Pip and Houdini follows the success of Run Pip Run, J.C. Jones’s shortlisted book for the CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers 2016 and winner of the Readings Children’s Book Prize. Pip is one of those characters who will leave you smitten, as with Anne (with an e) of Anne of Green Gables. Precociously independent and resourceful, ten-and-a-half-year-old Pip is the director of her own story.

In this sequel, Pip is dealing with the tragic loss of her guardian, Sully, a kind man who took Pip under his care after she was abandoned (as a baby) by her mother. Heartbroken by Sully’s death, Pip sets off in search of the only caregiver she believes she has left: the mother who’d abandoned her. With only a postcard of her mother’s last known address, Pip embarks on a journey from Sydney to Byron Bay. It’s fraught with challenges, such as being a stowaway in the back of someone’s van, sleeping rough in public places, and having to hide her dog Houdini in her backpack as they travel on trains. This is a journey that proves life-altering in a beneficent way, not just for Pip, but also for the strangers she meets on the way. A gorgeous story about a brave yet sensitive girl.

Natalie Platten