Kate De Goldi writes novels, short fiction and picture books. She reviews books on Radio New Zealand National, and TVNZ’s “Good Morning” show. Her latest novel, The Ten PM Question, was published by Longacre Press in 2008.
Read an excerpt from Kate De Goldi's novel, The Ten PM Question
BOOKS
Clubs: A Lolly Leopold Story
'The clubs epidemic breaks out in March like a giant nit plague. It spreads through our class 'til practically everyone's infected. Not me. I must be inoculated.'
Lolly has a divine teacher called Ms Love. She has a cat called Laughing Stock but he won’t qualify her for membership of the Kitten Club. The Harry Potter Club excludes girls, the Lego Club too violent and she’s disdainful of the Barbie Club beauty contests. In this story Lolly narrates her search for a Club to truly belong to. A beautiful and witty illustrated tale, Clubs will find an eager audience both in the 6–12 age group and with adults, who’ll enjoy it for the sly humour and many visual jokes. Clubs was the Book of the Year and Picture Book of the Year in the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, 2005.
'The wonderful homemade illustrations and text of Clubs describe perfectly the tough, complicated world of primary school, and Lolly's spunk and intelligence give hope to lonely kids everywhere. I love this book. I wish I'd had Ms Love for my teacher.' - Alison Lester
'Pure brilliance' - John McIntyre, Radio New Zealand
'Jacqui Colley's pictures are a revelation ... something of the flavour of Lauren Child but more sophisticated. The news that it's the first of a series is very, very welcome.' - David Larsen, New Zealand Listener
Uncle Jack
‘Our Uncle Jack wears a navy-blue duffle coat, a ninety-year old pork pie hat and scuffed gumboots painted with lightening bolts. He comes every Friday for fish n chips, but we must never mention that the fish once had eyes and a mouth and swam in the sea. Old Jack, he’s a softie for furs and feathers and fins, our Grandad says. Best not go there.’
This story ventures into the interior world of a luminous, quirky personality, a character evoked in such a way that his age and capacity beguile and puzzle right up to the story’s climax. The night and day of Uncle Jack’s imaginative world, his fears and fantasies and fabulous passions come to life with characters reminiscent of mythology, nursery rhymes and childhood stories. Rich with the warmth of family life and rituals, this book explores the power of light-handed loving and the ability to be gloriously who you are.
Billy: A Lolly Leopold Story
‘My teacher is a magnificent creature. She lives in an ancient house with a turret and a finial, two cats, an axylotl, and a Kune Kune pig called Daniel. She eats black pudding and banana cake for breakfast and cold Kim Chee for lunch. She sings Kiss me, honey, honey on the way to school and sometimes serenades us into class. She says work should be a pleasure but play must be even better. My Dad says they certainly broke the mould when they made Ms Love.’
Billy Button can’t keep his mouth shut or his temper under control. It makes preparation for the annual Pet and Produce Day a nightmare. Not only that: Room 7 is a competitive class of over-achievers, teacher’s pets and anarchists – and worse, he has to wrestle with the community judges’ arcane and rigid rules.
Lolly relates her version of the events, around P & P day and, in particular, Billy’s struggle to express himself. With characteristic wit and precocity Lolly plumbs the heart of Billy’s quest to overcome his learning and temperamental difficulties – under the compassionately creative guidance of the inimitable Ms Love. Lolly empathises with Billy’s frustrations and escapism and cheers on his ingenuity and unique solutions. Lolly’s and Billy’s imaginations run riot, and so do the events of P & P Day – just the way Ms Love likes things to go: ‘not with a whimper, but a bang!’
'Billy is another class act from the inspired pen and paint duo of De Goldi and artist Jacqui Colley, winner of the 2005 New Zealand Post Children & Young Adults Books of the Year for their first
Lolly Leopold story, Clubs. No one else comes close to celebrating a classroom’s directed chaos and the ricochet of action and ego. Colley’s layering illustrations employ a restless perspective that matches the story’s starburst of sub-plot, detour, wit and wonderful characterisation. Billy won’t disappoint the legion of Lolly fans – and those who secretly wished they had a teacher like Ms Love.'
– Dylan Owen, The Dominion Post
The Ten PM Question
Frankie parsons is twelve going on old man, an apparently sensible, talented boy with a drumbeat of worrying questions steadily gaining volume in his head:
Are the smoke alarm batteries flat?
Does the cat, and therefore the rest of the family, have worms?
Will bird flu strike and ruin life as we know it?
Is the kidney-shaped spot on his chest actually a galloping cancer?
Only Ma takes seriously his catalogue of persistent queries. But it is ma who is the cause of the most worrying question of all, the one that Frankie can never bring himself to ask. Then the new girl arrives at school and has questions of her own: relentless, unavoidable questions. So begins the unraveling of Frankie Parsons's carefully controlled world.
'In Kate de Goldi's sensitive, vital and hilarious novel, Frankie and the reader walk hand in hand through pages that gleam with hope and humour.'
-Ursula Dubosarsky
'A truly special book. Kate de Goldi's dazzling writing will break your heart and make you wonder, marvel and laugh all at once.'
-Agnes Nieuwenhuizen