they had. My God, I wish they had!”
For The Term Of His Natural Life is the best-known novel by Australian author,...
Blinky Bill, the mischievous anthropomorphic koala, is well known around the world through the TV cartoon and movies, but the book version is a little darker. He runs away from home several times and constantly disobeys his mother, who of course beats him when she catches him - this would have been a normal...
| Author | Henry Handel Richardson |
| ISBN | 0702231797 |
The subject of this book is a young woman: an awkward, insecure, restless and 'knowing' child who learns that self-realisation depends on rebellion and escape, but that the latter will first demand at least the semblance of conformity. In telling lies, Laura learns both the astonishing allure of fiction...
| Author | Eleanor Dark |
| ISBN | 0006160166 |
4.5★ (Read Sept 2018)
“The hardly endurable heat of the day had culminated again in a storm, and even to a less lively imagination than Tench’s it might have seemed that all the evil of earth and heaven was let loose, and some reckless spirit of self-destruction in the settlement lifting itself...
| Author | Colin Thiele |
| ISBN | 1741101875 |
Storm Boy likes to wander alone along the fierce deserted coast among the dunes that face out into the Southern Ocean. After a pelican mother is shot, Storm Boy rescues the three chicks, and nurses them back to health. He names them Mr Proud, Mr Ponder and Mr Percival. After he releases them, his favourite,...
Tell Me I'm Here: One Family's Experience of Schizophrenia
| Author | Anne Deveson |
| ISBN | 0140173390 |
Excellent book about an unbearable tragedy. Anne pours out her heart in such a raw, simple, honest manner. How she withstood all that she went through is awe inspiring. I'm so glad Jonathan had a mum like Anne. His life was a living hell, and he never found the way back ... if there is a way ... to his 'normal'...
Power Without Glory caused a sensation when it was released, leading to a famous court case. It is a thinly veiled description of the rise to power of real life figure John Wren (in the book 'John West').
Some other people alluded to in the book include Tommy Bent, Sir Samuel Gillott, the gangster...
| Author | Thea Astley |
| ISBN | 0140121382 |
Like a deal of Astley's fiction, It's Raining in Mango is set in north Queensland, an inhospitable locale in many ways but one which the Laffey family of Mango find compelling and to which they are drawn back after their half-hearted forays into urban life. The book is written in the saga form, spanning...
| Author | Mary Grant Bruce |
| ISBN | 0706355954 |
Billabong, a large cattle and sheep property in the Australian countryside, is home to twelve-year-old Norah Linton, her widowed father, David, and her older brother, Jim. Norah's prim and proper aunts, who live in the city, consider she is in danger of "growing up wild" - riding all over Billabong...
| Author | D'Arcy Niland |
| ISBN | 0141186135 |
A shiralee is a swag, a burden, a bloody millstone - and that's what four-year-old Buster is to her father, Macauley. He takes the child on the road with him to spite his wife, but months pass and still no word comes to ask for the little girl back. Strangers to each other at first, father and daughter drift...
| Author | Robert Drewe |
| ISBN | 0143002155 |
Author(s): Robert Drewe ISBN: 9780143002154 Binding: Paperback Published: 2003-06-01 Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to Perth, the world's most isolated city - and proud of it. This sun-baked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquillity and friendliness. Then...
Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM
| Author | Don Watson |
| ISBN | 1740512146 |
If he had never become Prime Minister Paul Keating's place in Australian history would still have been assured. He was the Treasurer who deregulated the economy; the weaver of Labor's modern story; its heavy weapon in the parliament. He was also the great enigma - a self-educated boy from Sydney's working...
