When Zana isn't reading or writing, she likes to explore the museums and hidden passageways scattered across Melbourne. She spent a year in China teaching English and now lives in Melbourne with her three sons, husband and two dogs. Zana has written two picture books for young children, a series for middle readers, and a novel for older readers based on research and accounts of survivors of the Forgotten Generation. Zana Fraillon was born in Melbourne, but spent her early childhood in San Francisco. But not until each of them has been braver than ever before. Subhi and Jimmie might both find a way to freedom, as their tales unfold. Unable to read it, she relies on Subhi to unravel her own family's love songs and tragedies. The most vivid story of all, however, is the one that arrives one night in the form of Jimmie, a scruffy, impatient girl who appears from the other side of the wires, and brings a notebook written by the mother she lost. The Night Sea brings him gifts, the faraway whales sing to him, and the birds tell their stories. But as he grows, his imagination gets bigger too, until it is bursting at the limits of his world. Born in an Australian permanent detention centre after his mother fled the violence of a distant homeland, life behind the fences is all he has ever known. I lie in my bed, Queeny's feet pushing up against my cheek, and listen to the waves lapping at the tent. As red as the sun and as deep as the sky. Sometimes, at night, the dirt outside turns into a beautiful ocean. The Bone Sparrow is a powerful, heartbreaking, sometimes funny and ultimately uplifting hymn to freedom and love. Subhi's imagination is as big as the ocean and wide as the sky, but his world is much smaller: he's spent his whole life in an immigration detention centre. Shortlisted for Children's Book Council of Australia Awards - Older Readers 2017. Shortlisted for the 2017 CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) Carnegie Medal. Shortlisted for Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2016.

Bone sparrow the fraillon