I won this book in year 8 primary school and it was a real treat. I love the imagery and this was my first experience of reading about a past time period.

I decided to read Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Parks again after watching the movie adaption in my history class and feeling that small sense of pride of being able to whisper to my friends as the movie went on, "oh, I've read that book. It's pretty good", never mind that it had been a while since I'd read it and I didn't really remember much of the plot. I faintly remembered liking the book and decided, as the movie went on, that I should re-read it.

Playing Beatie Bow was a good, fairly easy and More...

This well-written coming-of-age, historical fiction juvenile novel by New Zealand-born Australian writer Ruth Park is deserving of all the awards and rave reviews it has garnered through the years.

14-year-old Abigail – Abbie – Kirk is still deeply wounded by the separation of her parents four years earlier. In her anger at her beloved father for his desertion, she has changed her name from his chosen Lynette to “an old name, a witch’s name” – Abigail.

Anger seethes within Abbie, though she is lea More...

Abigail Kirk’s life is about to be upended – in more ways than one. Her mother has just announced that she has been seeing Abigail’s father again, the man who left the family for another woman four years ago. Abigail and her mother reside in Mitchell, the high-rise tower Abigail’s architect father helped create, in an affluent part of Sydney called ‘The Rocks’. Even worse than the news of her mother’s rekindled romance, is her announcement that they are moving to Norway with her father while he More...

Abigail is dismayed to learn that her mother and father are contemplating getting back together and moving to another country to make a fresh start. She can’t understand why her mother would agree to take her father back, after he left her mother and the family for a young woman he met at work. Then Abigail suddenly and unexpectedly finds that she has traveled back in time to 1870’s Australia. After befriending people in the earlier time, Abigail is finally able to return to her own time with a More...

I will forever remember the moment I first encountered this book. After a particularly mundane school day I plonked myself down in the backseat of our car and prepared for the drive home. However, instead of starting the engine my mother turned around and said, "I've got a small surprise for you. I was at a bookshop today and thought you might enjoy this." She then proceeded to hand me a copy of Playing Beatie Bow. Getting a book as a surprise gift truly made my day, I was almost giddy with anti More...

my mom brought up this book and told me that she had once read it out loud to a rapt class. the title was very familiar but i couldn't remember if i'd read it before. i ordered it from the library and the cover was also very familiar (n.b. not the cover pictured above--it's so old it's not in the GR listings). however, when i read the story, it didn't ring any bells, other than reminding me a bit of the witch of blackbird pond. i liked this story better though the language was a bit odd (in part More...

I realised just last night that 'blanky' is a substitute for 'bloody'. THANK YOU for ruining my childhood, PENGUIN. D:

What is the point of this when the book heavily implies certain characters are involved in prostitution and shows two alcoholic characters in pitiful detail?

"Oh, gee, guys, you can read about the worst parts of 19th-century Sydney, but we won't include swearing because this is the late 80s and we're too genteel for that. OH NOES the kiddies might learn some bad words." I'm going More...

I'm going to be completely honest here and start off by saying that part of the reason I loved this book so much is probably because of the nostalgia of it. I had read it when I was at school, and for years couldn't remember the title of the book. When I finally did, I went out and bought a copy straight away and was excited to read it again. It took me right back to those days where I seemed to have much more time for reading!

Having said that, I do think that even without the childhood memories More...

I still love this book (it has been my fourth time now). Abigail is a kind of anti-heroine, but her personality is interestingly multi-faceted, Beatie and the rest of the Bow Family are so entertainingly vivid and Abigail's time-travel-experience is believably painted in loving detail (up to the accent of the Scottish immigrants and their Glasgow Marble patterned woolen stockings).
There is no denying that the ending is cotton candy pink; it successfully underlines the two - disputable - messages More...

I absolutely LOVED this book when I first read it in middle school. I remember the library assistant, Ms. Flowers, recommending it to me. (I looooved Ms. Flowers.) She was so nice (unlike our librarian, Ms. Angelos, who was a biznatch). Anyway, upon re-reading it, I might rate it a bit less, say... 3.5, if that were possible on this site... It's still a really good book for the intended age group, though.
I usually am not all that into fantasy books, but this tale, of going back in time, was capt More...

In my quest to read Australian literature -for both adults and children- while I am living in Sydney, this was the latest book I read. It's a cute story about a modern day girl from Sydney who stumbles upon a portal to the late 19th century and becomes trapped in another time. As she tries to make her way back to her mother, she learns she is The Stranger that the Bow family has been waiting for. She grapples with not being able to leave until she fulfills her mysterious purpose, in the process More...

I really enjoyed this one.
I thought I had read this when I was younger, and was all geared up for nostalgia and whatnot... Only to discover I hadn't read it at all. I wish I had though, I would have loved it a thousand times more.
I felt that the "love" aspect was thrown in a bit randomly. I didn't believe it at all. The story could have done without it, really. We could have reached the same point without it.
I didn't like Abigail very much. I didn't like Beatie either. I also wanted to muzzle G More...

As a girl/young teen I adored this book, I remember my copy of it was almost falling apart from well use, so when I walked past a second hand book store a couple of years ago and saw a beautiful hard back copy of it sitting in the window I had to have it. It was still a great story, yes my now grown up self found it a ridiculously easy read, not just because I am no longer its target audience but because I realised I still knew the story almost by heart, but it was still a very pleasant couple o More...

10/12 - I loved this book as a 10-year-old and one small detail has stuck with me over the nearly 20 years since I last read it, and that was the significance of the crocheted yoke. I couldn't remember any other part of the story except that the yoke sent Abigail back in time. Often when I re-read a book I loved as a child and haven't read since they don't quite live up to my memories, but Playing Beatie Bow definitely did. I empathised with Abigail's feelings over the possibility of her separat More...

It's no surprise that Ruth Park is the author of such a good book. This prolific New Zealand-born writer has well and truly earned her place in the pantheon of fine Australian scribes. "Playing Beatie Bow," although it won the 1981 Australian Children's Book of the Year Award, is a story that will be appreciated by people of all ages, except those under ten perhaps. The book has a number of levels, all relatively complex, and uses slang terms and local expressions to some extent, that will leave More...

It looks like I’ve got a really good start, this year, in catching up with the Aussie lits. This is another classic which pretty much everybody has read but me! Seriously, looking at the cover, I thought it’d be something creepy (a quote at the back of the book reads, “It’s Beatie Bow – risen from the dead!”) but it’s not at all creepy! It’s a time travel tale which I adore and I love this book!

Abigail Kirk is not perfect. She was hurt deeply years ago and has never let go. She felt that she sho More...

At first i thought this would be a pretty lame book, because i had to read it for school, and so far i haven't encountered a good book when it came to my english teacher and her lame choices. And maybe partly because it was written even before i was born in 1980. But i found that i actually enjoyed it.

Ruth Park did a good job on this book, she wrote it well and really did her research on what life was like for poor people in Sydney in 1800's. Even right down to the way they spoke. It seemed like More...

A great story! I'm not sure why I never got around to reading this when I was younger - it's one of those titles that just seem to have always been naturally around.
I did feel a little bit like I wsa being smacked in the face with the moral a few times, and I tend not to like it when that happens, but I think I can let this book get away with it. Other than that, highly enjoyable. I loved thinking about The Rocks now, and trying to transpose it onto the C19th setting. A good little read.

This was adorable! I loved the voice and style of writing. From the cover/blurb, I was expecting a straight-out children's adventure story about time travel, and so was slightly confused when the pacing slowed and Abigail's character development took over. But looking back on it, as a coming-of-age novel it's simply wonderful. This book contains the best description of first love that I think I've ever read. As for the epilogue -- oh, so lovely!

I remember crying over this book at school. It's very dark for a novel aimed at young adults, but Ruth Park is so deft at weaving the complicated strands of her story that it's very difficult to put down, even as an adult. Much of this story is a curious blend of history and fantasy, but the themes she explores through the eyes of her out of place lead character - family, fitting in, first love, first loss - are thoroughly modern.

I found this book incredibly boring and hated the way they spoke. The storyline was good, but I don't like the way Ruth Park wrote it. I don't have anything against old books or what time period they were set in, I just found Abigail extremely annoying.
We read this book in year 8 and I don't know if it was because we are in modern times but my entire class hated it and most people didn't even bother reading it.

Ha Ha! I read this book when i was in year 8 and i think i was the only one of the class that fell in love with it! I remember reading it three times before we even had to have read the first page. I dont really remember what compelled me to love this book so much, just that it was a great story (even after i had pulled it apart for school). Yep definatley a favourite!

So in the beging i wasnt hooked but as i read more and more i was finding myself more and more attached. The ending was kinda sad when she found out somethings she didnt want to happen. The bookw as full of emotion and thats what i really liked. When romance was added to the book it was just like adding more salt to a dish. I really loved it when i got to about chapter 8. Great job

I love this story. I read it for the first time as a child around 11 or 12 and must admit i didint like it - i t was hard to understand the speech and I didnt care much for the idea. Re-reading it several years later has added this book to my favorite list. What a great story and really gives you insight to how people lived and believed in the 19th century.

Read this for my 9th grade English class, and I loved the way that the story involved time-travel, but not in the traditional sci-fi sense. I remember wanting to visit The Rocks after reading the book, and although I don't remember much, I remember empathising a lot with Abigail.

There's also a movie adaptation, although it's not that great.

Classic Australian YA novel about a young girl who is whisked back in time to 1800s Sydney. Although it suffers in the second half from a tacked-on love triangle and a rather convenient ending, there are some great moments in which Abigail suffers the plight shared by those finding themselves in a bildungsroman. Nice detail in the historical elements.

Though the language of this book was quite confusing in many parts I learnt to uderstand the way people lived in the 19th century. Though there were many dangers, people treated friends and family alot better thatn we do today. I believe that the book was better than the movie because there was more information and it was better to understand it.

I read this when I was in school and was terrified in a good way. Now I'm reading it to see if my students should read it. I can see why the tone and events in some plots left such an impression when I was younger. It was still quite an engaging read. I'm going to recommend it to the mature, high-level readers in my class.

I know it's a book for children but it's one of the best. The book is about a girl named Abigail (her real name is Lynette I think but she named herself Abigail after her father left), that lives in Sydney. The story was great and I enjoyed the characters. Hopefully I will re-read this book soon.