A CBCA NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR YOUNGER READERS 2025

Alytash and Leopold - Tash and Leo - are neighbours who used to be best friends, but aren't anymore, for reasons that Leo doesn't entirely understand. But now it's the last week of Year Six and Tash is standing in Leo's front yard with a misdelivered letter - and a favour to ask.

It's a request that will set off a chain of events in their little crescent in Noble Park, a suburb that is changing, and fast.

As they solve an unfolding neighbourhood mystery and help Ms Shepparson, a reclusive neighbour with a tragic past, Tash and Leo each has to confront fault lines in their own recent histories and families.

They will discover that friendships can grow and change, that bravery takes many forms, and that, most of all - whatever the future holds - friends and family are what matter.

Six Summers of Tash and Leopold is for fans of Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia and Nova Weetman's The Secrets We Keep, as well as Danielle Binks' previous bestseller, The Year the Maps Changed - and for anyone who enjoys a big, hopeful, coming-of-age middle-grade book that features complicated families and life-changing summers.

'Friendship, family and finding your way. This book perfectly captures the complex world of being twelve. I loved it.' NOVA WEETMAN

'Middle-grade readers who enjoyed A L Tait's The First Summer of Callie McGee and Nova Weetman's The Edge of Thirteen will delight in this compelling coming-of-age story . . . Equal parts plot- and character-driven, the narrative moves along at a gentle albeit page-turning pace' BOOKS+PUBLISHING

Praise for The Year the Maps Changed

'A gorgeous book . . . it's timeless and beautiful and it deserves to be read by people of all ages' MELINA MARCHETTA

'A brilliant gem that will make you see the world - and your place in it - in a new way' EMILY GALE