Poppy and the thief by Gabrielle Wang
Ill. by Lucia Masciullo. Our Australian Girl (series). Penguin,
2011. ISBN 978 0 14 330534 7.
(Ages: 9+) Australian history. Poppy hears about Jimmy Ah Kew from
the owner at Summerhill Station, when he spies her letter with his
seal. She leaves the place headed for Wahgunyah, the town where
Jimmy lives, again alone on the road, where many adventures befall
her. She shares a meal with a man she meets, and later finds he is
the notorious bushranger, Harry Power, and she finds a friend in
Jimmy Ah Kew, as well as a dog she calls Fisher.
The third in the quartet about Poppy, a gold rush era girl living
through the mid 1860's, a time of great change for Australia. The
perspective of an Aboriginal Chinese girl gives it a different point
of view of many other stories set in this time, and the facts given
at the end of the book will help students understand the times more
readily. As with the others in the Our Australian Girl series, there
is a teaser leading readers to the fourth book in this series within
a series.
Fran Knight