Mardi Mak wakes up to find Australia transformed into a winter wonderland. Swimming pools are frozen, snow is piled high in the streets – and it’s February, supposedly the hottest month of the year! If that weren’t strange enough, furniture is sliding everywhere and people are violently seasick. Australia, it seems, is floating south. If it isn’t stopped it will hit Antarctica in a few days.
When Mardi watches her Grandpa lassoing the furniture to stop it escaping, she has an idea. She knows how to stop Australia from floating and to get it back where it belongs. The trouble is, no one will listen to her. She is, after all, only eleven. How would a kid know the solution to the biggest problem Australia has ever faced?
Mardi Mak Meets the South Pole (Nearly) is a humorous tale for primary aged children. Full of silly impossiblities and stereotypically funny characters, it will tickle the funny bones of 9 to 12 year old readers.
Good fun.
Mardi Mak Meets the South Pole (Nearly), by Courtney Lynch
Scholastic, 2003