Michelle Hamer is the author of 18
books for adults and children. She
wrote the four Daisy books in
Penguin’s Our Australian Girl series.
Michelle is also a journalist, and was
previously an editor at The Age. She
runs writing classes for children and
adults through her company
Wordsmiths Workshops.
impossible task. I carry with me the echoes of so
many stories I have loved. Was it me who cut
her hair to earn money for the family, or Jo
March? Did I spend years in bed before being
family affair. We were squashed – grandparents,
parents, aunt and kids – eight of us, into one old
car. It was my turn in the foot well. I didn’t mind
so much. There was a hole rusted through the
floor and I watched the bitumen rush beneath
shipped off to boarding school, or was that Katy?
Childhood favourites such as Little Women and
What Katy Did, and the books I’ve gone on to
cherish have become burrowed in my psyche. I
me. I wondered what would happen if I stuck my
fingers out, and thought about the places and
people we streaked past.
Then I started to read Poor Man’s Orange
can’t choose one as a standout. Each has meant
something different at different times.
Some such as Ruth Park’s Poor Man’s
Orange, seemed life changing, yet I only opened
it because it was on the reading list at high
and I was no longer in the Monaro. I was in the
slums of Sydney, chasing vicious rats out of the
baby’s crib, mourning with Mumma and hoping
Roie would find true love. I was transported. The
memory is seared on my mind. This was a story
school that year. I read it cramped into the front
foot well of my family’s Monaro. We had few
holidays, and when we did it was an extended
I could live in. The characters were complex. Life
and death were smashed together on the page,
each as difficult and painful and confusing as the
Choosing a favourite book seems an