Carole Wilkinson

Set in the early 1970s, prolific children’s and Young Adult author Carole Wilkinson’s latest novel, Sugar Sugar, follows the adventures of Jackie, an Australian girl who dreams of being a fashion designer. After leaving her home in Semaphore to travel to London with her friend Colleen, Jackie finds herself working at the snooty fashion boutique Konundrum; waiting to be noticed by the fashion world. She soon realises that the ‘swinging London’ she’d been searching for ‘had pretty much swung’. After accidentally spilling hot tea over Julie Christie, and Konundrum’s most expensive evening dress, Jackie catches the hovercraft to Paris for the weekend hoping to impress French fashion designer André Courrèges with her design folio.

One walks a fine line between patriotism and claptrap when writing about anything to do with war. Especially when writing for young people, one tries to salute the courage of soldiers and to honour the fallen, but also to instil caution in potential young soldiers; to convey that war is hell and that it shows human beings at their worst. Of course, one wants to tell an exciting story, too, with heroes and villains and suspense – with maybe a history lesson or two thrown in. Two of the following books succeed majestically in this task; the third falls far short.