DragonQuest will be in the Walker Classics series September 2012 release!

A creaky knight rides into a boy's reading and demands he help to track down the last dragon. Scholastic Australia, Korea.
Awards: Short listed for CBCA Picture Book of Year, for NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

Krakatoa Lighthouse
The world's deadly volcano is about to explode.
Once it devastated every civilization in the world, include the Roman Empire.
Now it will create the loudest sound ever recorded, sending air waves seven times around the world. And it will create tsunamis of a height of forty metres.
There will be fools, cowards, the lucky and the tragic.
And then there will be incredible heroes…
 ®   Krakatoa Lighthouse is published by Penguin Australia.
Shortlisted the 2009 NSW Premier's Young People's History Prize
Won the NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2010: Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature
The judges said: This book is a marvel of precision and economy, stuffed to the gunnels with ideas, and brimming over with a dark energy. Allan Baillie gives a masterclass in how to write. Set against the imminent catastrophic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, Krakatoa Lighthouse is much more than a story of a natural disaster. It is a richly-layered historical novel, dissecting the political and colonial forces at work in the Java of the late nineteenth century. Baillie’s main protagonist is Kerta, the young son of the keeper of the Anjer lighthouse. It is through Kerta that we become immersed in the lost world of pre-Krakatoan Java. Never preachy or patronising, Ballie’s prose is spare and unsentimental, painting a clear picture of a particular time and place that resonates in contemporary society. Although his writing is ripe with symbolism, Baillie never oversells the links he makes between the islanders’ incipient revolution and the volcanic forces stirring malevolently beneath the ocean. Krakatoa Lighthouse is that rare find: an exciting, moving story that keeps opening doors to larger questions. Baillie puts the reader right there in the moment with stunningly accurate detail that rings true, yet we never feel the dead hand of history overwhelming us. Instead we discover the setting through Kerta’s gradual politicisation, his burgeoning friendship with a Dutch boy and a Scottish scientist, while in the background the rumbling anger of Orang Aljeh grows more and more insistent. And Baillie doesn’t flinch when it comes to the big moments, or the big questions. As Orang Aljeh flexes a finger and Kerta sees his world destroyed, and as all the characters – terrorists, colonials, the Javanese, the scientists – become simply human in the face of monstrous nature, Baillie makes his points so effectively, and in such a concise way, that the reader is left breathless. A wonderful book which fully deserves to become a classic.
Photos of Krakatoa Lighthouse
Penguin Australia
Amazon Kindle has Krakatoa Lighthouse

Little Brother   It's Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge are in power. Vithy has lost everyone and everything he loved - except his older brother. They've escaped from execution, but they are separated and Vithy is alone to 'follow the lines', Mang's fleeting instruction. Which lines?