Stella by the Sea by Ruth Starke

Stella lives with her busy and successful but time poor parents in a high rise apartment overlooking the ocean. Lucille Seaton is a real estate agent. She is ambitious and the family have to keep moving to new and "better" houses. Stella's father Henry transforms backyards and he works on a television show.

"People would be sent away for the weekend while Henry and his team secretly got to work. The people would come back to find their boring backyard transformed with crazy paving, pebble paths, water features, decorative rocks, timber decks, tropical ferns, fountains, birdbaths, Mexican mosaics, Thai temples or Tuscan urns. Invariably, they screamed with joy, which Stella could never understand. The old backyards always looked so much more comfortable and homely."

Stella has her own hopes and dreams. She would like a proper house, down on the ground not high in the sky, she would like to open the fridge and find food inside, she would love love love a dog, and most of all she really wants her own space. She wants a place to call home.

Then Stella spies an advertisement in the newspaper:

For Sale: Cubbyhouse

16 Florence Street, Bayside. 

Solid timber with balcony and ladder. Run down, neglected; needs work and TLC. 

$150 neg.

Stella knows all the real estate jargon and she has lots of experience from years of observing her mother buying and selling houses so she sets off to talk to the owner of the cubbyhouse. She has saved almost $100 but the advert does say "neg".  She does not expect to find a new friend, a fabulous place to call her own, new friends, dogs to walk AND heaps of delicious cakes. 

I do wish this book was not out of print. Perhaps you will be lucky and find it in a school library. You can hear an audio sample here - this is the scene where Stella shares her dream with a girl who purports to be a dream expert (for 50 cents) at school. 

This story is smart and funny, just like its endearing main character, Stella. Magpies, Magpies, vol. 18 no. 4, September 2003

I talked about the late Australian author Ruth Starke recently and realised I had not talked about Stella by the Sea on this blog probably because I didn't own a copy and because it was published in 2003 which is five years before I started this blog. At a recent charity book sale I spied a copy of this Aussie Chomp book for just $1 in mint condition. I sat down today and revisited this delightful story. I think I smiled through the whole book.

Has this book stood the test of time?  Yes but there is one slightly dated reference to using street directory maps. We had a television documentary series here recently which featured teenagers and older people. The teenagers had to navigate Sydney suburbs using only a street directory and not their phones. I was utterly amazed that the had no idea about using an index to find the street name and also even more amazing they all had no idea how to use a map grid reference. Stella can use a street directory and in fact her parents own several of them. She even understands that maps can change and that the edition she was using is now out of date because a new set of town houses have been built around the house at 16 Florence Street. 

"If there was one thing the Seaton family had plenty of, it was street directories. Lucille had one in her car and Henry had one in his. There was another in Lucille's mezzanine office and other near the wall phone in the kitchen. Stella flipped it open and noted the map grids. She found the right page and yes, there was Florence Street, at the southern end of the Esplanade and not more than a thumb's width from Bayview Tower. She could go there tomorrow after school."

A few decades ago Penguin/Puffin produced three wonderful book series for young readers featuring our best Australian authors and illustrators. There were Aussie Nibbles for the youngest group, then Aussie Bites and finally Aussie Chomps. If your school library still has any of these please hold onto them, please promote them, please re-read them - they are such a perfect way to hook kids into reading. Here is one you could start with from the Bites series - Nathan and the Ice Rockets. I also love to read aloud The Bugalugs bum thief by Tim Winton (Aussie Bites series).

Captain Stella is the sequel to Stella by the sea:

Stella's parents are going overseas for a holiday and Stella is left behind with Granny Bee. Her holidays are looking bleak. But when the fusty old op shop that Granny Bee volunteers at is in danger of being closed down by the council, Stella seizes the chance to give it a makeover and save the day. And with help from a cast of zany community characters, she might just pull it off.

Here is a list of some of the Aussie Chomp titles (sorry they are all out of print) I think there were around 36 published in the series:

Anton rocks on by David Metzenthen

68 Teeth by James Moloney

Birdie in the sky by Prue Mason

Boots and All by Sheryl Clark

The boy who would live forever by Moya Simons

Catland by Ruth Starke

The dog stole my brain by Mary K Pershall

Famous by Julia Lawrinson

A horse called Darling by Delwyne Stephens (illustrated by Cheryl Orsini)

Just one Wish by Sally Rippin

Making Jamie Normal by Mary K Pershall

The Mal Rider by Pat Flynn

Nicholas and the Chronoporter by Rowley Monkfish

There's money in toilets by Robert Greenberg