Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, one of two YA novels I bought when in Australia. I'm only a chapter in so far, but hope to read more today.
I saw the film version (for which MM wrote the screenplay) about ten years ago - on DVD imported from Australia, as it never had a UK cinema release. I'll have to watch it again once I've read the novel.
I've just read the chapter where Josie breaks a fellow schoolgirl's nose with a book for making racist comments. (Calling her a "wog" - Josie is of Italian/Sicilian descent.) I remember that scene from the film!
I've done a little research and it appears that of Marchetta's five novels, only
Saving Francesca was published in the UK. It's certainly the only one that's in Hampshire's library system. The other four are all available on Amazon UK but they appear to be used copies either from Australia or the USA. (
Alibrandi might be a UK edition but I'm pretty sure I've never seen it in UK shops.)
I guess this shows that every country has its own YA and they don't necessarily cross over to other countries - and that it's far easier to buy US books in the UK via Amazon than it is to buy Australian ones (or NZ ones, or South African ones). Every bookshop I went into in Melbourne and Sydney which had a YA section had copies of all five Marchetta novels. It seems her profile is much lower here, if not non-existent. I get the impression she's pretty big in her native country and I believe that
Alibrandi is taught in high schools there.
Another example is John Marsden's
Tomorrow series. It seems only the first four were published in the UK and there are seven of them. I guess they didn't sell very well. Yet they were everywhere in Australia, helped no doubt by the film version of the first one,
Tomorrow When the War Began. I'm planning to read TWTWB - I don't have a copy yet - before the film comes out in the UK. (I saw the film on its opening night in Melbourne but I haven't yet heard when it'll be coming out in the UK. Not before 2011 for sure. It'll be time to watch the film again by then.)