All the Little Tricky Things
by Karys McEwen
All the Little Tricky Things is a charming, heartfelt novel about a time when everything is changing, and a girl who’s trying to make sense of it all.
It’s the start of the summer holidays and twelve-year-old Bertie is worried. Next year she’s going to a high school in the city, while all her friends stay behind in Merri, the small town she’s lived in all her life.
To help her feel better prepared for high school, her best friend, Claire, makes a list of tasks Bertie has to complete over the summer. They start working through the list together, only to find that some of the cracks in their friendship are beginning to show. Soon, Bertie’s not even sure she’ll have one friend by the end of the summer.
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'Karys McEwen’s prose is gorgeous and she deftly traverses the highs and lows of tweenhood with a rich cast of characters. Ideal for 8–12-year-olds.'
– Books + Publishing
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‘A big warm hug of a book, tender and true. McEwen writes perceptively about the emotions of growing up and maybe growing apart from everything and everyone you’ve always known. I loved it.’
– Danielle Binks
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'Karys McEwen astutely homes in on that complicated and specific space between leaving primary school and facing a completely new stage in life. Between impending periods, crushes, making new friends and keeping old ones, McEwen honours the complexity of the tween-experience, and infuses it with warmth and originality.'
– Frances Atkinson, SMH
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'My daughter and I read All The Little Tricky Things by Karys McEwen together and it was the best thing we could have done. It allowed us to talk about some of the big topics and things she was feeling, without the pressure because we were talking about characters in a book.''
– Michelle, via Rebel Readers
About the author
Karys McEwen is the current vice president of the Victorian branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia. She is also a school librarian, and she is passionate about the role libraries and literature play in the wellbeing of young people. She has been a columnist for Books+Publishing and her work has appeared in library journals in Australia and the UK.
All the Little Tricky Things is her debut middle-grade novel. Her second middle-grade novel, The Paperbark Tree Committee, will be published in June 2024.
Studying or discussing All the Little Tricky Things in your classroom, book club or library?
Story Tools by Story Box Library
See Karys in the new series by Story Box Library! Story Tools is a story writing series, via short video tutorials and resources to support student creativity and literacy, inspiring and creating confident storytellers.
Karys is in Lesson 8: All About Genre and Lesson 12: Reading Stories of Story Tools Series 1, which launched in February 2023. Find out more about Story Tools here.