 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and today I'm going to be sharing with you a review of Sunshine on Vinegar Street by Karen Koma. This is a recent Australian middle grade verse novel release. It was sent to me by Ellen and Unwind for review, so thank you very much to them. And I had a really good time reading this book. I'm going to start off by reading the blurb from the back of the book. It says Freya's world is turned upside down when she and her mum moved to inner city Melbourne. Stuck in a new apartment on the 11th floor and Freya is afraid of lifts. Stuck in a basketball team where not everyone likes a new star player. Stuck in a classroom of kids who don't know Freya is a donor conceived baby. Stuck just like little Audrey in the skipping girl sign suspended over the suburb of Abbotsford. Being the new girl makes Freya feel like a dark cloud on a summer's day. Can she figure out how to belong on Vinegar Street? A really big part of this book has to do with Audrey who is the skipping girl. This is a real sign in Abbotsford that is very, very iconic here in Melbourne. It's a really cool concept because it sort of ties everything together in terms of where the story is set and it helps to accentuate a lot of Freya's feelings as she moves to this new place where she is really feeling very uncomfortable. Freya and her mum were previously living in Eltham which is very out of suburban. Lots of big houses, lots of greenery and she's moving to Abbotsford which is very much inner city and they're moving from a house into an apartment and on top of that Freya's father who is her biological father has moved into state so she doesn't get to see him all the time. Freya was a donor conceived baby, her parents are friends but have never been romantically linked so while it's not a divorce situation between parents it is a separation situation and she's really feeling the loss of that. Not to mention she's had to leave behind friends, she's having to start fresh in a place, she's the new kid and she feels out of sorts and out of place and she's constantly having to try and prove herself. I'm going to come back to the basketball things in a moment. Found it really interesting that we have a character who is afraid of lips living in an apartment building and looking at the way that she has to adapt to being in a situation like that to avoid stressing herself out but along the way it's that fear of going in a lift that helps her to connect to characters that she previously thought she might not be able to connect to as they begin to reveal things that they're afraid of as well so it becomes this point of connection for her and other characters. Basketball it plays a huge part in this story Freya is a great basketball as she loves the sport it's probably the only thing she's looking forward to about moving because she's got a team lined up but of course when she gets there she is having to prove herself with the new team and she faces bullying and criticism and things like that. She's able to use what she learns from basketball to also help her through those situations and one thing that I really liked that Karen Koma did was she included basketball terms their definitions and then also the definition of the word just in general use so we have steals in basketball that's when a player takes their ball from their opponent or takes possession of the ball and in life it's when someone takes something that is not yours and those definitions sort of break up the book into different sections that highlight something that Freya is dealing with in that part of the story. As I said earlier it is told in verse so that does change the reading experience. I enjoy reading verse novels I find them really interesting to read and to pick up the nuance and to see how the author crafts the story without a lot of the things that we would see in a traditional narrative such as conversations between characters which have to be shown in a different way so you have to really unpack that particularly with readers who may not have read a verse novel before every verse novel does it slightly differently so it's always something that can be a really great thing to unpack you know how does the author show conversation how does the author show tense moments or moments of joy or how do they highlight a character's feelings when everything is told through verse and I always appreciate that so I'm really glad to be able to add this to my middle grade verse novel collection because I love adding to that I think they're just so cleverly done and this was great because this was set in my hometown I know all of these places I know Eltham I know Abbotsford I have been passed a little Audrey many many times and it was just really cool to see some so many iconic Melbourne things in this book and also I really love this cover it's great I will leave links to where you can find out more information about this book down below as well as information about the author I would love to know if you are planning on picking this book up or if you have recommendations for books that you think might be similar feel free to leave them down below otherwise if you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a basketball emoji in the comments I hope that wherever you're on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video thanks so much for watching bye everyone