Sally Yule (text), and Cheryl Orsini (illustrator), Dancing with Memories, Harper Collins, July 2022, 32 pp., $24.99 (hbk) 9780733342578 Lucy has a special occasion coming up. Her granddaughter is getting married. Keen to get to the wedding by herself, Lucy plans her day, with a note from her daughter to help her remember. Lucy has dementia. Sally Yule brings us a heart-warming story that celebrates our ageing communities. Her choice of first-person narrative sensitively conveys the challenges facing older people with dementia, and keeping Lucy at the heart of the story demonstrates the value of a person-centred approach in communities. Colourful illustrations…
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Sam Winston, One & Everything, Walker Books Australia, November 2022, 48 pp., RRP $29.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781529509298 At first glance, this seems a simple picture book but looks can be deceiving. It is actually an extended metaphor for the loss of languages and the importance of preserving those we can. Once, we are told, there were many stories covering all sorts of topics such as sunsets and dogs. But One story decided it was the most important and gobbled up all the other stories. It becomes fatter and fatter – depicted on a double-page spread. However, things were happening inside…
Helen Milroy, Owl and Star, Fremantle Press, October 2022, 32 pp,, RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760992156 Owl and Star is the first picture book in Helen Milroy’s new series in which the Backyard series author invites readers to appreciate the magic of stars. Owl loves the magical times between day and night and knows every star in the universe. At dawn, he would bask in the cool mist and gentle light, and drift off into his dream time. Every morning, as moon went to her slumber, all the stars would descend from the heavens like a fine dew to cover…
Chihiro Takeuchi (text and illustrations), Whose Dinosaur Bones?, Berbay Publishing, September 2022, 32 pp., RRP $25.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781922610485 Whose dinosaur bones? features beautiful, bold and clear illustrations of dinosaurs and their bone structure. It’s created by Osaka based, award winning paper cut artist, Takeuchi. The book follows a repeated pattern, with illustrated clues (bones, paw prints, preferred food) and just three prompting words – “Whose dinosaur bones?”, challenging the reader to guess which dinosaur they belong to, and then revealing the corresponding dinosaur’s image and its name. The repetition of just a few words and the predictable pattern support…
Gregg Dreise, Where’s my baby? Magabala Books, August 2022, 10 pp., RRP $12.99 (board book), ISBN 9781922613721 From gifted artist and best-selling author, Gregg Dreise (Kookoo Kookaburra, Awesome Emu) comes this joyful new board book, Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby? This dinewah is too feathery. Where’s my baby? That guda is too fluffy. Gregg Dreise is a descendant of the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi people of south-west Queensland and north-west New South Wales and as well as encouraging young readers to learn new adjectives in English, Where’s my baby? introduces the names of iconic Australian animals in Gamilaraay language. My…
Jayden Boundry (text) and Tyrown Waigana (illustrator), Noongar Boodja Waangkan – Noongar first words, Fremantle Press, August 2022, 24 pp., RRP $24,99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760991975 Noongar boodja waangkan is an illustrated collection of everyday words in the indigenous language of the Noongar nation of south west Western Australia. It takes the format of a picture book with written transliterations of Noongar words and their English translation, each illustrated by bold, playful, coloured images. Topics covered are relevant to children’s everyday experience, including family relationships, body parts, plants, numbers, colours, emotions, animals, body movements, greetings and also a special page for…
Crystal Corocher (text) and Rebel Challenger (illustrator), The Naked Sheep, Larrikin House, November 2022, 24 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781922503725 The Naked Sheep is the perfect rollicking rhyming story to share with early readers. Strong as an ox, and six foot two, stood ‘Lightning’ Lizzy, the jillaroo. Beside her shed she plonked a sign: Shearing Salon Open at Nine Latest styles, hippest trends, layered bangs and trimmed split ends. Author and literacy educator, Crystal Corocher has created a tremendously entertaining and light-hearted tale that will have children laughing out loud and predicting the end of each line. As the…
Idan Ben-Barak (text) and Philip Bunting (illustrator), The Very Hard Book, Allen & Unwin, August 2022, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760526221 The very hard book asks kids to do things that are absurd or logically impossible – “drop something by accident”, “dig half a hole”, “sit in an empty room” and more. As such, it’s a silly and entertaining introduction to metacognition (thinking about thinking) and philosophy of mind, by prompting us to think about free will, mind-body connection, infinity, logic, paradoxes and perception. Helpful explanations of the formal theory, behind each page’s concepts, are on the back…
Oliver Jeffers, Meanwhile Back On Earth . . . HarperCollins Publishers, October 2022, 64 pp., RRP $27.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780008555450 The books of Oliver Jeffers charm you wonderfully while they inform you of amazing facts and remind you that life is best lived by the values summed up in Oliver’s Dad’s words: respect, consideration and tolerance. After the warm and wise Here We Are and the more strangely imaginative and poetic What We’ll Build, this new book continues the illustration style of vivid cartoonish characters with characteristic scribbles and arrows, but this time we’re off on a journey whose purpose…
Chaz Hayden, The First Thing About You, Walker Books, September 2022, 368 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781529510942 After moving across the country with his family, Harris wants nothing more than to just fit in and be a normal teenager – but that can be difficult when you have spinal muscular atrophy. Determined not to fall into the same lonely rut he was stuck in back in California, Harris is eager to reinvent himself. Prepped with his go-to icebreaker/personality test (‘What’s your favourite colour?’) Harris is searching for outgoing yellows, adventurous oranges, and thrilling reds to contrast his trustworthy blue.…