Willow Bright’s Secret Plot by A.L. Tait
Title: Willow Bright’s Secret Plot
Author: A.L. Tait
Genre: Contemporary
Publisher: Scholastic Australia
Published: 1st May 2025
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Price: $15.99
Synopsis: ‘I feel her in the breeze that makes the dahlias bob, and in the scent of the roses …’ After moving to the city from the country, Willow Bright feels like she’s lost her mum all over again-and landed on another planet. Her clothes are wrong, her taste in music is wrong, and even the food she eats is wrong. But when Willow spots a pattern in a series of puzzling accidents and mishaps, she forms an unlikely friendship-and finds new purpose. Can Willow solve the mystery and find room to be herself along the way? Or will her plot to run home to the wide-open spaces and memories of her mum land Willow in even more trouble? A middle-grade story about growing up, grief, finding your place in the world and the restorative benefits of nature.
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Willow Bright has moved to the city from the country to live with her aunt and cousin, while her dad works in the mines. But things aren’t going well, and Willow doesn’t feel like she really fits in, especially when she saves kids from a runaway calf at the funfair, and she appears to be wearing the wrong clothes, listening to the wrong music – everything she does is just wrong for the city, or in the eyes of Aunt Cressida and her cousin Fleur. She doesn’t fit in, and longs to be back at Jack’s Creek. But as Willow explores her new home, and finds a garden in need of repair, she also uncovers a series of accidents that feel like they’re too hard to dismiss, and slowly makes friends with Cos and River. She’s determined to get home, find out what is really going on, and get back to the memories of her mum…if people don’t find out about her plan.
Willow Bright is the latest novel from renowned author, A.L. Tait for middle grade audiences, where the voice of her young, female protagonist is strong and proud, but also filled with vulnerabilities that come with being twelve, coping with loss and grief, and changes that take her away from everything she knows. Everything familiar. It’s a story that captures the heightened emotions of huge changes in our lives that are often amplified when we go through them at formative ages. There have been lots of books coming out lately that deal with this, that are gentler stories to help readers understand what they are feeling, and we need books like this to read amidst the reset of the adventurous books or the books with quests. Each book has an important message and role to play, and this one is quiet but speaks volumes.
Willow’s voice sings out, and we get to see her stumble and make mistakes, because she’s learning a new way of being and living in a place filled with so many unknowns, and where she feels like Fleur is unwilling to help her, and where nobody asks how she is feeling about the changes she’s facing. Nobody seems to want to listen apart from Mr B, and at times, Cos and River – but navigating friendship when you’ve been alone for so long is tough. But it was wonderful to see Willow try and see River and Cos help her. I also liked that she was allowed to be messy and work through her confusion, because it reflects a reality that so many of us felt at Willow’s age – and if I am being honest, that feeling probably never really goes away, which makes Willow such a relatable character. There’s just something universally special about her, because what she is going through in this novel is something that everyone will go through at some stage, and also something that a lot of kids may have experienced as well.
For me, this is the power of a good middle grade book – it’s universality to speak to so many people about childhood experiences and feelings. The awkwardness of making friends and growing up, and learning to speak about your feelings or acknowledge them, and about finding out that people do care, and sometimes, it might take us, and everyone around us, time to understand. Because nobody can adapt to changes automatically when it comes down to it. And this book shows that sometimes, working out what to say and how to say it can be the hardest thing to do. And that grief doesn’t have a time limit – the ones we love are always with us and we will always miss them. Moving on doesn’t mean forgetting them, though. Everything we learn in this heartfelt book is created with love and an understanding of how pivotal changes at crucial ages can affect us, as well as a deep understanding of the foreverness of grief, however long it has been, however old we are. I think books like this remind us of the little Willow in all of us, who is singing and dancing, and roping cows whilst trying to find her way in a confusing world that doesn’t seem to get any easier to understand.
Another fantastic A.L. Tait book, and I can’t wait to see what she brings us next.