Everybody Jam

By Ali Lewis

This book is about Danny, and his family, who live on a cattle farm in Australia. His 14 year old sister, Sissy, is pregnant, his younger sister, Emily just doesn’t understand and his brother Johnny died in an accident. This year is their first ‘Muster’ on the farm without Johnny, and is Danny’s last one; he wants to make it a good one. But lack of rain causes some serious problems; the drought is getting worse…

I really liked the character ‘The Pommie’, their sort of Nanny. I thought how she acted was very realistic- a bit bewildered and confused, and I think if I had been her I definitely would have been. I also liked the character Danny, he had such a mixture of feelings and I loved reading about them. I thought it was sad that he felt he couldn’t talk to anyone about Johnny and the fact that he felt no one listened to him, everyone else was more important.

The storyline was great and even though I had no idea what a muster was, and what a lot of the things in it were, I still understood everything going on because it wasn’t just about the muster, it was about the characters life, within the muster and out of it. I learnt a lot from the book and thought the way everything was explained to the Pommie helped the reader to understand it too; I thought that was very clever.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and thought it was great. It was gripping in places, sad, happy and unpredictable, making it a really good read.

By Emily B, Year 8