Jane Taylor (text), Mandy Foot (illus), Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Lothian Children’s Books/Hachette, 22 March 2016, 32pp., $24.99 (hbk) ISBN 9780734416872 “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…” You know the words. We all grew up with them and sing them to our own children. Did you know though, there are many more verses? So if your baby/toddler/child really doesn’t want to go to sleep, you can learn the rest so you don’t have to sing the same words over and over. Yay! A gorgeous new picture book combines the original poem written by Jane Taylor in…
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George Ivanoff (text), James Hart (illus.), The Treasure of Dead Man’s Cove/Mayhem at Magic School (You Choose 1 & 2 flip bindup), Random House Australia, 1 Dec 2015, $19.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9780857989536 Readers of the You Choose series become embroiled in the action as they are the main character of the story. At the end of each event you are given a choice and a page number to continue reading. You are the master of your own destination, weighing up the odds to survival and making key decisions about which course of action to take… some ending in disaster rather quickly…
Pauline Hosking (text), Kat Chadwick (illus.), Cinnamon Stevens Crime Buster, Lilly Pilly Publishing, 1 Dec 2015, 193pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9780994398260 While on a Year 7 camp on Philip Island, wannabe detective, Cinnamon Stevens, becomes caught up in the mystery of her missing classmate and tent buddy, Becki Shrieber. Cinnamon Stevens desperately wants to be like her father and brother, working at solving crimes. So when Becki, disappears from school camp one night, Cinnamon thinks this is her big chance. Even though she had shared the same tent on the night of Becki’s disappearance, Cinnamon does not let her lack of…
Shamini Flint (text), Sally Heinrich (illus.) Diary of a Tennis Prodigy, Allen & Unwin, Jan 2016, 112pp., $9.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781760290887 Nine year old Marcus’ dad is author of a bestselling self help book, ‘Pull Yourself Up By Your Own Bootstraps’ and his mission is find the right sport for Marcus. He’s not giving up until he does. The problem is, Marcus is hopeless at sport. Any sport. In fact, eight prior books worth of sport – tennis is sport (and book) number nine! The story of Marcus’ ‘fear’ of his loving dad and multiple failures at everything he tries…
Mary Elizabeth Summer, Trust Me, I’m Trouble, Random House Australia, 1 Dec 2015, 368pp., $19.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9780857989512 Trust Me, I’m Trouble is the second book in what is clearly a continuing series about a teenage grifter, Julep Dupree. I haven’t read the first one, and while there are gaps, I was still able to work out how the previous book leads to the drama unfolding in this one. The author does a good job of including crucial details without being unnecessarily repetitive. Julep’s first person narrative voice keeps the story moving at a swift pace. She is a hands-on, action-oriented…
Sarah Ayoub’s new book The Yearbook Committee will be released on February 29th. We asked Sarah what the book means to her, and her insightful and thoughtful response challenges us to consider the notion of diversity, and how we, as readers, view authors and their subject matter. The Yearbook Committee is a powerful novel, one teenagers are sure to embrace. Thank you Sarah for your words. In a matter of days, I will launch my second novel, The Yearbook Committee, out into the world. It’ll be interesting to see how it will be received. By most accounts, it is starkly…
William Patrick Martin, Wonderfully Wordless: The 500 most recommended graphic novels and picture books, Rowman & Littlefield, Oct 2015, 334pp., $83.40 (hbk), ISBN: 9781442254770 Wonderfully Wordless is a book listing 500 books with little or no text, purported to be the ‘most recommended’ for preschoolers to teens. I did not read every review but taking a sample of the titles I saw some of my favourites listed and I have to agree with the recommendations made. Selected by 135 experts from 7200 titles, of mostly US and English origin, this collection has been collated into themes e.g. Classic Tales (although I will…
Julia Donaldson (text) Rebecca Cobb (illus.), It’s a Little Baby, Macmillan, 23 Feb 2016, 12pp., $14.99 (hbk/boardbook), ISBN 9781447251811 It’s a Little Baby is a lift-the-flap boardbook for infants from the author of The Gruffalo. Typical of the genre, the highly repetitive simple text speaks directly to its readers. A refrain – Somebody’s hiding. I wonder who – opens each spread and invites readers to open the flap and discover who it is. In fact, each time it is a baby hiding behind such various concealments as a pile of laundry washing, a patch of grass, a sandcastle, an assortment of…
Joseph Delaney, Spook’s : The Dark Army (The Starblade Chronicles #2), Red Fox/Random House Australia, 4 Jan 2016, 290pp., $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781782954446 Joseph Delaney introduced young Tom Ward, the sight-gifted seventh son of a seventh son, in The Spook’s Apprentice in 2006. He was apprenticed to old John Gregory, the local spook, a fixer of supernatural problems, especially the suppression of troublesome boggarts and malign witches. The popular series, set in pre-Industrial rural England, ran to thirteen books and also included three ancillary volumes. Now, as a spook in his own right after the passing of his old master,…
R.A. Spratt, No Rules (Friday Barnes #4), Random House Australia, 4 Jan 2016, 245pp., $15.99, ISBN 9780857987013 Non-stop action is the name of the game with detective Friday Barnes. In No Rules, the fourth book in the Friday Barnes series, our clever heroine has to save Highcrest Academy from being sold to developers and turned into a golf course. At the same time, she needs to clear the name of her “seriously good-looking” classmate, and key suspect, Ian Wainscott. Within the first three chapters, Friday has been deported, befriended everyone in the Zurich airport, solved a mysterious necklace theft and been…