Carol Garden
Carol Garden's first novel, Kidnap at Mystery Island, won the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award in 2021 and was published by Scholastic NZ in 2022. It won a Storylines Notable Book Award in November 2022. The novel was Initially a 2020 lockdown project to help children see a positive future with climate change. Since then Carol has immersed herself in writing workshops, classes and organisations and has completed a second novel dealing with similar themes. Now she regularly reviews books, mentors other writers and runs a novel writing course in Tauranga. A former journalist and English teacher, she has been writing for a living for over 30 years.
In 2018 Carol sailed up to the Pacific Islands for five months and has she has sailed extensively around the upper North Island, Alaska, Vanuatu and the Whitsundays. Her sailing experiences have been invaluable for writing material.
Genre:
- Young Adult
Skills:
- Editing
- Manuscript Assessment
- Mentoring
- Novelist
- Proofreading
- Public Speaking
- Readings
- Reviews
- Short Story Writing
- Tutoring
Branch:
Bay of Plenty
Location:
Tauranga
Publications:
Kidnap at Mystery Island
Kidnap at Mystery Island is a middle grade/YA novel set in Aotearoa in 2080, when the world is living carefully and sustainably with climate change. Main character Dom lives on a man-made island off the Coromandel, with his evil billionaire father, Dezi Krate. When Dezi kidnaps the niece of the local coastal rangers (to blackmail them to ignore his seabed mining plans), Dom has to choose between his father and doing the right thing. A high-tech exciting rescue ensues, where the genetically modified special talents of all the young people play a part.