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Can you put your broken-apart family back together again? Powerful YA novel by an award-winning author.

Minna Hargreaves is a typical fourteen-year-old. She's got lots of friends, and her boyfriend is the school hunk. She's being encouraged to 'take the relationship to the next stage' by her friend Lizzie.

Home is pretty much a non-event. Her mother seems distracted, her father breezes in and out but isn't really present, her brother is a stoner. Her life is turned upside down when Dad announces that he wants them to live on an off-shore island for a year and work to make it into a conservation island. Minna is horrified at the idea, as is her mother. All the more so when they discover that the whole venture is to be made into a reality TV series.

To her utter dismay, Minna finds herself on an island, with only her family for company. There's no phone or email contact with the outside world. The helicopter ride to the island has made Mum sick and she doesn't seem to be recovering. Minna has to cope with new family dynamics, come to terms with the fact that her parents' marriage is doomed, and has to learn domestic arts that don't rate very highly on her excitement meter.

By the end, although Minna no longer has two parents who are married, she has found her father, is able to appreciate her mother's strength, and is strong enough now to chart her own course.

Behind The Book…

I read a newspaper article about trees being planted on a conservation island. What an awesome place to set a story! I was very lucky in that I was able to talk to a wonderful couple who had been the conservators on just such an island. They were the only people living there. So I sent Minna’s family to an island like that, and to make things really difficult for her, there is a television documentary going to be made of the year they spend there. One of the TV company’s rules is that the family may only communicate with outsiders (including friends and family) via snail mail. The situation is not Minna’s idea of paradise.

- Fleur Beale

Reviews For The Transformation Of Minna Hargreaves

Fleur Beale’s The Transformation of Minna Hargreaves concentrates on feisty, 14-year-old Minna and her family…As in her previously successful novels, Beale effectively uses contrast in mood, behaviour and attitude.

- Diane Hebley, New Zealand Review of Books

Another awesome one for Fleur Beale.

- Jess, GoodReads