The Apprentice Witnesser
By (Author) Bren MacDibble
Allen & Unwin
A&U Children
30th April 2024
Australia
Children
Fiction
Paperback
256
Width 128mm, Height 198mm
198g
That's what my photos are. Little moments. All the good moments, the kind moments, the moments of care and love that, if you add them all together, make a life sweet.
Bastienne Scull is a young orphan who lives with the local Witnesser of Miracles, Lodyma Darsey, who investigates 'miraculous events' and spins them into stories she tells at the night markets.
After Lodyma's husband and oldest son died of a sickness that continues to sweep the land, she sent her teenage son Osmin into the hills to live with the mountain men. That was ten years ago and Lodyma doesn't know if he's alive or dead. And she's taken Bastienne as an apprentice to fill the void of her lost family.
One day, two young boys arrive in town asking Lodyma to go on a mysterious mission to a monastery. And when Lodyma and Bastienne arrive, what they discover will change their lives.
A wonderful novel, full of hope, courage, resilience and family.
'A classic MacDibble: young Basti is a delight as she searches for her strength and a family in a post-apocalyptic world, leaving us with a glimmer of hope for her future and our own.' - Wendy Orr
Bren MacDibble was raised on farms all over New Zealand, she backpacked the world in her twenties, stopped off in Australia on the way home and stayed. She lived in Melbourne for twenty years, then travelled Australia living and working in a bus, and now runs holiday villas on the stunning coral coast of Western Australia. In 2018, How to Bee - her first novel for younger readers - won the Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers, the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature, and the New Zealand Book Awards Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction. In 2019 The Dog Runner won the New Zealand Book Awards Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction. Across the Risen Sea (2020) was shortlisted for multiple awards and nominated for a CILIP Carnegie medal. TheRaven's Song(2022), co-written with Zana Fraillon, was an Honour Book for the CBCA Award for Younger Readers. Bren also writes for young adults under the name Cally Black.
www.macdibble.com