Clare Atkins (text) and Harrison Vial (illustrator), Egg, The University of Queensland Press, August 2022, 40 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780702265594 When something strange washes up on the eggs’ island, they are scared. It looks like them. But different. What if it hatches? What if there are more of them? Most of the eggs hope the newcomer will float back to where it came from, but one little egg is not afraid. Can their friendship prove there is nothing to fear? Egg is an extraordinarily thought-provoking picture book that elegantly addresses many complex themes around xenophobia, climate change, displacement,…
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Coral Vass (text) and Heidi Cooper Smith (illustrator), Amanda Commander and the Purple Invitation (Amanda Commander #1), Wombat Books, March 2022, 82 pp., RRP $12.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781761110771 Amanda is friends with everyone so, when she discovers she is the only girl in her class not invited to her friend Eve’s birthday party, she cannot understand why she has been excluded. It is even more obvious as Eve’s invitations are in purple envelopes so there is no way Amanda could have overlooked it. She gathers her best friends Lu and Mai to create a plan to ensure Amanda will be…
Vikki Conley (text) and Deb Hudson (illustrator), Milly and the Mulberry Tree, EK Books, June 2022, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781922539120 Milly and her papa plant a mulberry tree and so begins a connection to nature that follows Milly into adulthood. As a child Milly watched their mulberry tree grow, giving a home to silkworms, and making magical potion mulberry ice-cream. Now an adult, Milly lives far away from her home but longs for the memories of her childhood. Will Milly return to her roots, and complete her life story? Vikki Conley invites us into a nostalgic and whimsical…
Rhiannon Wilde, Where You Left Us, UQP, August 2022, 328 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780702265600 After the success of her first book, Henry Hamlet’s Heart, Rhiannon Wilde is back with Where You Left Us. Landscape and setting play a vital role in developing both plot and character, and Wilde does a great job of using it also to reflect her themes. There is a clear attempt to incorporate gothic elements into this story of secrets borne from grief, mental illness manifesting into family dysfunction, and above all the fragile uncertain relationship between two sisters. Cinnamon and Scarlett Prince narrate…
Wenda Shurety (text) and Amy Calautti (illustrator), One Book Was All it Took, EK Books, July 2022, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781922539137 A rainy day is a perfect day for reading, though Violet can’t seem to find a book that she hasn’t read yet. I wish our town had a library! Violet writes a letter to the mayor expressing her hopes for a town library filled with books to read. While continuing to search for a book to read, Violet unintentionally creates a chain reaction of events which lead to her wish for a town library being granted. …
Claire Saxby (text) and Max Hamilton (illustrator), Tasmanian Devil, Walker Books, June 2022, 32 pp, RRP $26.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760652418 A whiskered snout appears in the mouth of a wombat burrow, but it is not a wombat. It is a Tasmanian devil in a borrowed den. So begins Tasmanian Devil, an inspired new offering from Claire Saxby and Max Hamilton and the latest addition to the Nature Storybooks series. The book highlights the interplay between animal and habitat as we follow two curious young devils, or imps, from pouch and den to exploration and independence. Deftly blending fact and fiction, young readers…
Stephanie Owen Reeder (text) and Astred Hicks (illustrator), Swifty, CSIRO Publishing, October 2022, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781486315918 We adore swift parrots for their gorgeous colours, endearing natures, love of nectar and their messy eating spreading pollen to make flowers grow. Swifty grows from a hatchling to a fledgling in the blue-gum forests of Tasmania, ready to follow the blossom trail across Bass Strait to mainland south-eastern Australia. They are one of the fastest parrots in the world. Stephanie Owen Reader carefully refers to the dangers that the swift parrots face. What happens to the other two birds…
Karen Ginnane, When Souls Tear (Time Catchers #2), Penguin Random House, July 2022, 336 pp, RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760895044 Magic and mystery abound in this gripping finale to the Time Catchers duology. Time Catchers: When Souls Tear picks up where book one left off. It’s 1858 and Ava is back in London, still intent on destroying the time snatchers, fulfilling a mission set by her dying mother in the first instalment. Although it doesn’t seem possible, the stakes are even higher in the second book, where Ava faces a terrifying new foe – a force so ambitious, so destructive…
J. A. Cooper, Something About Alaska, MidnightSun, September 2022, 224 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780987380975 J. A. Cooper’s debut novel is a richly detailed, tenderly recounted story of a fifteen-year-old boy coming to terms with his parents’ failings and failures. The great pleasure of the book is in its portraits of the three main characters: Zac, his father and Stanley. Young Zac Greene wants, perhaps too desperately, to impress his surly father, but must also find a way to assert himself against a man who might know how to survive Alaskan winters, how to deal out violence to others,…
Allison Rushby (text) and Bronte Rose Marando (illustrator), Miss Penny Dreadful and the Midnight Kittens, Walker Books Australia, August 2022, 144 pp., RRP $15.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760654030 Penny does not believe Miss Strickland’s School for Girls of an Enquiring Mind is right for her. Rather than enquiring about scientific theorems, Penny’s mind imagines such things as student eating bear invasions and she sketches her imaginings zealously in notebooks that she forgets to hide from her teachers. Miss Strickland herself told Penny she enquires about all the wrong things and that she best be careful because girls can’t get by on…