In-store Book Launch: Degrees of Happy by Philippa Werry

Join Unity Books & Cuba Press for the launch of Philippa Werry's latest YA novel Degrees of Happy.

About the book:
Tess's parents have dropped a bombshell. The family's moving back to the place everyone wants to leave, the place Tess calls Toytown. She doesn't want to go and not just because it's small and nothing ever happens there - moving means leaving Chloe behind, her sister who died. What she doesn't expect is how much happens in Toytown, especially with a half-brother and half-sister moving in, the promise of chickens and a frenetic dog called Milo. And school isn't any less busy. Tess accidentally gets caught up in the annual Shakespeare festival, playing a tree in the Scottish play, and prompting for The Tempest, directed by a boy in a patchwork waistcoat who seems to think she knows what she's doing. Happiness, she has begun to realise, has gradations, like steps, or rungs on a ladder, and she's not at the bottom anymore. And then it's Chloe's birthday, and with the voices of Miranda and Prospero in her head, Tess leaves her new life behind and goes to find her sister. Degrees of Happy is a story of friendship and family and the power of words to heal, by the award-winning author of Iris and Me.

About Philippa:
Philippa Werry writes fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays for children and young adults, as well as articles, reviews and non-fiction for adults. Her work has been widely published, broadcast on National Radio, included in anthologies and shortlisted for a number of awards, including the Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing three times, as well as the Text Publishing Prize in 2010 and the Joy Cowley Award in 2015, the 2004 Australian Bilby Awards, the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards (2009 and 2014), the 2014 LIANZA awards, and the New Zealand Children and Young Adults Book Awards (2016, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2023). Werry was the winner of the Jack Lasenby Award in 2006, and the recipient of the NZSA mid-career writer's award in 2010.