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Holding Back
Fifteen-year-old Nick is a shy homeschooler whose best friend is his younger sister. Growing up on a farm, they both like the Australian horse-riding sport campdrafting, but Nick is too nervous around other people to compete. Tired of watching his sister making friends wherever she goes, Nick joins a local swim squad to challenge himself.

There he begins to come out of his shell, especially when he is befriended by four of his teammates who show him how to be friendly and self-confident. He soon discovers that he is great at swimming the breaststroke and finds the assurance to compete in meets. As his friendships and self-esteem grows, his shyness diminishes, but will that be enough to help him compete in the next campdraft event?

Written by a homeschooling mother of six, Holding Back provides an authentic look at what homeschooling is like and how hard it can be for homeschooled kids to challenge themselves in social situations.

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Holding Back
Fifteen-year-old Nick is a shy homeschooler whose best friend is his younger sister. Growing up on a farm, they both like the Australian horse-riding sport campdrafting, but Nick is too nervous around other people to compete. Tired of watching his sister making friends wherever she goes, Nick joins a local swim squad to challenge himself.

There he begins to come out of his shell, especially when he is befriended by four of his teammates who show him how to be friendly and self-confident. He soon discovers that he is great at swimming the breaststroke and finds the assurance to compete in meets. As his friendships and self-esteem grows, his shyness diminishes, but will that be enough to help him compete in the next campdraft event?

Written by a homeschooling mother of six, Holding Back provides an authentic look at what homeschooling is like and how hard it can be for homeschooled kids to challenge themselves in social situations.

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Holding Back

Holding Back

by Frances Prentice
Holding Back

Holding Back

by Frances Prentice

Overview

Fifteen-year-old Nick is a shy homeschooler whose best friend is his younger sister. Growing up on a farm, they both like the Australian horse-riding sport campdrafting, but Nick is too nervous around other people to compete. Tired of watching his sister making friends wherever she goes, Nick joins a local swim squad to challenge himself.

There he begins to come out of his shell, especially when he is befriended by four of his teammates who show him how to be friendly and self-confident. He soon discovers that he is great at swimming the breaststroke and finds the assurance to compete in meets. As his friendships and self-esteem grows, his shyness diminishes, but will that be enough to help him compete in the next campdraft event?

Written by a homeschooling mother of six, Holding Back provides an authentic look at what homeschooling is like and how hard it can be for homeschooled kids to challenge themselves in social situations.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781761112546
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
Publication date: 07/08/2025
Pages: 128
Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range: 15 - 18 Years

About the Author

Frances Prentice is a mother of six, including one stillborn, who lives with her husband and two youngest children on a cattle property in rural Queensland. She juggles her writing with home schooling, tutoring and running a home school co-op. She loves creating stories with young people and is planning to self-publish works she has co-written with young authors. She has a passion for helping people with reading and writing difficulties so they can experience the joy she has had in literature. She is an avid reader of middle-grade and young adult fiction, who first dreamt of being an author at the age of eight. She always thought she would be middle-aged when she began this career, once she had some life experience.

 

Frances has been shortlisted twice in Furious Fiction by Australian Writers Centre in 2023. Her short story Uplifted was included in the anthology The Opposite of Disappearing (2021) and I am Vine in Audrey Puzzle Magazine (2020). Her ballad, Love at First Sigh was included in the anthology Tell ‘em They’re Dreaming (2020).  Always, Your Sister is her first middle-grade novel, releasing in 2025.

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