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A Concise Compendium of Wonder book cover
A Concise Compendium of Wonder
2026
First Published
4.00
Average Rating
90
Number of Pages

A radical collection of reimagined fairytales from three incredible Australian authors, for readers of all ages. In the middle of a great famine, two siblings are cast out into a forest that holds both danger and beauty. Perpetual winter descends upon a giant’s garden after rowdy children are shut out by a massive wall. In the year 3099, humans find themselves stranded on the Moon and turn to their one remaining tree for wisdom. At the centre of each of these stories is an urgent question about humanity’s relationship with nature. But there is also a tiny seed of hope. Based on the Brothers Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel, Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, this epic collection from award-winning authors Ceridwen Dovey, Ursula Dubosarsky and Jennifer Mills is destined to be a favourite for all generations. A Concise Compendium of Wonder is published to coincide with the Slingsby theatre production of the same name, premiering at the Adelaide Festival in March 2026, and includes illustrations by Lorelei Medcalf.

Avg Rating
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Number of Ratings
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Authors

Jennifer Mills
Jennifer Mills
Author · 7 books
Jennifer Mills is the author of five books: the novels The Airways (Picador, 2021), Dyschronia (Picador, 2018; shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award for Literature and the 2019 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel), Gone (2011), and The Diamond Anchor (2009), and a collection of short stories, The Rest is Weight (2012). In 2012 Mills was named a Best Young Australian Novelist by the Sydney Morning Herald and in 2014 was awarded the Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship from the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. Mills lives on Kaurna Yerta.
Ursula Dubosarsky
Ursula Dubosarsky
Author · 32 books
Ursula Dubosarsky is an award-winning author of numerous books for children and young adults. About The Golden Day, her first book with Candlewick Press, she says, "The little girls watch, wonder, respond, change, and grow—and then their childhood is gone, forever. This element of the story, I suppose, is at least partly autobiographical. But, as I say—all of our teachers come home safe and sound in the end." Ursula Dubosarsky lives in Australia.
Ceridwen Dovey
Ceridwen Dovey
Author · 10 books
Ceridwen Dovey grew up in South Africa and Australia, studied as an undergraduate at Harvard, and now lives in Sydney. Her first novel, Blood Kin, was translated into fifteen languages and selected for the US National Book Foundation’s prestigious ‘5 Under 35’ award. J.M. Coetzee called it ‘A fable of the arrogance of power beneath whose dreamlike surface swirl currents of complex sensuality.' Her second work of fiction, Only the Animals, will be published by Penguin in 2014 (Australia) and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2015 (USA).
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