Enid Blyton, (text) and Mark Beech, (illustrator), Christmas Wishes, Hodder & Stoughton, October 2020, RRP $15.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781444957198 Here is another collection of Enid Blyton Christmas short stories (Hodder & Stoughton have also released Christmas tales, Christmas stories and Christmas treats), gathered from her many publications including Enid Blyton’s Sunny Stories and The Enid Blyton Nature Readers. The stories were first published between 1922 and 1959. Needless to say, Blyton was absolutely prolific, so this volume contains 30 stories relating to Christmas, and is 316 pages long. Most stories contain ‘Moral Lessons for the Improvement of Young Minds’, but some of these lessons are still applicable today, such as “Christmas is what you make of it” (which can indeed be applied to life…
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Melina Marchetta (text), and Deb Hudson (illustrator), What Zola Did on Wednesday, Puffin Books, September 2020, 96 pp., RRP $12.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760895174 This is the third book in the Zola series, about a lively, curious girl and the adventures she has in her neighbourhood. Zola lives on Boomerang Street with her mum and Nonna Rosa and tries every day to keep out of trouble, which doesn’t always happen. In this book, Sophie’s turtle is missing! Zola knows exactly what to do and enlists the help of her cousin’s dog, Gigi, to sniff the turtle out, but this only leads to trouble! After a chat about rules with her neighbour Leo and his police officer mum,…
Alexa Moses (text) and Anil Tortop (illustrator), Santa and the Sugar Glider, Lothian Children’s Books, September 2020, 24pp., RRP $19.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780734419521 The appetite for children’s Christmas books is a big part of the children’s book landscape; besides the thousands of stand-alone Christmas books, many of the most popular series will have a Christmas flavoured edition. Some focus on Santa and his world of elves and reindeer, others the Nativity, and still more on wintertime adventures, which for us here in Australia is bizarre. I probably wised up to the Santa deal before I realised I was never, ever, going to…
George Ivanoff, The Human Body Survival Guide, Penguin Australia, September 2020, 50pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760896744 George Ivanoff has followed up The Australia Survival Guide with The Human Body Survival Guide. Using tones of black, red and white, the book is divided into four sections: ‘On the outside’, ‘On the inside’, ‘Better out than in’ and ‘Everything else (not all of it gross)’. Within each section there are up to six different subsections and the introduction warns readers to Proceed only if you have a strong stomach! As the narrator thinks most things about the body are pretty gross, he has included a gross-o-meter to measure the level of grossness of the topics under discussion. The text is supposedly written by someone still at school. The…
Smitri Halls (text) and David Litchfield (illustrator), Rain Before Rainbows, Walker Books, September 2020, 32 pp., RRP $27.99 32 (hbk), ISBN 9781406382358 From two prize-winning creators, this is a deeply beautiful book making a determined bid to bring home to its readers the message that all troubles are part of a world of change, and that if we can hold on long enough to embrace the mercies change brings, we will find that after rain comes rainbows, after night comes day, and in trouble friends arrive. Of course such a message could be trite, and even needlessly dismissive of suffering. But this book takes its time, entrusts its message to the images of…
Guinness World Records 2021, September 2020, RRP $44.95 (hbk), ISBN 9781913484071 Every year, the Guinness World Records is published, and every year, it’s just as popular. Readers of all ages can find something to inspire, engage and challenge them in this reliable tome. Over the years, it’s refined its production values and the images and text layout, almost imperceptibly. It seems the same as it always has, but it’s astutely continued to keep pace with each generation so that readers keep coming back for more. There’s an excellent table of contents, and 14 pages of indexes, acknowledgements and extra information at the end, so even the most discerning…
Andrew Daddo (text) and Stephen Michael King (illustrator), The Treasure of Treasures, Atticus van Tasticus: Book 3, Penguin Australia, September 2020, 288pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760892869 You’ve got to love a story that begins with the name, ‘BUTTFACE’ hollered from a pirate. In this third installment in the Attitcus Van Tasticus series, the Map of Half Maps is in the hands of Atticus and his crew. All aboard The Grandnan, the pirates are set to find the long-awaited treasure. But it just isn’t as easy as having a map to lead the way. Dark scary islands that are actual giant skulls, method writers who really want to feel their pirate story, terrifying monsters…
Raymond Huber (text) and Sandra Severgnini (illustrator), Tree Beings, Exisle Publishing, October 2020, 96pp., RRP $34.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781925820539 The Foreword by Dr Jane Goodall provides the reason for this book. She shows us that trees provide life, fight climate change, need to be protected and have many likenesses to human beings. One young woman sat up on a giant redwood for two years to save it from the axe; trees suck up CO2 and breathe out oxygen; and wild animals depend on them. We are given facts about the tallest, biggest, oldest and widest tree, the person who planted a…
Solli Raphael Spotlight, Penguin Australia, September 2020, 144 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760898410 Solli is an award-winning teenage slam poet and activist who has previously published Limelight, a collection of slam poetry in different forms. Here in Spotlight, Solli, now 15, again offers a collection of poems written in different forms as well as five chapters on how to effect change. He hopes to motive the reader to become more active in accomplishing change and therefore includes advice and activities on where to start and what to do. ‘Having a Voice’ explains what this means and how to find it. In ‘The Power of Words’ Solli is passionate about how words…
Mike Lucas (text), Heidi Cooper Smith (illustrator), Bad Herbert, Larrikin House, September 2020, 32 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780648804901 Bad Herbert has no manners and what’s more he loves cake so if you want to get to the delicious cake that awaits you at the end of this story you’d better get moving and make sure you get there first because Bad Herbert won’t wait. But how to stop a naughty monkey? You could draw a big gate with a padlock so he can’t get to the next page but if that doesn’t work maybe an enormous wave to wash him off course or…