Esme in the Limelight

(Paperback)

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Description

Esme doesnt like the girl she sees in the mirror. Not pretty enough. Not thin enough. Not smart enough or talented enough. Nothing at all like her big sister, Ro.
Then, a new friend comes into her lifea friend who wants Esme to be exactly who she is, or so Esme thinks.
For a while, Esme likes who she sees in the mirroreven if it never really feels like her. But then, she messes up. Her friend goes away, leaving her alone. Theres no-one to help cover up the fact that she is a talentless nobody whose only real dream is to work in a milk barwhich will never be good enough for her controlling mother.
When two new friends try to help her see the real Esme again, she cant risk it happening all over again. She cant be their friend. And she definitely cant let them convince her to be in the school play
School plays are for girls like Ro. So, of course she gets a part. Because she is perfect. But what if Ro wasnt as perfect as she seems What if she needs Esmes help
And what if the real Esme Rogers is nothing like who anybody says she is, but a creature of her own making, who can be more than any of them imagine even if it makes her mother mad.
A book about finding friendship in unlikely places and finding yourself in even stranger ones
And, most importantly ice cream.

Author Bio

Kate Gordon grew up in a very bookish house, with two librarian parents, in a small town by the sea in Tasmania. In 2009 she won a Varuna fellowship and hasnt stopped writing since. Her first book, Three Things About Daisy Blue, was published by Allen and Unwin in 2010. She has since been published multiple times by everyone from Yellow Brick Books through to Random House Australia. Kate won the 2016 IBBY Ena Noel Award for Writing Clementine, and in 2018 was shortlisted in the Dorothy Hewett Awards for an Unpublished Manuscript. Her YA novel Girl Running, Boy Falling (2018) is a CBCA Notable. In 2021, Asters Good, Right Things (published by Riveted Press) won the CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers, and in 2023, Xavier in the Meantime was shortlisted in the same category.