GOLD MEDAL, BEST FICTION: AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND-AOTEAROA/PACIFIC RIM. 2024 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER BOOK AWARDS SILVER MEDAL, LITERARY FICTION, 2024 READERS' FAVORITE BOOK AWARDS From Jenni Ogden, author of multiple-award-winning A Drop in the Ocean, comes another evocative story of friendship, coral reefs, and marine conservation for book-club readers. It is the late 1970s and teenagers Gaia and her brother Bron live with their parents on their isolated property on Western Australia’s Coral Coast. Intensively trained for a career as a professional ballet dancer by her mother, once a Principal Dancer in the American Ballet Theatre, Gaia also loves snorkeling over the coral reef that borders their small market garden. Then comes a day that changes her life forever: she discovers a rare pair of dramatically colored seadragons, their courtship dance over the coral spellbinding, and that night she loses her entire family and her dancing dream. Two years later she returns to the abandoned property, determined to live off the land. For years her only friends are the wild animals of the bush and reef, and Mary and Eddie, an Aboriginal couple who work for the racist farmer on the neighboring property — until one morning Jarrah, Mary’s 11-year-old orphaned nephew, is entranced when he sees Gaia dancing on the beach. As an unlikely friendship between these two lonely and scarred people deepens, they discover that when you lose everything the only way to survive is to open your heart.

Everyone in Miss May's class believes in dragons-except for Jack. When the other children join in the game of imagining a dragon at school, Jack refuses to play along. Is there anything that can convince him to change his mind?

Calling all precocious princesses! This series is sure to be a hit with girls who love E.D. Baker and other authors who offer a big dose of humor and adventure with their princess fix. Rules for the Ballet of the Flowers: 1. The invitations must be perfect. 2. You must pick a beautiful flower. 3. Your dance must be graceful. At Tall Towers Princess Academy, the Ballet of the Flowers is a very special performance. But Grace just can’t seem to get it right. First, she ruins the invitations when she falls off her unicorn and into the mud. Then she picks a flower called dragon’s heart . . . but it smells more like dragon poo! And graceful? Well, that’s just not Princess Grace. She has much more important things on her mind—like whether a real dragon is living near her school! But will Grace’s secret new friend mess up the ballet performance?

A children's picture book about hope, hard work, and being true to oneself. And dragons!