A home for Grace by Sofie Laguna

Ill. by Lucia Masciullo. Our Australian Girl (series). Penguin, 2011, ISBN 978 0 14 330529 3.
(Ages 9+) Recommended . Australian history. The fourth in the quartet of stories about Grace in the series, Our Australian Girl, has Grace finally being accepted by her master, Tom, after he realises that it is Grace who has helped nurse his beloved horse, Glory, back to health. In this final book about Grace, many loose ends are tied up, she meets again her friend from the convict ship, Hannah and her mother, and finds that they live comparatively close by. The background is fascinating, giving readers an informative look at the privations suffered by the early European settlers who came to this country. The characters are interesting, put in situations at once unsettling and adventurous.
The four books about Grace will give history lessons a boost as the class looks at the early settlement of New South Wales and ponders the ideas around how early settlers coped with the strangeness of the new land, and in particular, how children accepted their fate.
Fran Knight