Kathryn Barker, Waking Romeo, Allen & Unwin, March 2021, 386 pp., RRP $19.99 (pbk), IBSN 9781760297152 Waking Romeo is a suspenseful novel with many twists and turns and even a few important messages for the younger generation regarding action versus inaction. The protagonists are well developed and likable and the plot, although a little confusing at times, is imaginative and intriguing. Kathryn Barker has taken the classics Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights and turned them both inside out and upside down, revisiting their tragedies from a unique angle. Waking Romeo is set in a dystopian future London. As to…
Author: Admin
Dan Marshall, No Way! The Wildest Mind-Blowing Facts in the Universe, Pantera Press, September 2021, 364 pp., RRP $29.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780648677024 I love a good information book and No Way! The Wildest Mind-Blowing Facts in the Universe is an excellent information book. Notabled in the 2022 CBCA Book of the Year Awards Eve Pownall category, No Way! is packed full of interesting and exciting facts about just about everything. With chapters titled Space, Humans, Earth, Science, Animals and Maths it presents information on a dizzying array of subjects. Ideal for dipping in and out of, the text is set…
Samantha Ellen Bound, Seven Wherewithal Way, Affirm Press, September 2021, 400 pp., RRP $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781922419224 Trouble is just adventure disguised. Eleven-year-old Celeste is having her worst summer ever! She’s been sent to stay with her Gran and keep an eye on her pesky and immature little sister Esme. Celeste resents her parents going off having adventures, leaving her behind, being boring. She’s thrilled when her eccentric cousin Ferd appears from the sky in their flying bus and invites them to come to their magic home at Seven Wherewithal Way. How can she resist? This is the first book…
Ursula Dubosarsky (text) and Tohby Riddle (illustrator), The March of the Ants, Book Trail Press, March 2021, 24 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780648498919 An army of ants sets out on a journey. Each one tells the others what they are going to bring. Most of them nominate ‘useful’ things like maps and tools. The littlest ant, on the other hand, says she is bringing her book. On the long, long journey when some of the ants are in despair wondering if they are ever going to get to their destination, it is the littlest ant who reinvigorates and re-motivates…
Philip Bunting, Superpower, Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing, September 2021, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760507930 In Superpower, Phillip Bunting has again taken a complex and potentially dry non-fiction topic and made it kid friendly. This time the topic is renewable energy: what it is, how we get it, and why we need it. This book covers a lot of information, including a history of human energy use, electricity, climate change, ways to reduce energy use, and detail on a variety of renewable energy sources including wind, solar, nuclear and biofuels. Superpower manages to simplify a very complex topic to…
Jane Godwin (text) and Anna Walker (illustrator), Don’t Forget, Penguin Random House Australia, March 2021, 32 pp., RRP $19.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781761040955 Renowned author and illustrator duo Jane Godwin and Anna Walker have brought readers their latest offering— and it’s as beautiful as the rest of their respective (award-winning) back catalogues. Don’t Forget is a moving, hopeful evocation of the things we should hold tight in life. The book opens with generic instructions often given to children (make your bed, brush your teeth, do your homework), but soon ushers readers to more profound reminders: Watch the ocean and listen to…
Samone Amba, The Good Times of Pelican Rise: Save the Joeys, Affirm Press, July 2021, 300 pp., RRP $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760653378 Young activists will adore this new middle-grade series which focuses on kids making a positive difference in their community. Set in rural Australia in the fictional township of Pelican Rise, the story takes place in the immediate aftermath of the bushfires during the 2019-2020 summer. Main character, Sunday Moon, and her three friends are in Grade 6 and tired of being stuck in after-school care. But when their teacher assigns a legacy project and the after-school care leader…
Mirranda Burton, Underground: Marsupial Outlaws and Other Rebels of Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, August 2021, 272 pp., RRP $29.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760631475 Is this absorbing and lively book a work of fiction, a history, a series of min-biographies, an oral history, or a re-enactment of real events re-imagined? Underground is already a 2022 Notable Book, and in the running for the CBCA Book of the Year Eve Pownall Award for an information book. But exactly what kind of book this is, doesn’t matter so much as the fact that it can be enjoyed on a number of…
Allison Saft, A Far Wilder Magic, Hachette Children’s Books, March 2022, 320 pp., RRP $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781250623652 A Far Wilder Magic is the fantastical tale of outcast teens Maggie and Wes, navigating worldly hardships in their search for belonging. Following the death of her brother and the mysterious disappearance of her mother, Maggie Welty is alone, broke, and lacking any sense of purpose. Her only hope is to enter the mythical Halfmoon Hunt and win the fame and riches promised to the victor. She can’t enter alone however; she needs a trusty alchemist by her side. An opportunity presents…
Katya Balen, The Light in Everything, Bloomsbury, July 2022, 272 pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781526647405 The cover and title can say a lot about a book. In his mindfully conceived cover illustration, Sydney Smith places the paper crane in the forefront of the image: it is a symbol of hope that lights up the narrative and finds its way into even the darkest cracks and corners of this beautifully written story about two eleven-year-old kids trying to navigate life’s ‘slings and arrows’. If only they could make one thousand cranes, then everything would end up alright. That’s what Tom…