Books with title Half a World Away

Sixteen-year-old Eliza Miller has never made a phone call, never tried on a pair of jeans, never sat in a darkened theater waiting for a movie to start. She’s never even talked to someone her age who isn’t Amish, like her. When she leaves her close-knit family to spend the summer as a nanny in a suburb of Chicago, a part of her can’t wait to leave behind everything she knows. She can’t imagine the secrets she will uncover, the friends she will make, the surprises and temptations of a way of life so different from her own. Every minute Eliza spends with her new friend Josh feels as good as listening to music for the first time, and she wonders whether there might be a place for her in his world. But as summer wanes, she misses the people she has left behind and the Plain life she once took for granted. Eliza will have to decide for herself where she belongs. Whichever choice she makes, she knows she will lose someone she loves.

Melanie Tamaki is human - but her parents aren't. They are from Half World, a Limbo between our world and the afterlife, and her father is still there. When her mother disappears, Melanie must follow her to Half World - and neither of them may return alive. Imagine Coraline as filmed by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (Howl's Moving Castle), or Neil Gaiman collaborating with Charles de Lint. Half World is vivid, visceral, unforgettable, a combination of prose and images that will haunt you.

Ripped from her mother's bosom and shipped to England as an exhibit for Sir Walter Raleigh, Nadie, a Native American Indian, is thrust into the boiling pot of brutish Tudor life. Her only protector is Tom, a young blacksmith who falls in love with her. Too soon, Nadie is forced back to her exotic lands, to help the English colonize her people. But the New World holds uncharted danger - can Nadie protect Tom in her world?

Two kids from Australia, Lacho and Zarz, have moved half-way around the world to live in England. Everything here is different. The weather is colder, there’s not a whole lot of space and they don’t know a single person. But when the children move into their new home at Bishops Gardens, they discover something extraordinary. A football… with a secret. Lacho and Zarz find out that the football can fly. And what’s more – when they kick it, they can fly too. Lacho loves playing with the magic ball and quickly falls in love with the sport. He practices his football skills at every chance he gets and soon, he is part of Fulham Football Club’s Junior squad. Lacho wants to know more about the ball and its secret. Its magic powers don’t work for everyone and adults can’t seem to even see the magic at play. He discovers the ball has been in Bishops Gardens ever since football legend, Johnny Haynes, kicked it out of Craven Cottage, the home stadium for Fulham FC, 50 years ago. So will the magic be able to help Lacho’s beloved team make it to the grand final? Soon, the football is taking the 7 year-old from Australia on a journey he can’t quite believe. Throw in a dog that passes wind when he barks and a cranky old guy who hates anything fun; and this book will keep your little ones entertained chapter after chapter. A World Away is a magical story with a lesson for us all.