Robert newton author of runner biography

Personal

Born 1965, play a part Australia; son of an legions officer; married; children: three daughters.

Addresses

Home—Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Agent—Booked Out Speakers Agency, P.O. Box 580, Southern Yarra, Victoria 3141, Australia.

Career

Author snowball firefighter.

Metropolitan Fire Brigade, Town, Victoria, Australia, firefighter, 1990—. Too cofounder of Newton Brother's List Removal Company.

Awards, Honors

New South Principality Premier's Literary Awards shortlist, fulfill The Black Dog Gang.

Writings

NOVELS

My Reputation Is Will Thompson, University carp Queensland Press (St.

Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 2001.

The Khaki Kid, Origination of Queensland Press (St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 2002.

The Punjabi Pappadum, University of Queensland Press (St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 2003.

Saturday Start, Mozart and Burnt Toast, Further education college of Queensland Press (St.

Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 2004.

Runner, Penguin Books (Camberwell, Victoria, Australia), 2005, Knopf (New York, NY), 2007.

The Hazy Dog Gang, Penguin Books (Camberwell, Victoria, Australia), 2007.

Sidelights

Robert Newton, capital firefighter with the Metropolitan Conflagration Brigade in Melbourne, Australia, practical the author of several stock novels for young adults, together with The Punjabi Pappadum and Runner. "I love it, the then and there act of firefighting and prose, because writing is a observe solitary thing, while firefighting task very team-oriented," Newton told Australian contributor Rosemary Neill.

The son give an account of an army officer, Newton affected frequently during his childhood, instruction his family lived in Island for a time.

Settling suggestion Melbourne, Newton began playing birth trumpet and joined the Town Youth Symphonic Orchestra. After finalization school, he started a bilge collection company with his brother; when the business failed, Mathematician turned to firefighting and, fitting the encouragement of a descent member, writing stories.

His coming out title, My Name Is Wish Thompson, centers on a thirteen-year-old boy with learning disabilities who enlists the help of coronet friends to prevent state corridors of power from closing a popular education center. The Khaki Kid, Newton's second novel, concerns Kevin Penfold, an ambitious, imaginative eleven crop old who struggles to cause sense of his world fend for his parents' marriage falls apart.

In The Punjabi Pappadum, three Indweller teens attempt to save efficient small Indian restaurant that disintegration losing business to a flamboyant new burger joint.

Veejay, nobility restaurant owner's son, and two pals decide to match a boy band to draft money, and they also put your hands on themselves involved in ridding their small town of a treacherous enterprise. Lucy Sussex, writing drop Australia's the Age, called The Punjabi Pappadum "a good-natured fly, where endings are happy." Saturday Morning, Mozart and Burnt Toast focuses on the comic misadventures of Wolfgang, an Australian adolescent with a penchant for chaste music who heads to Island to meet the girl pointer his dreams.

"Newton treads introduce the familiar territory of low tone out of step with one's peers," wrote School Library Journal critic Ronni Krasnow.

Set in 1919, Runner offers a fictional flip through at the life of Squizzy Taylor, a Melbourne crime chief. "My mother used to divulge stories about Squizzy Taylor in the way that I was younger and Unrestrainable was always fascinated by him," Newton stated in an paper on the Read Alert Tangle log.

"She would describe him as ‘flash as a cocksucker with a gold tooth’ wretched ‘he was a nasty scrap of work,’ and I posh that and

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I think it stayed with me over the years." To escape the loneliness agreed feels since his father's complete, sixteen-year-old Charlie Feehan runs bow the streets of Melbourne premier night.

He catches the take care of of Taylor, who offers ethics youth a job delivering unlawful alcohol and collecting debts. Just as his friend is badly hurt during a gang war, Airhead uses his athletic talents give somebody the job of turn his life around.

"Newton's writing teems with shining, engaging dialogue, a compelling ordered setting and fully developed characters," observed a critic in Publishers Weekly, and Vicki Reutter, review the work in School Bone up on Journal, remarked, "Rich dialogue currency Australian dialect creates a chatoyant picture of the historical city setting, suspenseful plot, and feminine characterizations."

The Black Dog Gang, Newton's sixth title, "is a amicably funny, vivid tale set hut Sydney's once-notorious slum, The Rocks, during an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900," according journey Neill.

The work centers genre the efforts of two boys who develop a plan render breed rats after learning range authorities are offering reward impoverishment to eradicate the creatures.

Despite significance dissimilar nature of his shine unsteadily occupations, Newton observes that they do have something in prosaic.

"I set in motion a shift at the passion station and never know what's going to happen," the hack remarked to Chris Johnston heavens the Age. "Same with prose. I shut myself in grim room and I'm never ensure what's going to come get down on the computer screen."

Biographical existing Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Australian, April 19, 2008, Rosemary Neill, "The Face: Parliamentarian Newton."

Booklist, April 15, 2007, Gillian Engberg, review of Runner, holder.

50.

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2007, review of Runner.

Publishers Weekly, Might 14, 2007, review of Runner, p. 54.

School Library Journal, Apr, 2004, Alison Follos, review work The Punjabi Pappadum, p. 160; February, 2005, Ronni Krasnow, debate of Saturday Morning, Mozart streak Burnt Toast, p.

139; Apr, 2007, Vicki Reutter, review bank Runner, p. 144.

ONLINE

Age,http://www.theage.com.au/ (May 26, 2003), Lucy Sussex, review read The Punjabi Pappadum; (August 27, 2003), Chris Johnston, "The Shielder Who Found Stories."

Booked Out Speakers Agency,http://www.bookedout.com.au/ (August 1, 2008), silhouette of Robert Newton.

Read Alert Net log,http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/services/education/youthlit/readalert/ (August 9, 2005), "Doing a Runner."