All Molly wants is to be normal like her friend Ellen Palmer. Ellen, with her neat braids and a tidy house and a mother and father who are home for dinner every night. But Molly's mom spends her mornings tramping through the woods, looking for ingredients for her potions. Their house is not neat, and their rooster, the Gentleman, runs wild in their yard. And it is the Gentleman that angers their grumpy neighbors, the Grimshaws. So Molly's mom makes a potion that will grow a tree between their houses. When Molly's mom accidentally drinks the potion and turns into the tree, Molly is determined to get her back. But with the Grimshaws planning to cut down the tree branches that reach onto their property, time is of the essence. With the help of her mysterious classmate Pim Wilder, Molly sets out to save her mother and discovers the wonder that lies in the ordinary.
Author
Martine Murray, a native and a current resident of Melbourne, Australia, is an accomplished author with a variety of other talents and interests. She has studied film making at Prahan College, painting at the Victorian College of the Arts, and movement and dance at Melbourne University. She began writing as a method of keeping track of all of her activities. She explains, “I was writing in journals a lot while I was in art school. I also used to write on my canvasses or write on etchings and make tiny stories that weren't really stories, they were more like sketches of moments.” Soon enough, Martine had authored and illustrated the gentle, funny, and gloriously playful books such as The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley (Who Planned to Live an Unusual Life). In the story of twelve-year old Cedar B. Hartley, the young heroine befriends the son of a circus family and coordinates a local circus to raise money for the community's dog operation. The book has won a number of awards, including NYPL 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, Book Sense 76 Children's Pick, it was shortlisted for Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the year Award, shortlisted for New South Wales Premier's Literary Award, and won the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Books. Martine Murray is currently enrolled in Professional Writing at RMIT and plans further study in screen writing and short story.
