Change the Locks Read online

  “I need you to help me look after Dylan, don’t I?” she said, and suddenly reached over to ruffle my hair. “I need you to look after me.”

  And I nodded my head in some sort of agreement, waiting for her to slip the car into gear for the rest of the drive home.

  “There’s something else,” I finally managed to say.

  “What is it?”

  “Dylan. Just now he stood up for the first time. And he took a few steps … by himself. It was great.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “About time, boyo,” she said to Dylan’s reflection in the rear-view mirror, before she steered the car out onto the highway.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Simon French grew up in Sydney’s west, and had his first novel published while he was still at high school. He has written many novels and picture books, and been published in Australia and overseas. His work is praised by critics and has won several awards, including the 1987 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award for All We Know. Change the Locks was an Honour Book in 1992. Where in the World won the 2003 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature, and was short-listed for the 2003 CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers, long-listed for the 2003 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and nominated to the IBBY Honour List in 2004. His most recent novel, Other Brother, was short-listed for the 2013 CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers award. Simon is a primary school teacher in the Hawkesbury region of New South Wales.

  First print edition published in 1991 by Ashton Scholastic Pty Ltd.

  Published in 2012

  by Walker Books Australia Pty Ltd

  Locked Bag 22, Newtown

  NSW 2042 Australia

  www.walkerbooks.com.au

  This ebook edition published in 2014

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Text © 1991 Simon French

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  French, Simon, 1957– author.

  Change the locks / Simon French.

  For children.

  Subjects: Single-parent families – Juvenile fiction.

  Stepfathers – Juvenile fiction.

  A823.3

  ISBN: 978-1-922244-77-2 (ePub)

  ISBN: 978-1-922244-76-5 (e-PDF)

  ISBN: 978-1-922244-78-9 (.PRC)

  Cover image © iStockphoto/Kian Erikson

  For Marnie, the Toddlers and the Dirty Creek Gang.