Sophie Deen (text) and Anjan Sarkar (illustration), Agent Asha: Mission Shark Bytes, Walker Books, July 2020, 240 pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781406382723 Asha Joshi has been tasked with an important mission for the Children’s Spy Agency: find out what is bringing down the internet. I don’t know if Mission Shark Bytes is the first in a series, but I certainly hope it is. I remember reading Nancy Drew books as kid and loving every minute of them. Later on, I realised that I wasn’t seeing a girl like me investigate any crimes like Nancy Drew did, and wasn’t sure I ever would. This is why I appreciate Agent Asha so much…
Author: Admin
Kaye Baillie, author of The Friendly Games, chats to Reading Time reviewer, Maura Pierlot MP: Hello Kaye! Would you classify The Friendly Games as non-fiction or creative non-fiction (and why)? KB: I would classify The Friendly Games as non-fiction because I was careful to use only factual information throughout. John’s thoughts, expressions and actions are all correct according to his audio interview and written interviews. The descriptions of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and the street scenes were taken from newspaper articles, videos, archival footage, and photos. The illustrator, Fiona Burrows did meticulous research to recreate the setting, people’s clothing, vehicles, shop fronts and the Children’s Home as it was in 1956. MP: How do you strike the balance between providing facts and the maintaining the energy of…
Kaye Baillie (text) and Fiona Burrows (illustrator), The Friendly Games, MidnightSun Publishing, June 2020, 32pp., RRP $29.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781925227642 Based on a true story, The Friendly Games documents Chinese student John Wing’s efforts to ensure that the closing ceremony of Melbourne’s 1956 Summer Olympics Games were a joyous, inclusive and friendly celebration. Baillie grounds the story in John’s happy upbringing at a Melbourne orphanage. When world tensions threaten to overshadow the Games, Wing turns his mind to bringing people together. His anonymous suggestion that all athletes walk around the arena in mixed groups, sent with a diagram to the Chairman of the Organising Committee, was soon adopted. ‘The Parade of Athletes’ went on to become a…
Laura Sieveking, The Secret Journal (Ella at Eden #2), Scholastic Australia, May 2020, 192 pp., RRP $15.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781743834947 In this second book of the series, Ella has settled into life at Eden College and is enjoying her new friendships. When a dare takes her to the top of the out-of-bounds bell tower, she discovers an old journal in the stone wall, written by a 12-year-old student during wartime 1940. Journal extracts and Ella’s emails to her friends are cleverly woven throughout the story as the mystery of the author’s life deepen, leading Ella to uncover some secrets of Eden College. Told in first person, we see the world through Ella’s…
Trace Balla, The Heart of the Bubble, Self-published, July 2020, 72 pp., RRP $24.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780648904304 As our country (Australia) headed toward isolation earlier this year, as we saw our supermarket shelves empty in way they never had before, as we saw people acting in ways that we couldn’t quite believe, I was reminded of my Grandma Bell and her passing. Following her funeral, I helped my mother and uncle clean out her two-bedroom unit and in her linen cupboard we found eight sets of single bed sheets. She had one single bed and it rarely saw any use as a bed, rather it was…
Stef Gemmill (text) and Tanja Stephani (illustrator), In My Dreams, New Frontier Publishing, April 2020, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781925594928 We all occasionally slip into another world where anything’s possible, whether it’s a daytime reverie or during a night-time slumber. In this new title from Steff Gemmill, a young boy’s dreams take him on a magical journey full of fun, frivolity and adventure. Who wouldn’t love to ‘lick the stripes off rainbows,’ ‘dive deep down to the ocean floor and meet creatures of the sea,’ or make mischief with monkeys’? But there’s danger too. Dark shadows lurk, blinked away by the dreamer, bringing him to a warm light that sings him home.…
Wednesday 2nd September 2020 is Indigenous Literacy Day, and on this day the Indigenous Literacy Foundation are holding two special digital events: the first event will be at 12:30pm (AEST) today, you can view the premiere on the Indigenous Literacy Foundation YouTube channel. At 2pm (AEST) there will be a second special event held in conjunction with the Sydney Opera House. This free digital event is aimed at primary and early learners, ages 3-11, you can register to watch this event here. Reading Time would like to commemorate Indigenous Literacy Day with a roundup of some of the wonderful reviews…
Philip Bunting, Who Am I?, Scholastic Australia, September 2020, 32 pp., RRP $17.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781743835043 There was excitement at our house when this book arrived. ‘Look! Look at the pictures! It’s by that guy who wrote the funny book about evolution and stuff!’ ‘That guy’ is Philip Bunting — author and illustrator of fiction books (including Mopoke and Koalas Eat Gum Leaves), and nonfiction including his ‘funny book about evolution and stuff’, How Did I Get Here? Bunting’s books are instantly recognisable because of their delicious lolly-shop aesthetic. His illustrations are cartoonish and flippant — with bright colours, wide eyes, and tongue in cheek cheekiness — but his messages…
Zana Fraillon, The Lost Soul Atlas, Hachette Australia, July 2020, 240 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780734419934 Twig’s father disappears at night into the city’s black markets, and sometimes brings home a taste of fruit from Heaven: Fruit of the Gods. Twig adores his Da, but now that he’s eleven he wants to be given some freedom, and some responsibility—and he wants his Da to recognise that he has skills. When he follows his Da into the markets one night, it is the end of him, and of his Da. Well, it seems that way until Twig emerges into the hinterland of the afterlife, accompanied by the skeleton of a raven, chased by…
My grand-daughter Matilda, who is four, likes to talk a lot. She is both fluent and energetic in her delivery, confident and expressive in her language. I wrote a story called Tilda loves to Talk, and in this story her neighbour up the street, George, visits. George is about three, nervous and shy about communication. Surprisingly, his Dutch grandmother teaches George her language. Basically, the story evolved around the way the children played and communicated. Even if the words were not clear, they knew what the other was doing and thinking. I even included some Dutch phrases to add some drama to the story. I sent this story to Di Bates, who suggested the character of George would make a more interesting story, from his perspective, not Tilda. George with…