DRIFT

Fourteen-year-olds Nate and Luna join forces to rescue the 20,000 bees that swarm Nate's home and build a hive in the walls. Can they rescue each other, too?

Nate has recently moved to a sleepy town with his mum. Separated from his dad, who's stayed behind until he can relocate his job, Nate misses his father, friends, and previous life. When a 20,000 strong swarm of bees invade the walls of their dilapidated beach house, Nate forms a connection to them and sets about trying to save the hive with the help of a young local beekeeper Tyler. But when the devastating varroa mite virus hits, the hive might have to be destroyed. Meanwhile, next door, Luna's anxiety is spiralling out of control since a "fight" video - in which she's brutally attacked by two girls at a party - went viral. Luna has become a social outcast at school and lost her best friend Sia. She and Nate who crucially hasn't seen the shocking video - become friends. They hatch a plan to avoid disaster for the bees. Can they save the hive and save each other? Told in a dynamic first-person dual narrative, Drift will resonate with younger-teen readers beginning to understand themselves and the changing world they live in. In the spirit of Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, Toffee by Sarah Crossan, and Blood Moon by Lucy Cuthew. Pip Harry is an Australian author, copywriter and journalist. Her middle grade novel The Little Wave won the 2020 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers. Pip's second middle grade novel, Are You There, Buddha?, was a 2022 CBCA Notable Book and was shortlisted for the 2022 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Pip's next middle grade novel, August & Jones, was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year: Younger Readers 2023 and the 2024 YABBA Awards, and won the CBCA Shadow Judging Book of the Year for Younger Readers. Up next are picture books Over or Under? and The Inside Dog (Feb 2025), spooky middle grade Attack of the Aliants (July 2025) and YA verse novel Drift (August 2025)