Bat Attack!

By J E Fison and Marc McBride

The Hazard River series is fast-paced and easy to read, even for reluctant readers. The covers are attractive and by Deltora Quest illustrator Marc McBride. The series deals with many envirnmental issues including endangered species using well-targeted humour without being didactic.

It centres around brothers Jack an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ford Street Publishing
• Release date: Sep 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781925272468

J E Fison

JE Fison is a television reporter turned children's author. Her work has been short-listed for the Raspberry and Vine Short Story Competition 2009 and long-listed for The Times (London) Children's Fiction Competition 2009. Julie writes the young adult series Smitten (2013-), and has titles in the series for tween girls, Choose Your Own Ever After (2014). Julie currently lives in Brisbane, writing stories for children and young adults, blogging on writing, travel and life, and juggling the many challenges of family life.

Book preview

It should have been the best New Year’s Eve ever. My parents agreed to let me go to the Hazard River Disco – on my own. This would be my chance to stay up until midnight. To drink 100 cans of lemonade. To eat 200 packets of chips. To really have some fun with the friends I’ve made on the summer holidays.

But at Hazard River things never quite turn out the way they are supposed to ...

11.00 am: I have some work to do.

There are only eight hours until the Hazard River Disco and I have to get my hair right. Oh sure, when I go out tonight, I’ll look like I got ready in a couple of minutes. I’ll look like my hair took no time at all. But looking super cool takes a lot of work.

I’ve used a cocktail of spit, soap and glue to get my hair to stand up straight. I look in the mirror and growl. I don’t look cool. I look like an echidna that’s just swallowed a hairball. I smooth my hair into a point at the front. I scowl, put on some sunglasses and strum my air guitar. But I don’t look like a rock star. I look like a rhino ready to charge. It’s hopeless.

‘Jack,’ my friend Mimi Fairweather calls from outside the window. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ I say, patting my hair down. ‘I’m not doing anything. Just sitting in my room doing absolutely nothing.’

I watch Mimi drop her bike on the lawn. I’m a bit surprised to see her with a bike. Mimi lives on a yacht. It’s anchored on Hazard River. There aren’t many places on a boat that you can cycle. But I guess even yachties have to get around on land sometimes.

‘Do you want to help get the fire station ready for the disco tonight?’ she says, as she walks into the house. ‘It might be interesting.’

Mimi has a strange idea of what would be interesting. I think comic books are interesting. I think PlayStation games are interesting. Hanging up a few lights at the fire station sounds about as interesting as Maths homework or an English essay.

But Mimi is Professor Bigbrains. And to her everything is interesting. She once saw a doggy doo-doo in the grass and stopped to tell me ‘ten things I should know about dog poo’. Those are ten facts I really didn’t need to know.

‘Will they be giving out free lemonade to the helpers?’ I ask.

‘Yes, they might be,’ Mimi replies.

‘Free lemonade! Free lemonade!’ my brother Ben shouts. He dances out of the bathroom with a pile of rubbish on his head.

An old snakeskin is wrapped around his hair like a turban. There’s a feather hanging off one end and a toothbrush (that I once used to sweep up dead flies) is wedged into the front.

‘It’s a disco hat,’ he says. He pats his creation to make sure it’s still in place.

My brother the Stink Collector.

It is not a hat. It’s a smelly pile of garbage. And if he’s wearing that to the disco tonight – I’m staying home.

‘Race you to the fire station,’ Ben says. He runs out of the house with a snake’s tail and a grubby feather trailing behind him.

Ben grabs his bike from the shed, jumps on and pedals as fast as he can down Wallaby Track. Mimi is right behind him. By the time I untangle my bike from a crab pot in the shed, I’ve lost a few minutes.

‘We’re going to the fire station,’ I call to my neighbour Lachlan as I speed past his house.

Lachlan is cleaning his father’s car – his punishment for shaking up a whole case of beer last week. The first bottle his father opened sprayed him in the eye. The second he opened covered his hair. By the third, his father was getting suspicious. By the fourth, Lachlan was in big