About This Author
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Anna is passionate about drafts, planning, research, writing and illustrating and her enthusiasm is contagious! Comments like “You are Annabella’s idol now. She said she wants to be an author like you when she grows up” are typical responses from parents or teachers to her lively, inspiring presentations. Anna is the winner of the 2021 Nance Donkin Literary Award and an Australia Reads Ambassador. Her latest book, A Message Through Time, came out in 2023. This is a standalone companion to The Boy Who Stepped Through Time, a best-selling adventure about a modern Australian boy transported to the time of the Roman Empire and taken for a slave. Anna has won several Notable Book awards as well as a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Her books have been listed for numerous awards, and are translated and published around the world.
Books by Anna Ciddor

A Message Through Time
Best Suited 8-13 Years
When 11-year-old Felix finds a message in a bottle during a trip to France, he is in for the surprise of a lifetime. Suddenly he is flung back 1700 years to Ancient Roman times, dragging his very unwilling 15-year-old stepsister, Zoe, with him.
They are offered sparrows for lunch and horse-spit as medicine, but that is only the beginning! When they ricochet forward to their own time again, Felix and Zoe discover they have accidentally brought a high-class Roman girl with them… Can they navigate the strange Roman world – from opulent city to distant sacred spring – and return the 12-year-old girl to her family before time runs out?

The Boy Who Stepped Through Time
Best Suited 8 – 13 years
When Perry steps into a crumbling ruin while on holiday in France, he is not expecting to be transported back 1700 years to Roman times. While he hunts desperately for a way home, he must blend in as a slave – even if it means eating mice for dinner! Gradually, Perry is caught up in the fascinating world of grand Villa Rubia and a life he could never have imagined. But when he makes a new friend, he thinks he might already know her terrible fate. Perry is faced with an impossible choice: to find his way home or stay and guard his friend’s life – and risk being trapped in the past forever…

The Family with Two Front Doors
Best Suited 8+Years
Meet the Rabinovitches: mischievous Yakov, bubbly Nomi, rebellious Miriam, solemn Shlomo, and seven more! Papa is a rabbi and their days are full of intriguing rituals and adventures. But the biggest adventure of all is when big sister Adina is told she is to be married at the age of fifteen – to someone she has never met. Based on the author’s real family, the Rabinovitches dance, laugh and cook their way through an extraordinary life in 1920s Poland. In the classic tradition, this highly readable story is fascinating, engaging and as warm as freshly baked bread. A book with a Jewish theme that is not about the Holocaust.

52 Mondays
Best Suited 8-12 years
When Anna sets out to find the doll of her dreams, her two younger sisters are eager to help. But it’s not easy. This is 1960s Australia and there’s no computer or internet yet. This is a time when teachers still write with chalk, cars have no seatbelts, and Mr Whippy sells ice-cream cones for half a penny. Anna and her sisters fill their days with fun, mischief and adventure – like the time Anna glues a block of wood to her middle sister’s foot, then worries it will be stuck there forever! They celebrate birthdays and Passover together, cope with friends being mean, and feed peanuts to the bears at the zoo. But through it all, Anna never loses sight of her dream.
