Just So Stories

Walker Books Australia

May 2024

ISBN13:9781760657666

Australia RRP:$17.99

New Zealand RRP:$19.99

Zanni Louise has slam-dunked again with this new middle-grade novel which is an ideal read for your kiddos who love those books with a sensitive, not-so-confident protagonist who finds her own way into a more self-assured mental space. Once again, the setting is unusual and certainly adds to the overall charm of this one. Cora and her family are moving from Ipswich, Queensland, and all they know, to a small town in Tasmania, where her dad is going to restore an aged and decrepit theatre.

Once the quirky stand-out glory of Caroline Creek, as well as the setting for the famous performer, Clair de Lune, the crumbling theatre is not without its appeal. Moreover, although she’s leaving behind her friends, school, recently widowed Gran and pretty much her entire life, Cora seizes this opportunity to re-invent herself as Cora 2.0.

At 11 years old and on the cusp of puberty, Cora is planning on a whole new persona as she starts at her new school. No more gawky, self-conscious, shy, tongue-tied Cora – no, sirree. Instead, super-cool, poised and popular Cora is on her way – as cool as her big sister, Bekah in fact.

Aside from the living in a dilapidated theatre, with Dressing Room 2 and a mattress on pallets as the bedroom she shares with Bekah, Cora’s family is a little on the irregular side. Mum is a therapist with a hugely popular podcast channel and Dad works as a freelance writer for lifestyle blogs but, at heart, an inveterate fixer-upper. He is now passionate about this latest project, while Cora’s mum is a little short on patience and tolerance, especially when compounded with the recent loss of Cora’s grandfather, and leaving her own mother back in Queensland. Bekah, who has been school captain and all-round high achiever, has been having a gap year before starting an engineering degree, and has had a long-term relationship with Will.

But as Cora plunges into her new life and school, and finding her first real friends, she also finds things starting to shift dramatically. Her mum and dad are at odds, and she for one blames her mother. Bekah has become quite involved with a girl called Luella, with her music and her motorbike. It feels like her Dad is the only happy one as he plasters, hammers, fixes, shifts, and props up around the theatre.

Cora finds an outlet for her increasingly anxious feelings by writing secret letters to the long-lost but famed Clair du Lune, using her own nickname. But then disaster strikes and those personal and private letters disappear , only to start re-appearing, published in the local newspaper. Quelle horreur!  What will happen if her friends and family discover that it is Cora who is the real letter-writer?

While Cora and her friends pursue their individual history projects and explore the theatre together, her anxieties heighten as she fears that her most inner-most secrets will be exposed to the world. [As you would know, I don’t usually outline so much plot but I felt I needed to with this one.] Her fears and anxieties increase, even as she begins to see the threads of friendship strengthening.

It is such a refreshingly different narrative and, at the same time, it takes those common emotions and fears of tweens and weaves them into a very relatable context, with which many readers will connect. The conflict between mother and daughter (man, do I relate to that one as well!), the self-doubt, the yearning for close connection/friendship, the worry of being different (for the ‘wrong’ reasons), lack of confidence – all of these are very much what can occupy the thoughts and emotions of young girls who are growing into their older selves.

Cora is a very warm character, despite her anti-mum behaviours, and it is immensely reassuring for both herself and for readers, that her new friend, Elle, turns out to have equally self-doubting moments, despite her outward breeziness. “Just because a person is chatty, doesn’t mean that they don’t feel like running away in terror.”

More than that, the girls begin to build a circle of trust with others such as cute boy, Arlo, and definitely different Rae. Alongside that, Cora is amazed to find these new friends see her as the cool and capable one – and that’s not Cora 2.0 we’re talking about. It is very much Cora comfortable in her own skin who is the one being valued – finally, seen and heard.

What a very lovely and warm journey of self-discovery it is, and I am supremely sure that young readers will embrace this one as enthusiastically as they did Queenie in Seven Moves.

Highly recommended for readers from around 9/10 years upwards.