The world of story is a magical place - where almost anything can happen. Join Tuesday McGillycuddy and her dog Baxterr on another nail-biting adventure!
Angelica Banks is not one writer but two. Heather Rose and Danielle Wood are both award-winning authors of novels for adults. Writing the Tuesday McGillycuddy series together, they chose a pen name to make things easy.
Danielle won the Vogel prize for her first novel, The Alphabet of Light and Dark. She is also the author of two short story collections - Rosie Little's Cautionary Tale for Girls and Mothers Grimm and the non-fiction book Housewife Superstar - The Very Best of Marjorie Bligh.
WC Heather is the author of three novels, White Heart, The River Wife and The Butterfly Man. Her forthcoming novel is With Marina.
They both live in Tasmania. Between them they have two husbands, six children (including a set of twins), a dog, a cat, six rats, quite a few guinea pigs and countless bees.
I loved Finding Serendipity, the first book featuring Tuesday McGillycuddy. But I adored A Week Without Tuesday. It is fun, imaginative, and with an excellent story and characters. Vivienne Small, a character created by Tuesday’s mother, the famous author Serendipity Smith, needs help in her world. In the real world, newspaper headlines scream ‘EXCLUSIVE! SEVEN WRITERS ABDUCTED.’ These writers are turning up in places a long way from where they are meant to be and are invariably injured and have no memory of how they got to these places. So Denis McGillycuddy in an effort to protect his wife and daughter from being the next writers whisked off and hurt, decrees Serendipity or Tuesday must write. The plan sounds good in theory. But it doesn’t stop Tuesday and her winged dog Baxterr being whisked off into the world of story, which is in chaos with worlds colliding. This is a story of love and sacrifice with memorable characters. I also loved the inclusion of characters and references to other books and all the helpful titbits about writing. Parents can enjoy reading this book with their kids, while teachers and students will benefit from some of the hints given about using imagination, being a writer and developing story. I loved the humour in this book and the vercaka are suitably scary as they attack and prey on people’s secret fears. This is a book that could be read more than once and discover more things in it, missed first time through. This feat of imagination deserves a place in every home, school and library. It is a gem. I do think you would need to read the first book in the series first to gain the full benefit from this captivating book. Highly recommended reading. The first thing the reader of this book is going to do, if they haven’t already, is find a copy of Finding Serendipity (FS) by the same authors. It is not that you can’t read this book on its own and enjoy it immensely but the reader wants, no needs, to find out about the characters and the adventures they had previous to this one. The authors mention only in passing, events that have happened in the previous book. The tension and mystery in this story is as good as it was in FS. The reader cannot put it down and as good readers do, they try to work out how the authors are going to resolve this or that problem and then move on from it. The interesting thing in this story is the way the authors have two stories travelling alongside each other- Tuesday’s adventure and her parents’ adventure. The reader doesn’t know which one will be in the next chapter increasing the tension in the story. The reader finds it difficult to wait and find out what is happening to each of the characters resulting in the urge to read just one more chapter. The book once again is for the better reader. While the vocabulary is not difficult the sentences are long and descriptive. The book could be available to other readers if it was used as a read aloud for the class. In chapter 26, the authors use the resolution of the major problem to tell readers of the passion and commitment needed to write stories once again giving them help to become better writers themselves.Teachers reviews
Dale Harcombe, NSW
Roxanne Steenbergen, Windermere Primary School, TAS