Thunderwith Libby Hathorn Analysis

Question: HOW does Hathorn present the theme of overcoming challenges?
The book “Thunderwith” by Libby Hathorn is about a young girl called Lara; who faces multiple challenges with fitting in and moving on. Firstly she has the challenge of managing her new family and her dad. Secondly, Lara is having to cope with being in a new school and isn’t doing too well! Lastly, she has to move on from her mother’s death which is a hardship she is finding difficult to overcome. Libby Hathorn uses techniques such as symbolism to show what the mood of the character(s). A symbol used in the book, would be the black bird which will hover over Lara when she was feeling down. A second technique used is flash-backs, which was used frequently when Lara saw kindness or books or some particular poem. She would have a flashback of her mother reading to her and precious memories featuring her mother and her previous lifestyle.
Lara, throughout the book is facing many challenges and quite a few of them are in her home with the hostile Gladwyn who makes it fairly obvious that she doesn’t want Lara with them.
Some techniques used to show this are her tones and what she says. She will also never speak to Lara as a responsible teenager and more of a menacing one who won’t “bug off” for example when Gladwyn says “You’re a fool, no common sense whatsoever!” page number???? Gladwyn had said that when she and Pearl had come back from the shops and Opal had been on fire. Lara bravely put it out with her hands and she also used up their tank water in the process. At times, Gladwyn will expect too much of Lara and then will get Lara in trouble like:” You’re a great dumbcluck, you are. A big girl like you can’t even get on a bus.” She spoke to Lara as if she was a 5 year old but she was also expecting too much from Lara. She didn’t believe that she could overcome these challenges; after all, if they were easy they wouldn’t be
challenge
Lara doesn’t exactly have it easy as she is also quite unsettled at school. There is a school bully who seems out to “get her”. To make things worse, he is her neighbour and gets off the bus at the same bus stop. He proves to be a challenge in facing up to as whenever Lara musters more courage to face-up to him he will force her to back down again as seen in pg number . Gowd (the bully) seems to be haunting Lara and she will never know what he wants until it’s too late. His most precious demand from Lara would probably have been when he demanded her mother’s coin collection. She reluctantly gave up the coin collection to prevent too many challenges and difficulties ahead but she is trying to hold onto her mothers lucky coin the and Gowd seems very determined to make things difficult for Lara and her coins. She will frequently find refugee in the Library while talking and entrusting Neil, an Aborigine visitor to her school, with her greatest secret… Thunderwith.