Emily Rodda

Today’s author to read aloud is Emily Rodda.  Rodda has written numerous books and series for children and all are fun to read aloud.

The series my son and I started with was Deltora Quest. When he was 7-8 I read the first series to him (which contains 9 books). We both loved them. They were a great adventure story about a boy Leif who has to search the land of Deltora to fill a belt with special jewels in order to find the rightful heir to the throne and overthrow the Shadow Lord. It has great characters (the grumpy minder Barda and a feisty girl Jasmine) and it is full of puzzles and plays on words which are printed in the book and you can look at together to see if you can figure them out. There are fight scenes, evil characters and real problems.

We both loved this series and were both genuinely excited to discover who the true heir to Deltora was at the end. He then went on to read the subsequent two Deltora series himself.

He has then gone on to read the Rowan of Rin series and loved them too. There are also the Three Doors series and the Rondo series (also aimed at 8-12s). Then there is the Fairy Realm books for girls and for very young ones (new readers), the Squeak Street series is quite cute, about a street of mice who each have an individual book.

Don’t you love an author who writes numerous series for numerous age groups!

In researching Rodda, I have realised that this name is actually a pseudonym; she is actually Jennifer Rowe, author and journalist from Sydney.  That is probably why we like her writing so much, there is something about reading Australian authors that feel familiar and natural when you read them. She also has written adult fiction – anyone read any of them?