I Lost My Mobile at the Mall (fiction)

Cellphone lost at the mall.
Home computers stolen.
How can Elly cope with losing constant contact with her friends?

Elly's terrible luck doesn't make high school life easy in her all-things-British Australian suburb, as she's not sure where her surfer boyfriend is after school, she doesn't know when friends are getting together for pizza, and she has to use the public computer to log on to her favorite social sites... finding out everything - good or bad - well after everyone else does.

Well-known for her humorous adult books, Australian Wendy Harmer is spot on with Elly's dismay over being out of touch with the rest of Oldcastle High School in her first young adult novel on our Fun Friday. Hope to see more of Elly in future books!
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Book info: I Lost My Mobile at the Mall: Teen on the Edge of Technological Breakdown / Wendy Harmer. Kane Miller Children's Books, 2011. [author's website] [publisher site] [author video]

Recommendation: When she loses her cellphone at the mall (again), Elly can’t even report it missing until her Mum gets home from some fancy event she’s organizing - no landline at home, of course. When her parents refuse to buy Elly another cellphone, she finds herself completely out of the loop, unable to text her friends or send photos or talk to her cute surfer boyfriend. Time slows down to a crawl with every minute that she’s out of contact…

Not that life in Oldcastle is at all exciting. Everything in their Australian coastal town has a British name – the shops, the pubs, even Elly and her sister and her parents and her pets! With the Pickering family coat of arms hanging on the bathroom wall, who can take all this seriously? Now, not having a cellphone in ninth grade – that’s serious! She can’t even talk to her best friend about it – no mobile phone means no calls to far-off Queensland where Carmelita moved last year.

When the family’s home computers are stolen, Elly feels fully cut off from everyone as planning for the ninth grade dance goes into overdrive.

Why do her big sister’s new silver sandals fit Elly better than they fit Tilly? What is boyfriend Will doing in that photo on Bianca’s phone? Does her grandmother really want to learn how to use a computer? When will Carmelita’s advice letter arrive? And where’s the Post Office anyway?

Australian comedienne Wendy Harmer’s first book for young adults brings the effervescent Elly to life as a “teen on the edge of technological breakdown.” (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com) Review copy courtesy of the publisher.