Jess Black (text) and Sam Loman, The Mystery of Missing Billie (Jo Weston’s Netball Besties #1), Penguin, April 2025, 192 pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781761348525
The Mystery of Missing Billie is the first in a new middle grade series that centres on the fictionalised girlhood of Australian netballer, Jo Weston. It’s wonderful to see a work for younger readers that’s set squarely in regional Australia, featuring believable rural people including farmers.
With large print, bolded key words and appealing monochrome illustrations sprinkled throughout, this series will appeal to young readers graduating from junior fiction to middle grade. Sports-loving children, especially netball fans, will enjoy the scenes in which Jo trains and plays. The feeling of being off-your-game when something big is weighing on your mind is bound to resonate.
This first story of Jo’s missing dog will be a comparatively common experience for the target audience. (I know how traumatised our kids were when our beloved pup went missing. Spoiler – some kind soul handed him in at the vet.) Being rural kids, Jo and her friends are given lots of agency to search for the lost furry friend. In the climax, the whole community pulls together to join the hunt, which provides a heartwarming finale.
Reviewed by Heather Gallagher
