Michelle Morgan (2)

For kids who like the "My Australian Story" series from scholastic. Set in Glebe, Sydney during the Great Depression, Joe Reilly is a bit better off than some of his friends and neighbors. For starters, his mother and sister run a successful dressmaking business out of their house, his father HAS a job as a Debt collector during the week and runs an illegal SP Bookie ring on the weekends AND Joe himself delivers his uncle's eggs around the neighborhood and earns pennies himself.
The book starts with 13 year old Joe getting into trouble because he and his best mate Pete have climbed up the newly opened Sydney Harbour Bridge to watch Charles Kingsford Smith fly over in his plane, The Southern Cross, instead of taking bets from punters for his father. Joe has decided he wants to be an aviator just like "Smithy" but his parents have other ideas, especially his mother whose 2 brothers were pilots killed in WW1. Joe is determined to take flying lessons and starts saving as much money as he can, even wagging school on Wednesdays to work as a runner for a real Bookmaker at Randwick.
This book has everything - Joe's romance with the Principal's daughter Amy, the TB epidemic that kills someone close to him,a robbery and a bashing, a disastrous scout camp at the beach in Summer and finally a plane crash!
We also learn, as we read along that Joe is not perfect (he was expelled from a fancy school) and that he isn't averse to "bending the rules" like his father. But he still comes across as a like-able larrikan lad who is passionate about his goals and realizes his mistakes.… (mer)