Barry Jonsberg

"This isn't just about me. It's also about the other people in my life - my mother, my father, my dead sister Sky, my penpal Denille, Rich Uncle Brian, Earth-Pig Fish and Douglas Benson From Another Dimension. These are people (with the exception of Earth-Pig Fish, who is a fish) who have shaped me, made me what I am. I...

Good evening, Rob. Your first challenge follows. These challenges have nothing to do with impressing Destry Camberwick. They are all to do with Rob Fitzgerald impressing Rob Fitzgerald. Bear that in mind at all times. Challenge 1. You will enter the Milltown's Got Talent competition. This gives you over a fortnight to polish your act and work out strategies to...

Two things that are true and one that is a lie: I think my mother is dead and alive. I think if I work hard I will be very good at something. I've tried to please my dad but I don't think I ever will. Thirteen-year-old Morgan lives with his dad and his older brother, Mitch. He hasn't heard from...

I'm miserable and sixteen. In that order. Sixteen can be a tough time. And it's almost unmanageable for a wisecracking boy whose temper is white-hot. As a consequence, he is sentenced to a time-out with his reclusive grandfather in a primitive shack in the Tasmanian forest. There is little to do except chop wood and watch the red-eyed wallabies gather...

SHORTLISTED: 2024 Chief Minister's NT Book Awards, Children's/YA Books SHORTLISTED: 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature NOTABLE BOOK: 2023 CBCA Book of the Year, Older Readers I don't tell Mum and Sam anything about my weekends with Dad. It would be giving them tickets into that world. The world Dad and I have created....

'We've been worried about Aiden too, Ash,' said Mum. 'He's always been such a ... predictable child. You're not the only one to have noticed the changes.' Ash and Aiden Delatour are identical twins, living a privileged lifestyle with loving parents. In a world that has fallen apart at the seams, they want for nothing. All they have to do...

SHORTLISTED: 2025 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's LiteratureSHORTLISTED: 2025 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Writing for Young AdultsSHORTLISTED: 2024 Queensland Literary Awards, Young Adult Book AwardI don't know about love. I suspect the emotion that others apparently feel all the time is just . . . absent from me. Like there's an ingredient missing from the...

'Where do I start in explaining how much I loved this hilariously quirky and moving story with its beautiful, fractured gem of a narrator? How about A is for Awesome.' - Michael Gerard Bauer This isn't just about me. It's also about the other people in my life - my mother, my father, my dead sister Sky, my penpal Denille,...

'The world will end at ten thirty-six in the morning, on the fourteenth of March this year.'This is the message aliens send to eleven-year-old nerds Harrison (Aitch), Ally and Mo. How do they send it? Via the magnetic letters on Mo's fridge, of course. Aitch and Ally aren't sure what to believe, but soon they're in an alien spaceship travelling...

Pandora Jones: Admission begins with Pandora Jones waking in an infirmary, her body weak and her memory offering only flashes of horrific scenes of death. She soon discovers that her family has succumbed to a plague pandemic that nearly wiped out humanity. Pandora is one of the survivors admitted to The School, a quarantined, heavily guarded survival-skills facility. Here, survivors...

Part detective fiction, part quirky journal, this bold and funny novel is a laugh out loud tale that unfolds when two unlikely friends are drawn into a dramatic series of events through mutual mistrust of their english teacher.