Books with author Bruce Grant

Norah is now 14. She, Jim and Wally do their best to put up with Cecil, the 19-year-old cousin from town who has come to stay at Billabong for the Christmas holidays and tries to show off to his Bush relatives with his disdainful city airs. But the results are invariably disastrous and highly amusing until he does the unforgiveable and takes Norah’s much-loved pony for a wild ride...

Norah, Jim and Wally have to grow up, but that is always the order of things. Growing up brings its own attractions and its own romances. One of the best books in the Billabong series, Billabong's Daughter delves a lot more into the emotions of Jim, Norah and Wally than previous books, using Wally's experience in Queensland and his bonding with Norah as examples.

It is the height of the gold rush when Dick and his sister Betty make their first visit to stay at Billabong and encounter rather more excitement than they’d bargained for. News of the gold strike has brought hopeful prospectors into the Billabong hills, among them an unscrupulous ex-prize fighter named McGill and Lee Wing, the Chinese gardener turned cook, whose ingenious plan to outwit McGill makes him the hero of the day. At the end of the adventure, everyone agreed with Dick - it certainly was something they’d never forget!

THE trench wound a sinuous way through the sodden Flanders mud. Underfoot were boards; and then sandbags; and then more boards, added as the mud rose up and swallowed all that was put down upon it. Some of the last-added boards had almost disappeared, ground out of sight by the trampling feet of hundreds of men: a new battalion had relieved, three nights before, the men who had held that part of the line for a week, and when a relief arrives, a trench becomes uncomfortably filled, and the ground underfoot is churned into deep glue. It was more than time to put down another floor; to which the only objection was that no more flooring material was available, and had there been, no one had time to fetch it. It was the second trench. Beyond it was another, occupied by British soldiers: beyond that again, a mass of tangled barbed-wire, and then the strip of No-Man’s Land dividing the two armies—a strip ploughed up by shells and scarred with craters formed by the bursting of high explosives. Here and there lay rifles, and spiked German helmets, and khaki caps; but no living thing was visible save the cheeky Flemish sparrows that hopped about the quiet space, chirping and twittering as if trying to convince themselves and everybody else that War was hundreds of miles away. The sparrows carried out this pleasant deception every morning, abandoning the attempt as soon as the first German gun began what the British soldiers, disagreeably interrupted in frying bacon, termed “the breakfast hate.” Then they retreated precipitately to the sparrow equivalent to a dug-out, to meditate in justifiable annoyance on the curious ways of men. In the second trench the men were weary and heavy-eyed, and even bacon had scant attractions for them. It was their first experience of trench-life complicated by shell-fire, and since their arrival the enemy had been “hating” with a vigour that seemed to argue on his part a peculiar sourness of temper. Now, after two days of incessant artillery din and three nights of the strenuous toil that falls upon the trenches with darkness, the new men bore evidence of exhaustion. Casualties had been few, considering the violent nature of the bombardment; but to those who had never before seen Death come suddenly, an even slighter loss would have been horrifying. The ceaseless nerve-shattering roar of the big guns pounded in their brains long after darkness had put an end to the bombardment; their brief snatches of sleep were haunted by the white faces of the comrades with whom they would laugh and fight and work no more. They were stiff and sore with crouching under the parapets and in the narrow dug-outs; dazed with noise, sullen with the anger of men who have been forced to endure without making any effort to hit back. But their faces had hardened under the test. A few were shrinking, “jumpy,” useless: but the majority had stiffened into men. When the time for hitting back came, they would be ready. Dawn on the fourth morning found them weary enough, but, on the whole, in better condition than they had been two days earlier. They were getting used to it; and even to artillery bombardment “custom hath made a property of easiness.” The first sense of imminent personal danger had faded with each hour that found most of them still alive. Discipline and routine, making each officer and man merely part of one great machine, steadied them into familiar ways, even in that unfamiliar setting.

Enjoyed by generations of young Australians since its publication in 1910, A Little Bush Maid is the ultimate, idyllic tale of an adventurous girl growing up in the Australian bush. Billabong, a large cattle and sheep property in the Australian countryside, is home to twelve-year-old Norah Linton, her widowed father and her older brother, Jim. Norah's prim and proper aunts, who live in the city, consider she is in danger of "growing up wild" - riding all over Billabong on her beloved pony, Bobs, helping with mustering, and joining in all the holiday fun when Jim and his friends come home from boarding school. A fishing trip results in unexpected drama when they discover a mysterious stranger camped in the bush. Who is this stranger and why is he there? Norah's resourcefulness is tested to the full!

Farmer Simpson works all day.He plants his corn, and beans, and hay.His feet get tired, his nose gets red.At night, he likes to go to bed.But Simpson's sheep have other plans -- and sleep is not one of them! They think of every excuse to stay awake.They need a drink. They want a snack.They have to ''go!'' They like to yack.Will poor Simpson ever find a way to lull his sheep to sleep? Illustrated with soft pastel drawings that are both silly and soothing, Simpson's Sheep Wont Go to Sleep! is a story for every parent who has put a child to bed -- and every child who has creatively resisted.Hardcover.32 pages.Full color throughout.Ages 4 to 8.8-7/8 inches wide x 11-1/4 inches high.Author and illustrator Bruce Arant -- a father of three -- writes from personal experience of tucking youngsters in at bedtime, when he has fielded all possible childhood excuses to stay awake just a little bit longer. Prior to becoming a full-time writer and illustrator, Arant enjoyed a career of nearly 20 years in the magazine and custom publishing industry, where he held a variety of editorial and creative positions. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.