Barry Jonsberg 's "Darkest Night, Brightest Star" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

Judges' comments from the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature

From the first page, the reader is captivated by the fresh, authentic inner voice of 13-year-old Morgan. He moves through the worlds of school and home almost entirely alone, and mute. It’s safer that way, he’s decided — until a boy called Gray wants to be his friend. Brought into a new world of feelings and communication, Morgan discovers what he does enjoy in life, who he likes, and what his numbness is all about. 

The characters are so vivid it hurts, and yet the joy of their evolution is all the more powerful for the pain. It was deeply satisfying to see how, as freedom opens up the world for Morgan, his kindness blooms like the flowers he plants. In spare, powerful writing, Barry Jonsberg compellingly challenges old but sadly persistent ideas of a what a man ‘should’ be, and conveys how humanising it can be to connect, be vulnerable and experience love.

About the author

Barry Jonsberg is an Australian award-winning YA and children’s author. He lives in Darwin, Australia, with his wife, children, and two dogs. His books include The Whole Business with Kiffo and the Pitbull (2004), award-winner It's Not All About You, Calma! (2005), and My Life as an Alphabet (2013), Smoke & Mirrors (2024). They have been published in the USA, the UK, France, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, Korea, Slovenia, and China. 

Synopsis of Darkest Night, Brightest Star

The novel commences in the English classroom with thirteen-year-old Morgan and his speech task. It’s a disaster. Morgan lives in a household with his older brother who taunts him by calling him Moron, and a father, who runs a gardening business, who dominates the household and demands his son excel at football. His mother left when he was little and Morgan is now subjected to a punishing regime of soccer training and supervision.  While he becomes a very effective player there is no joy in the game for him. Morgan is a loner and has no friends at school. So when he meets Gray, a gay student who challenges Morgan’s stunted view of his identity and encourages him to see himself more positively, it gradually begins to make a difference in his life. None of this is easy and when his mother reappears in his life his difficulties are compounded as she really wants to be part of his life. Her reasons for leaving become more apparent as the novel progresses. Morgan also encounters an older woman called Mary in his neighbourhood who thinks he is her son and who needs help with her garden.  Morgan discovers he has a talent for getting things to grow. As their friendship develops there are challenges including Morgan’s homophobia from his father and brother. But Gray just sees Morgan as a person in peril, much like himself before he understood who he was and what he stood for. The bridge he once stood on contemplating ending it all is also a bridge that he hopes he can rescue Morgan from. 

Friendship, respect and empathy do win out in this powerful story of discovery. The lemons on the lemon tree he plants for Mary, who has been moved to a nursing home, may be tied on by the helpful Gray under Morgan’s clever instruction, but they ring very true for her and so does this story. 

Distinctive features of Darkest Night, Brightest Star

• A cover that asks: ‘How do you find your light when you’re stuck in the dark’? 
• A story that showcases how humans deal with loyalty, betrayal, trust and forgiveness and a search for identity  
• Characterisation is a feature of Jonsberg’s fiction and thirteen-year-old Morgan has a lot to contend with as his father pressures him to be an ace football player and his older brother Mitch dismisses Morgan with a contemptuous nickname ‘Moron’ as well as beating him up when he feels angry about their father 
• Morgan is a loner at school and his puzzlement at the friendship offered by school mate Gray and uncertainty at how to help Mary, an elderly neighbour with dementia gradually turn to a growing confidence as he discovers who he is and what he can achieve   
• Vivid scenes full of threat, tension and emotion occur in the home and at school 
• Hard choices are required by the young protagonist whose determination and sense of identity grow as he faces real and deals with difficult choices and situations 
• Gardening and football play equally important roles in the story 
• There is more light than dark, and friendship and lemons do shine at the conclusion. 

Ways to use Darkest Night, Brightest Star in the classroom

Darkest Night, Brightest Star could be studied as a close study of text or placed in a group of novels that explore the ideas about masculinity. While it features a thirteen-year-old protagonist it fits better in Year 9. It could also be studied in conjunction with some of Jonsberg’s other YA novels such as The Whole Business of Kiffo and the Pitbull. 

A collection of texts that explore different types of masculinity could include: 

Listen to the author 

In an interview published on the Good Reading website Barry Jonsberg responded to a question about where the idea for the book came from. https://goodreadingmagazine.com.au/article/barry-jonsberg-on-darkest-night-brightest-star/

This time it was following a conversation I had with my wife. She had just come home from work [she’s an English teacher] and she told me that one of her male students had said to her, ‘I have always tried to please my father, but I don’t think I ever will.’ Nothing more was said, but both of us agreed that this was rather sad and moving. It prompted us to have a conversation about how parents can exert subtle and not so subtle pressure on their children to perform in ways that the parents might find satisfying but might not be the best for the kids. My wife recounted the time she came home from school when she was about 10 or 11 and told her father that she had got 97 per cent on a maths test. He asked her what had happened to the other three per cent. Maybe he was joking. Maybe not. But that remark stayed with her for close to 50 years. So I thought that a story about a boy trying to live up to his father’s expectations might make a good book. I started Darkest Night, Brightest Star the following day. Ask students to discuss in groups the choices both Ben and Olive make in both books and how they would answer the question ‘What would I do if that happened to me?’

Jonsberg also answered the question ‘If you were stranded on a desert island and you could only have five books – what would they be?’  

Phew. Tricky. The Complete Works of Shakespeare goes without saying. The Lord of the Rings [all of them – would that count as one book?]. The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake [you can see how I’m trying to cheat here!]. The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. Great Expectations by Dickens.

This could provide a good opening activity for the class. In groups ask students what books they would choose. If they have any agreement on books they have enjoyed they can create a list and share their list with the class.  

Group task on prediction: Ask students to predict what might occur in the novel based on the cover and the blurb.  

In another interview with Joy at PaperbarkWords blog Jonsberg is asked several excellent questions, and some are reproduced below. Ask students in groups to consider these questions and share the author’s answers with them at the end of their responses to the class.  

• Morgan has a tough life on most fronts. What are his redeeming qualities? 
• Why is his father like he is?
• Why did Morgan turn out differently from his brother Mitch?
• How are Morgan’s lack of interest (and poor results) at school holding him back?
• How influential can significant adults outside the family unit be? When can a teacher turn a student’s life and possible future around?
• Loyalty is a valued trait in your story. Who personifies loyalty inside Morgan’s family? Outside his family? How?
• How do you show the power of friendship and kindness?
• Apart from the protagonist, Morgan, which character do you most care about? Why?
• The novel addresses being gay and the homophobia that this can pile onto a young gay person with daily and compounding impact. How do you hope your story changes homophobic reactions and behaviour? How do you suggest young people suffering this abuse find help?
• What is the symbolic (or other) significance of plants and gardening?

From https://paperbarkwords.blog/2026/08/21/darkest-night-brightest-star-by-barry-jonsberg/

The characterisation of Morgan, Gray, Mitch, the father, the mother and the English teacher 

Group Task: In groups create a profile for the main characters. Also consider how much agency the three boys have and how that increases in the novel. Remember that agency is about their development of an identity and sense of belonging and the power they have to fulfil their potential. Use the template below for Morgan as a starting point and consider what  aspects you would choose for the other characters. 

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English K-10 syllabus

Text requirements: Darkest Night, Brightest Star is a novel (extended prose) from a Australian author. It includes a range of cultural, social and gender perspectives including from popular and youth cultures. 

Concepts could include Context • Representation • Point of view • Characterisation • Connotation, imagery and symbol

Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content

Reading, viewing and listening to texts

A student uses a range of personal, creative and critical strategies to interpret complex texts EN5-RVL-01

Reading, viewing and listening skills

• Develop a deeper understanding of themes, ideas or attitudes by revisiting and reinterpreting texts to find new meaning

Reading, view and listening for meaning

• Analyse the main ideas and thematic concerns represented in texts
• Investigate how layers of meaning are constructed in texts and how this shapes a reader’s understanding and engagement
• Analyse how the use of language forms and features in texts have the capacity to create multiple meanings

Reading for challenge, interest and enjoyment

• Read increasingly complex texts that challenge thinking, pique interest, enhance enjoyment and provoke a personal response
• Engage in sustained and varied reading that presents increasingly diverse and complex perspectives and experiences, including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and respond in a range of ways, including through extended written responses
• Consider how the social, cultural and ethical positions represented in texts represent, affirm or challenge views of the world
• Evaluate experiences of reading by sharing responses to texts
• Evaluate the ways reading texts help us understand ourselves and make connections to others and the world

Reflecting

• Understand and reflect on the value of reading for personal growth and cultural richness
• Reflect on how reading promotes a broad and balanced understanding of the world and enables students to explore wider universal issues

Understanding and responding to texts A

A student analyses how meaning is created through the use and interpretation of increasingly complex language forms, features and structures EN5-URA-01

Representation

• Analyse how contextual, creative and unconscious influences shape the composition, understanding and interpretation of all representations

Code and convention

• Use metalanguage effectively to analyse how meaning is constructed by linguistic and stylistic elements in texts
• Analyse how language forms, features and structures, specific or conventional to a text’s medium, context, purpose and audience, shape meaning, and experiment with this understanding through written, spoken, visual and multimodal responses

Connotation, imagery and symbol

• Analyse how figurative language and devices can be used to represent complex ideas, thoughts and feelings to contribute to larger patterns of meaning in texts, and experiment with this in own texts
• Analyse how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors use figurative language and devices to represent culture, identity and experience

Point of view

• Examine elements of focalisation, such as omniscience, limitations, indirect speech, tone, reliability and multiple narrators, and how these interact to shape perceptions of meaning in texts, and apply this in own texts

Characterisation

• Analyse how engaging, dynamic and complex characters are constructed in texts using language features and structures, and use these features and structures in own texts

Narrative

• Analyse how narrative conventions vary across genres, modes, media and contexts and how they can be used to represent ideas and values and shape responses, and apply this understanding in own texts
• Explore how narratives can represent and shape personal and shared identities, values and experiences

Understanding and responding to texts B

A student evaluates how texts represent ideas and experiences, and how they can affirm or challenge values and attitudes EN5-URB-01

Perspective and context

• Understand how the personal perspectives of audiences are a product of historical and cultural contexts
• Analyse how texts can be understood or interpreted from different perspectives, and experiment with this idea in own texts
• Evaluate how texts can position audiences to accept, challenge or reject particular perspectives of the world, and reflect on this in own texts
• Analyse how elements of an author’s personal, cultural and political contexts can shape their perspectives and representation of ideas, including form and purpose
• Explain how texts affirm or challenge established cultural attitudes and values in different contexts

Style

• Analyse how the distinctive aesthetic qualities and stylistic features of a text can shape and be shaped by its purpose, and experiment with this in own texts
• Examine the way an author’s distinct personal style shapes meaning in their work

(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023)

Connecting texts