THE GOODBYE YEAR BY EMILY GALE
The Goodbye Year is a story about finding your place among your friends and community as well as accepting that sometimes life can be a bumpy road. Harper is really looking forward to Year 6 as she and her classmates will get to enjoy the comradery and special privileges that come with your final year of primary school. She is also keen to see which captains badge she’ll get. When her best friends Cleo and Ro are given great badges along with her arch enemy Corey and she is left with the Library Captains role, she is devastated. Each recess and lunch her friends seem to be slipping further away as they have meetings to discuss various projects. Harper’s life is thrown another curve ball when her parents, both nurses, decide to do aid work in a war-torn country far away. Harper is left to go and live with her grandmother Lolly, who she hardly knows.
Living with Lolly isn’t bad, but Harper is finding it difficult to sleep. Something keeps on waking her up at 3am and she is beginning to sleepwalk. An old cadet badge she found on the way to school keeps on turning up in the strangest places and she is wondering if there is something wrong with her. Harper’s life is further thrown into disarray when schools are shut down during the pandemic. What with her friends seemingly abandoning her, trying to find something exciting about the library to engage her fellow students and her sleepless nights, she is growing more and more unsettled. When she sees a ghost in the library, Harper finds herself exploring another time that is eerily similar to her own.
What does this young soldier want and why is Harper the only person who sees him? His appearance and their conversations only manage to create more difficulties with her friends. Surely there must be a solution somewhere to be found in a thread from the past.
Emily Gales’ character Harper embodies the thoughts and experiences of so many kids in the past and recent times. The themes of friendship, family, resilience and empathy flow throughout the novel which combines the perennial ups and downs of the final year of junior school with modern experiences. The Goodbye Year gives a glimpse into a world inhabited by characters familiar to many, and readers will enjoy Harper’s journey and the unexpected twists it sometimes takes.
For Ages: 10-12 years
Number of Pages: 256
Published: August 2022 Text
Themes: Family, friendship and resilience
Purchase here: https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-goodbye-year-emily-gale/book/9781922458599.html