What do you think?
Rate this book
Callie
Two favourites from Ruth Park in one volume. Callie's Castle introduces Callie Cameron, who is unhappy with her friend Frances, her family and, well ... life. With her brothers and sister running riot through her bedroom, reading her diary and ruining her treasures, she's desperate for a space to call her own. Even the promised new house is proving to be a letdown, until her beloved grandfather helps her find a solution. In Callie's Family, we return to the Cameron household, with new dilemmas arising as the kids grow up. Callie hates the thought of having to give up her 'castle' to her brother Dan, now she's getting older. And there's an adventure in store - a trip to Denmark to meet their cousin Marius - but only one ticket. So which of them will Callie or Dan?
155 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2010
6 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Ruth Park
83 books112 followersRuth Park was a New Zealand-born author, who spent most of her life in Australia. She was born in Auckland, and her family later moved to Te Kuiti further south in the North Island of New Zealand, where they lived in isolated areas.
During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house. After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. For a time she stayed with relatives on a Coromandel farming estate where she was treated like a serf by the wealthy landowner until she told the rich woman what she really thought of her.
Ruth claimed that she was involved in the Queen Street riots with her father. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D'Arcy Niland.
Her first novel was The Harp in the South (1948) - a story of Irish slum life in Sydney, which was translated into 10 languages. (Some critics called it a cruel fantasy because as far as they were concerned there were no slums in Sydney.) But Ruth and D'Arcy did live in Sydney slums at Surry Hills. She followed that up with Poor Man's Orange (1949). She also wrote Missus (1985) and other novels, as well as a long-running Australian children's radio show and scripts for film and TV. She created The Muddle-Headed Wombat series of children's books. Her autobiographies are A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). She also wrote a novel based in New Zealand, One-a-pecker, Two-a-pecker (1957), about gold mining in Otago (later renamed The Frost and The Fire).
Park received awards in Australia and internationally.
Winner of the Dromkeen Medal.
During the Great Depression her working class father worked on bush roads, as a driver, on relief work, as a sawmill hand, and finally shifted back to Auckland as council worker living in a state house. After Catholic primary school Ruth won a partial scholarship to secondary school, but this was broken by periods of being unable to afford to attend. For a time she stayed with relatives on a Coromandel farming estate where she was treated like a serf by the wealthy landowner until she told the rich woman what she really thought of her.
Ruth claimed that she was involved in the Queen Street riots with her father. Later she worked at the Auckland Star before shifting to Australia in 1942. There she married the Australian writer D'Arcy Niland.
Her first novel was The Harp in the South (1948) - a story of Irish slum life in Sydney, which was translated into 10 languages. (Some critics called it a cruel fantasy because as far as they were concerned there were no slums in Sydney.) But Ruth and D'Arcy did live in Sydney slums at Surry Hills. She followed that up with Poor Man's Orange (1949). She also wrote Missus (1985) and other novels, as well as a long-running Australian children's radio show and scripts for film and TV. She created The Muddle-Headed Wombat series of children's books. Her autobiographies are A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). She also wrote a novel based in New Zealand, One-a-pecker, Two-a-pecker (1957), about gold mining in Otago (later renamed The Frost and The Fire).
Park received awards in Australia and internationally.
Winner of the Dromkeen Medal.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
queued
April 20, 2023Callie Cameron's not happy. She's had a fight with her best friend Frances, and her brothers and sister keep reading her diary and wrecking her things.
And that's not all. Callie hates the thought of having to give up her 'castle' to her brother Dan, now she's getting older. There's also an adventure in store - a trip to Denmark to meet their cousin Marius - but only one ticket. So which of them will go: Callie or Dan?
Originally published as Callie's Castle and Callie's Family, this combined edition reintroduces these two classics by one of Australia's best-loved authors to a new generation of young readers. Cover illustration by Margaret Power
Displaying 1 of 1 review