Elizabeth Macarthur

“This mature and nuanced story … will be a brilliant classroom text” Books and Publishing

“This charming coming-of-age story is perfect for late primary/early high school reads and bridges that tricky gap between kids and young adult books perfectly!” Better Read Kids 

“A wonderful way to discover Torres Strait Islander culture and language … filled with tender moments …  It’s powerful as well – giving Torres Strait Islander people a voice, showing how they live, and that co-operation between people of all backgrounds is what will help us in times of need … This is a great book to either start learning or continue learning with, especially as it is peppered with accessible, gentle explanations about things that speak directly to the reader to help them get into Ezra’s world.” The Book Muse

“Loved it. A vivid journey into another world.” David Astle, ABC Radio presenter and crossword guy.

“Highly recommended … The setting of this story within the Torres Strait community on Sabai Island is an absolute delight! We are welcomed into the warmth of their families and feel their heartache as climate change impacts become a burden for their future. This is a wonderful journey into a coming-of-age story in a different cultural setting that is imbued with real heart. The adventure through disaster is stirring, but it is the cultural differences and practices that are endearing. Everyone on the Island works hard to support one another and in their tiny community we see real power, but a future that may well be hampered as sea levels rise and climate impacts threaten. This is for readers aged 10-14, who will enjoy the boys-own experience facing insecurity and danger, with a bit of friendly fun, and an eye on environmental issues.” ReadPlus

“This is technically a middle-grade novel but if you ask me I think Spirit of the Crocodile is a book for everyone. Kids will love it because it’s funny, relatable and full of adventure. But adults – like teachers, parents and policy-makers – need to read this too. This book is a wake-up call. It shows us what climate change looks like right now: not in graphs or reports but through the heartbreak of a child watching his island disappear. It’s also a celebration of Torres Strait Islander culture – of kinship, community and resilience. For readers unfamiliar with these stories it’s an invitation to listen, to learn and to stand in solidarity with them. And for readers who are from this community, it’s a mirror that says we see you and your stories matter.” Mara Mahoney, Yapese-Fijian Reviewer, Radio Australia. (Review begins at 1:42:42)

 “A stunning middle-grade novel set on Saibai Island in the Torres Strait. … Spirit of the Crocodile is, in many ways, an extremely relatable, age-old story exploring the pain and excitement of growing up. However, its evocative descriptions of island life, kinship systems, trilingual code-switching, cross-cultural negotiation, and community resilience also offer a generous and original insight into Torres Strait culture.” Story Links

More reviews here …

Ezra and Mason and all the people in this book are fictional characters. But their love for family, community and culture are very much real, and drawn from the real life community and culture of Saibai and the Torres Strait.

Tagai State College, with its seventeen campuses throughout the Torres Strait is real, as are the marine biology tanks. However, the Year 7 orientation day described in the book, and all the action and activities associated with it, is entirely the authors’ invention.

Saibai Island is a real place, population almost 300, with a school and an airport and health care centre and a co-op store that sells the good icy poles. The croc-infested waters, the jetty and the sea wall are real too, as are the risks to the island and its people posed by climate change and rising sea levels.

During the 1930s and 40s king tides flooded Saibai and submerged much of the village. For the people of Saibai, it was only the latest in a series of environmental challenges. The community had been suffering from the effects of erosion and the impact of salt on their crops and freshwater supplies for a long time. After much discussion, in 1947 many Saibai families decided to move permanently to the Australian mainland – to the tip of the Cape York Peninsula – where they established two new settlements, called Bamaga and Seisia.

A teenager called Mary-Betty Townson was among the families who moved. One of Australia’s first climate change refugees, she would become the fierce and beloved grandmother of Aaron Fa’Aoso, the co-author of this book. Today she is revered by the Bamaga and Seisia communities as a genuine pioneer.

The Saibai Islanders who remained attempted to prevent further ocean inundations and erosion by using local manpower, ingenuity and materials to build a preventive seawall. Only in 2017 did the Australian and Queensland governments finally fund and build a disaster-graded seawall. It was inundated six months later, and has since been regularly breached by rising tides.

This book is a fictional response to those real-life rising tides.

Our hope is that Spirit of the Crocodile shines a light on a little known corner of Australia, and introduces readers – through the eyes of their new friends Ezra, Mason, Maryanne and Barbara – to new ways of looking at their own world.

Low-lying Saibai Island truly is at the front line of the climate emergency and illuminating the  community’s challenges – in an accessible way – was an important motivation for writing the book.

Loving, heartwarming and laugh-out-loud

To be honest, early on in the process we consciously made a creative decision to be a little subversive – to tell a slightly different First Nations story.

Readers will find no trauma clickbait in the pages of Spirit of the Crocodile.

Our Torres Strait Islander characters belong to loving families, where both parents work in good jobs and value education. And our characters are part of a generous and well-functioning community that gently guides them towards accepting their responsibilities. Because despite what the (white) media all too often tells us – loving, heartwarming and laugh-out-loud stories also reflect the reality of life in a remote community.

As spelled out above, Ezra and Mason and all the people in the book are fictional characters. But their love for family, community and culture are very much real, and drawn from Aaron’s lived experience of the real-life community and culture of Saibai and the Torres Strait.

Torres Strait Islander kids are just like …

For sure, we hope our readers learn something about the Torres Strait and its people. But another of our chief motivations in writing this book was to demonstrate to mainland Australian readers that – in all the ways that are important – Torres Strait Islander kids are just like them.

Ezra and Mason love basketball, computer games and the sea. Ezra finds his little brothers deeply annoying and will do almost anything for a dare – especially if there’s cake involved! The boys get told off for farting; they worry about getting teased; and they wonder what they might become when they grow up. Ezra’s biggest problem (he thinks) is that he doesn’t want to go to high school next year, because it means leaving Saibai to live on a different island, many hours away from home.

They really are just ordinary Australian kids who happen to live in an extraordinary location.

And finally …

Having worked together on Aaron’s memoir (So Far, So Good) Michelle and Aaron were delighted to be able to work together again on Spirit of the Crocodile. Aaron said yes because he’s always keen to showcase his beloved Torres Strait. As a minority within a minority, it’s often hard for Torres Strait Islanders to have their voices heard.  And Michelle said yes because, as a white Australian, she’s determined to learn more about (and to actively support) First Nations culture and community.

We hope everyone enjoys reading Spirit of the Crocodile as much as we enjoyed writing it.