Canterbury Quake

An eleven year old’s straight-from-the-heart account of life through the Canterbury quakes and shakes.

Anyone would think Maddy’s world had crumbled when she didn’t get a cell phone for her eleventh birthday. But Maddy soon has far more important things to worry about. In the dark of night, with a terrifying rumble and a deafening roar, the world turns upside down! Suddenly, words like ‘liquefaction’,

‘aftershocks’ and ‘state of emergency’ bubble to the surface of her vocabulary.

As Maddy navigates the bumps and crashes of life after the big quakes, she discovers how strong family ties can be, and finds friendship in the most unlikely of places.

·            Excellent account of the 2010–11 earthquakes by a Christchurch-based author who lived through them

·            Good level of detail and emotion for target age group

·            Well-researched, engaging and has good parallel stories about school, singing and friends

·            Part of a popular ‘factional’ series of historical diaries

·            Includes useful Historical Notes and a section of photos taken at the time­

About the author:           

Desna Wallace (right) is

a school librarian in

Christchurch who

is passionate about

children’s books.

After Desna left

school she spent a

number of years

travelling overseas

before coming back to New Zealand to raise her family.  Desna takes any chance she can to read children’s and young adult books. Reading, she believes, is one of the best ways to improve your own writing. Desna has had a number of plays, poems and stories published in the School Journal, but this is her first novel.

Another in the highly admired My New Zealand Story" series from Scholastic in which vividly imagined accounts of life make history come alive.

Scholastic - paperback - $18.50