Finding Serendipity (Angelica Banks, A&U)

Tuesday’s mother is Serendipity Smith, the most famous author in the world. Serendipity is supposed to finish her latest novel today, but when Tuesday knocks on her door, the manuscript is lying unfinished on the desk and Serendipity is missing. Tuesday thinks the key to finding her may lie in the unfinished manuscript, so she sits down at her mother’s typewriter. But when she starts to type, the words lift her up and sweep her to the land where writers go to find the way through their stories. There she finds her way into her mother’s latest novel, the thrilling adventures of Vivienne Small. Finding Serendipity is the first novel for children by adult fiction authors Heather Rose and Danielle Wood, writing as Angelica Banks. It’s not entirely successful: the prose feels self-conscious and cutesy, and Vivienne Small’s Peter Pan-esque story-within-a-story isn’t original or convincing enough to really support the book’s theme on the magic of storytelling. But the  world is an imaginative one, with some charming details such as the room of ghostly works in progress and the row of helpful dishes labelled things like ‘Absolutely Nothing Is Going to Plan’. Tuesday’s story will appeal to middle and upper primary readers with writing aspirations.

Jarrah Moore is a primary literacy editor at Cengage Learning Australia

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews