Josh Book

For fourteen-year-old Josh, the village of Ryan Creek, settled by his great-grandfather, is a jungle--completely different from Melbourne, where he was born and raised. And the people he meets in Ryan Creek--his eccentric Aunt Clara, the two O'Connor boys and their beautiful sister Betsy, Laura and Harry Jones--are not only baffling but dangerous. Josh does everything wrong here. A dreamer and a poet, he is also strong-willed and uncompromising in his principles. His encounters with the young people of Ryan Creek during his three-day visit begin with mutual bewilderment and confusion and move inexorably to an explosion of violence.

Ivan Southall is one of Australia's best-known and prolific writers for children and young adults. Four of his novels won the Children's Book of the Year Award from the Children's Book Council of Australia: Ash Road in 1966, To the Wild Sky in 1968, Bread and Honey in 1971, and Fly West in 1976. His work has been translated into 23 languages.

A fourteen-year-old poet visiting his great-aunt for a week is subjected to some strange treatment from the residents of Ryan Creek, a rural town in Australia.