Lin and the Red Stranger
Published on 1. December 2012
174 pages
978-1-77553-207-1 (ISBN)
Description
A poignant young adult novel set in the goldfields of Otago during the 1860s goldrush.
The story by an award-wining YA writer follows the lives of two young people, both very different, drawn to the goldfields for the same reason - they all hope to strike it rich.
One of the main characters is a young Chinese girl, and the other a European boy. As well as being a plot-driven story, this book examines the cultural differences between these two. This provides interesting discussion points for New Zealand society today, where we still grapple with many of these same cultural problems.
It shows how people are shaped by struggle and adversity and how the goldfields shaped our society in the nineteenth century, changing people who then went on to change their world.
More details
Person
Ken Catran is an award-winning children's writer of over 30 acclaimed novels for young adults, as well as having been a highly successful television scriptwriter. His books for young adults engage with the historical, the fantastical, and science fiction.
He has been shortlisted many times in the New Zealand Post Book Awards and won Book of the Year in 2001. In 2004 he won the Esther Glen Award for his distinguished contribution to literature at the LIANZA Children's Book Awards.
He has been the Waikato University Writer in Residence and was the 2007 winner of the New Zealand's most prestigious award for children's writers, the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal. The award is given annually by the Storylines Children's Literature Charitable Trust to acknowledge a distinguished contribution to New Zealand children's literature.
