Theodork is a high-school disaster comedy in a similar vein to the Ishmael books by Michael Gerard Bauer. It also illustrates, with humour and intelligence, the pain of becoming a school outcast. Theo’s failed attempts to gain acceptance make the book somewhat episodic, but Green cuts Theo some slack by allowing him occasional success – his stint as class clown built around Spoonerisms is especially entertaining. In this type of novel, you expect some kind of underdog-makes-good ending, but the point-form conclusion of Theodork is strangely abrupt and feels like a cop-out. While Theodork is mostly a fun read, this rushed ending leaves the reader unsatisfied.

The combat zone of Don Henderson’s Keepinitreal (Scholastic, $17.95 pb, 229 pp) is located among the busted outdoor couches of the low-rent suburb Victory Gardens. Stevie Goodes, who managed successfully to drop out of high school in Year Seven (he did it gradually so that no one would notice), now works with his Uncle Boff collecting cans and other ‘refundables’ to cash in at the local recycling depot. It is a quiet lifestyle that suits Stevie, sorting through bins, checking discarded lotto tickets, breakfast with the derros at the local church, evenings spent watching Heroes of Olympus on television. One day, Stevie sees local daredevil Kid Kabula scream through the shopping centre on his bike and knock the leader of the town bikie gang into a pond. As Stevie is drawn reluctantly into Kid Kabula’s schemes to expose the bikie gang’s race-fixing at the dog track, his life begins to develop some unwanted excitement.

Henderson has created some memorable and loveable characters in the ‘ordinary folk’ of Keepinitreal. The neighbourhood eccentrics and personalities are funny and recognisable, often reminiscent of the film The Castle (1997). Like The Castle, some of the satellite characters veer towards caricature, but the warmth and humour Henderson invests in them overrides this. Keepinitreal shows a different kind of teenage life to the ‘schoolchild’ we are used to encountering. The teens in this novel are either not at school, or it remains very much in the background. There are a couple of jarring moments: some of Stevie’s comments seem at odds with his education (‘he had his beard trimmed to a neat goatee of the type that was popular with illegitimate monarchs of the Middle Ages’); and, as in Theodork, the ending seems rushed. Overall, Keepinitreal shows an assured voice and is a pleasure to read.

In Stephen M. Giles’s Gothic adventure novel Silas and the Winterbottoms (Pan Macmillan, $14.95 pb, 261 pp), the conflict is between family members, and the war is fought over inheritance. Cousins Adele, Milo and Isabella Winterbottom receive a letter from their estranged Uncle Silas informing them that he is dying, and requesting that they visit him at his grand manor so that he can get to know them before his death. Each cousin reads between the lines that Uncle Silas is looking to choose an heir to his fortune. Adele is reluctant to go, but her money-grubbing mother bundles her off with threats of sending her to the prison-like Ratchet’s House if she isn’t chosen as heir. Devious Isabella is instantly determined to worm her way into Uncle Silas’s affections and sabotage her other cousins. Milo, who believes Uncle Silas murdered his parents, is only out for revenge. But when the three children arrive at Sommerset, they discover that Uncle Silas has some plans of his own and that he doesn’t intend to allow the children to leave Sommerset alive.

Silas and the Winterbottoms is a straightforward adventure tale that sees the three cousins battle man-eating alligators, murderous doctors, malevolent inventions and, of course, each other. The characters are all lightly drawn and fairly two-dimensional, but the story is well paced, builds nicely in excitement and is entertainingly over-the-top. Inevitably, a plot thread is left hanging, presaging more Winterbottom adventures in the forthcoming Book Two.

The characters in Glenda Millard’s A Small Free Kiss in the Dark (Allen & Unwin, $16.95 pb, 228 pp) struggle to survive as innocent victims of a real war. Skip, almost twelve, has run away from his new foster family and taken to the streets. While adjusting to his new life of sleeping rough and eating out of bins, he meets Billy, a homeless man, and the two gradually become friends. Billy nurtures Skip’s artistic side and encourages him to draw on footpaths and to read the art books in the State Library. When war suddenly erupts and the city is bombed, the two take refuge in the library, where they discover six-year-old Max. As the library becomes progressively uninhabitable, the three journey to an abandoned funfair where they are joined by damaged Tia and her baby, Sixpence. A fragile, ad hoc family is formed, the first real family Skip has ever known.

The driving notion that imagination and love can help lift us above the difficulties of life is a strong one that lightens the wretchedness of Skip’s experiences. That said, this is a terribly sad book; Skip’s few moments of happiness are bitter-sweet in the context of his history. Sometimes the sadness becomes almost too much: ‘Then I kissed Max because I loved him, and everyone I had ever loved had gone away and I had never kissed them goodbye.’ While death is handled carefully and the rape of Tia is only implied, I would suggest that the audience for this novel starts a little older than the 11+ indicated on the jacket. The prose of A Small Free Kiss in the Dark is easy to read and doesn’t draw attention to itself, but uses carefully chosen language to create a vivid picture in the reader’s mind.