Winter

by John Marsden

Overview

"Australia's king of young adult fiction" The Australian

Winter is sixteen. It's time to come home.

For twelve years Winter has been haunted. Her past, her memories, her feelings, will not leave her alone. And now, at sixteen, the time has come for her to act.

Every journey begins with a single step. If Winter is going to step into the future, she must first step into the past.

Winter is an intense, emotionally rich book that you will want to read not just once, but many times.

Fans of Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins and John Flanagan will love John Marsden.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781743346136
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan Australia
Publication date:	06/01/2001
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	136
File size:	314 KB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

John Marsden is Australia's bestselling author for teenagers and a highly acclaimed picture book writer. His titles include Winter, The Head Book, The Boy You Brought Home and Millie.

John Marsden lives at the Tye Estate, just outside of Melbourne, where he opened a school called Candlebark in January 2006. The school currently has 52 students, ranging from Prep to Year 7.

John Marsden is the third of four children: the position traditionally occupied by the rebel of the family! John's father was a bank manager, and it was the custom in those days for banks to transfer staff regularly. As a result, John went to a number of different primary schools, in Victoria, Tasmania and Sydney.

From an early age John enjoyed the journeys into magical worlds that reading could provide. His teachers in Grade 4 and Grade 6 encouraged him to write, and at the age of nine, inspired by his favourite writers such as Enid Blyton and Nan Chauncy, he decided he wanted to become an author.

For seven years John attended The King's School Parramatta, a strict military school in Sydney, and from there went on to the University of Sydney. However, he soon decided that a career in law looked too boring, so he dropped out and drifted around for nearly 10 years, trying jobs as diverse as motorcycle courier, truck driver and hospital clerk.

When John was 28, he began a teaching course, which he loved from the start. Embarking on a teaching career, he also became more and more interested in writing, and in 1987 succeeded in getting his first book, So Much to Tell You, published. A string of huge hits followed, highlighted by the Tomorrow series and The Ellie Chronicles. John has now sold more than two and a half million books in Australia alone, but is also an international bestseller, with many major awards to his credit.

John's interest in education has never waned. In 1998 he bought the Tye Estate, 850 acres of natural bush, on the northern edge of Melbourne, and later added the property next door. For eight years he ran enormously popular writers' courses and camps at Tye, before starting his own school there, Candlebark, in 2006.

In 2014, John moved into new literary territory, publishing his first novel for adults, South of Darkness. The book met with instant success, winning the Fellowship of Australian Writers Christina Stead award for Best Australian novel of the year. In 2015 John purchased a second school in Victoria's Macedon Ranges, which he plans to open in 2016 as a secondary school specialising in the performing arts.

Editorial Reviews

In what PW called "an engrossing novel," a 16-year-old girl returns to her late parents' estate determined to solve the riddle of their death. Ages 12-up. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Most Americans know the Australian writer Marsden for his thrilling series that starts with Tomorrow When the War Began, in which a small group of teenagers stage guerilla warfare against an unnamed enemy that has taken over their part of Australia. The narrator Winter in this novel could be a part of that intrepid group. She is an orphan who has returned to her parents' large homestead to take charge of her own life—even at 16. She is fierce, determined, and not especially charming. We soon admire her, especially as she quickly sums up the fact that the couple managing the homestead are doing a poor job. In fact, they are corrupt, so she insists that they be fired immediately. As she finds her parents' graves, she learns that they did not die together in a sailing accident as she had been told: her mother had died some months after her father. She is mystified, but determined to unearth the truth about her mother's death, even if the truth is difficult to accept. Winter's stamina is impressive; and, as her confidence builds, she is able to reach out to make friends. She becomes a more likeable human being. The setting of the Australian countryside is exotic for American readers, who will soon get past the Australian vocabulary challenges. This is a short novel that will be a quick read for most YAs, who will be turning pages eagerly to follow Winter's narration, filled with action and emotion. KLIATT Codes: JS—Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2000, Scholastic, 146p.,
— Claire Rosser

KLIATT

Gr 7-10-In this short but satisfying Australian novel, 16-year-old Winter is determined to know the truth about her parents. Orphaned at four years old, she has spent most of her life with cold, uncaring relatives in Canberra. Now she has returned to her childhood home, Warriewood. Instead of answers, however, she finds more problems, from an irritating but intriguing boy next door to the crooked managers who are supposed to take care of her land and cattle but are instead stealing from the estate. Told that her parents drowned in a sailing accident, Winter visits their graves and discovers that her mother actually died six months after her father. To find out what really happened, she confronts the local authorities, a doctor, and her strong-willed great aunt, any or all of whom may be trying to cover up the truth. At first, the teen seems stubborn to the point of unreasonableness, but before long readers will warm to her and cheer her on. As the secrets of her past are revealed, she takes charge of her inheritance and of her life; at the same time, her icy reserve begins to thaw. The facts of her mother's death, when they finally come out, are unexpected enough to make for a gratifying conclusion. Teens will especially enjoy the ferocity with which Winter stands up to the adults who try to take advantage of her.-Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

An Australian import that examines the reverberations a traumatic past has upon the present. Winter is a girl who knows what she wants, and now at 16, she aims to get it. In foster care with diligent but unloving relatives for the past 12 years, she has nagged them and her lawyer into allowing her to return to her family's cattle ranch. Her goal is not simply to return home-she needs to discover the truth behind her parents' deaths. When he isn't writing about hypothetical guerrilla wars, Marsden (The Night Is for Hunting, 2001, etc.) frequently presents stories that conceal a single shocking moment in the past from the reader, and frequently from the protagonist. This offering is one of the latter stripe, and the narrative follows Winter as she not-very-tactfully reasserts her control over her property and begins to plumb her past. Much of the tale reads like teen wish-fulfillment: Winter bullies the adults around her into letting her do what she wants, lives in her own house without supervision and with access to an apparently very large sum of money (which allows her to redecorate at some length), and discovers a handsome and charming boy at the ranch next door. For all that, Winter is an appealingly gutsy narrator who keeps the story moving as she rips up blackberries and insults everyone around her. If the eventual shocker is rather predictable (and therefore not so shocking) and easily discovered, Winter's own need to learn the truth and ability to assimilate it are well established in the development of her character. Not up to the standard set by the author's Letters from the Inside (1994), but likely to find a readership nevertheless. (Fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews