Her world changes as she soon discovers that her nan who she has been told is dead, is very much alive and she lives close by. Of course this raises questions and sends her into a quandary wondering why on earth her mum would say these things.

Now Gemma is wondering what she imagined for all her eleven years, she has so much to catch up on. when she meets her nan, she asks why her mum said she was dead, this explains a lot. There had been an argument and slowly Gemma discovers more, How bad could this argument have been?

Using verse to tell the story works well, as Gemma processes what she has discovered and speaks with her school friends who comfort and give their thoughts on what she should do. Many families are estranged and in the author's notes she explains the conversations in her research for writing this story.

A somewhat complex story, made easier to read in verse.

The author

Sherryl Clark is a writer, editor and writing teacher with an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults and a PhD in Creative Writing. She has been writing poems and stories for children for over twenty years. Her verse novel, Farm Kid, won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Children’s Books in 2005 and Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!) was an Honour Book in the 2008 Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards. Sherryl worked in community writing for many years and taught professional writing and editing at Victoria University TAFE for over two decades. She now writes full-time. In 2022, Sherryl won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature, for her verse novel, Mina and the Whole Wide World.