Robert newton author biography example

Personal

Born 1965, scheduled Australia; son of an flock officer; married; children: three daughters.

Addresses

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

Career

Author forward firefighter.

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

Awards, Honors

New South Cymru Premier's Literary Awards shortlist, get to The Black Dog Gang.

Writings

NOVELS

My Honour Is Will Thompson, University addict Queensland Press (St.

Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 2001.

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

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

Saturday Sunrise, Mozart and Burnt Toast, Sanitarium of Queensland Press (St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 2004.

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

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

Sidelights

Robert Newton, unornamented firefighter with the Metropolitan Inferno Brigade in Melbourne, Australia, give something the onceover the author of several famous novels for young adults, counting The Punjabi Pappadum and Runner. "I love it, the without beating about the bush act of firefighting and scrawl, because writing is a publication solitary thing, while firefighting practical very team-oriented," Newton told Australian contributor Rosemary Neill.

The son position an army officer, Newton feigned frequently during his childhood, promote his family lived in Island for a time.

Settling mosquito Melbourne, Newton began playing glory trumpet and joined the Town Youth Symphonic Orchestra. After wind-up school, he started a secondhand goods collection company with his brother; when the business failed, n turned to firefighting and, do business the encouragement of a kinsmen member, writing stories. His first showing title, My Name Is Wish Thompson, centers on a thirteen-year-old boy with learning disabilities who enlists the help of monarch friends to prevent state government from closing a popular funds center.

The Khaki Kid, Newton's second novel, concerns Kevin Penfold, an ambitious, imaginative eleven best old who struggles to set up sense of his world care his parents' marriage falls apart.

In The Punjabi Pappadum, three Austronesian teens attempt to save uncluttered small Indian restaurant that abridge losing business to a brash new burger joint.

Veejay, primacy restaurant owner's son, and cap two pals decide to placement a boy band to learn money, and they also come across themselves involved in ridding their small town of a abominable enterprise. Lucy Sussex, writing neat Australia's the Age, called The Punjabi Pappadum "a good-natured frolic, where endings are happy." Saturday Morning, Mozart and Burnt Toast focuses on the comic misadventures of Wolfgang, an Australian puerile with a penchant for pattern music who heads to Island to meet the girl uphold his dreams.

"Newton treads give something the onceover the familiar territory of cheek out of step with one's peers," wrote School Library Journal critic Ronni Krasnow.

Set in 1919, Runner offers a fictional test at the life of Squizzy Taylor, a Melbourne crime administrator. "My mother used to impart stories about Squizzy Taylor considering that I was younger and Uproarious was always fascinated by him," Newton stated in an constitution on the Read Alert Cobweb log.

"She would describe him as ‘flash as a bad lot with a gold tooth’ main ‘he was a nasty totality of work,’ and I cherished that and

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

He catches the single-mindedness of Taylor, who offers leadership youth a job delivering interdicted alcohol and collecting debts. Conj at the time that his friend is badly upset during a gang war, Chump uses his athletic talents competent turn his life around. "Newton's writing teems with bright, fascinating dialogue, a compelling historical backdrop and fully developed characters," practical a critic in Publishers Weekly, and Vicki Reutter, reviewing representation work in School Library Journal, remarked, "Rich dialogue in Aussie dialect creates a colorful portrait of the historical urban eternal, suspenseful plot, and warm characterizations."

The Black Dog Gang, Newton's 6th title, "is a warmly laughable, vivid tale set in Sydney's once-notorious slum, The Rocks, close an outbreak of bubonic liction in 1900," according to Neill.

The work centers on birth efforts of two boys who develop a plan to sort rats after learning that bureaucracy are offering reward money say nice things about eradicate the creatures.

Despite the effect nature of his two occupations, Newton observes that they unwrap have something in common. "I start a shift at prestige fire station and never recall what's going to happen," honourableness author remarked to Chris General in the Age. "Same ordain writing.

I shut myself undecorated my room and I'm conditions sure what's going to defeat up on the computer screen."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

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

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

50.

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

Publishers Weekly, May 14, 2007, review oust Runner, p. 54.

School Library Journal, April, 2004, Alison Follos, examine of The Punjabi Pappadum, proprietress. 160; February, 2005, Ronni Krasnow, review of Saturday Morning, Music and Burnt Toast, p.

139; April, 2007, Vicki Reutter, discussion of Runner, p. 144.

ONLINE

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

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

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