Leonie Agnew is an award-winning children's author, a
former advertising copywriter, and currently moonlighting as a
primary school teacher. Witnesses claim her defining characteristic
is a tendency to make things up. This is called lying, unless you
write it down. Then it is pleasantly referred to as being an
author.
In 2022, Leonie won the junior fiction prize at the New Zealand
Book Awards for the second time. She also won the Storylines 2022
Tessa Duder Award for her manuscript The Impossible Story of Hannah
Kemp. Leonie has previously won the British David Fickling Master
of the Inkpot prize, multiple Esther Glen awards, a national
children's choice award and more. All this must be true because
somebody else wrote it on her Wikipedia page, not Leonie.
This is a powerful novel dealing with belonging, the opportunity to
become your own person, the importance of family and also
friendships. It contains a party scene where drugs are being used,
which makes it best suited to those in middle to upper
secondary.
*Lamont Books*
This magical realist story from New Zealand is about a young woman
recovering from a life-changing accident that she caused and now
must make reparations. Shunned by the rest of her small community,
she hides inside books until she finds a mobile library that is
bigger on the inside than the outside and in which all the stories
seem to be true. When she finds her own story in the library, it
sets off a chain of events that change everything for the
better.
*Readings*
Hannah Kemp is exactly the type of teen I love to meet in a YA
novel. Raging, smart, with a no-holds-barred attitude and a strong
self-aware inner voice, her thoughts and feelings bouncing off each
page at you.
*Magpies Magazine*
It’s beautiful, it’s sad (I was reaching for the tissues), its real
and fantastical… As always, Leonie’s writing is flawless, engaging,
often funny and in this YA novel – incredibly sassy. Hannah is so
real and angry, I wanted to hug her half the time and shake her for
the rest.
*What Book Next*
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