Katrina Roe (text), Jemima Trappel (illus.), Same, Wombat Books, 1 July 2015, unpaged, $19.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781925139266 This book tackles a child’s responses to a family member with a significant physical disability. Ivy is confused when confronted by her Uncle Charlie who uses a wheelchair and has a significant speech impairment. At first Ivy hides, then curiosity gets the better of her and she draws for her uncle and approaches him with the gift of her artwork. When Charlie, together with Ivy’s Mum, produce a drawing in response, Ivy realises they are “the same” and barriers are neatly swept away. With…
Author: Admin
Melbourne-based radio and television personality, and author of The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas, The Cow Tripped Over the Moon and Jack (Stuff Happens), Tony Wilson was MC at the CBCA Book of the Year Awards on Friday 21 August at Melbourne Town Hall. This is his welcome speech – and hilarious Awards inspired picture book manuscript…. What a day we have in store. Across the country we have nervous short-listees, huddled over the CBCA website, pressing refresh over and over with terrified hope. There are some in that category here at the Melbourne Town Hall, eyes glazed over, willing…
Nancen Beryl Masterman was born in 1900, in Middlesex in the south of England and grew up as an Edwardian child acquiring the language, idiom and accent of her parents’ social class. She had a twin Jan and four other siblings. Her mother, Lilla, (from a successful London Osmond family) and father, Charles, told them stories and read from the rich tradition that English literature provided. Her father had attended the great English public school, Charterhouse, to which he had sent his eldest son, Kay, and her mother had been to a school run by one of the early suffragists,…
The total number of entries for the 2015 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year was 434. This includes 386 fiction entries and 48 non-fiction. Australian history was once again a dominant theme across many categories, with war and more specifically the 1915 Anzac Gallipoli campaign represented. However, the judges noted that it was refreshing to see war and its effects presented through the eyes of others, not just a nationalistic view. This shift in perspective helps broaden the debate, open that time period to a new audience, and provide alternative views. Two categories were particularly strong this…
Emma MacTaggart (text), Ester De Boer (illus.), Imagine, Boogie Books, 20 January 2015, 28 pp., $24.95 (hbk), ISBN 9781922224040 This is a charming picture book that prompts its readers to imagine the animals at the zoo, but to go even further and re-imagine those animals in the craziest of ways. So the giraffe becomes a chair, the chimp becomes a backpack, the meerkat is a cereal bowl and the cheetah is a bike. Madness ensues and the colourful illustrations paint a wonderfully detailed picture of each imagined state. The text addresses the reader directly and uses rhyme to…
Kathryn Lomer, Talk Under Water, Penguin, 29 July 2015, 322 pp., $19.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780702253690 Will and Summer meet in the most modern of ways: social media and a shared interest in solo sailor Jessica Watson’s blog brings the fellow Tasmanians together online. The opening of this novel tracks their first encounters through email and the relationship develops from there: Lomer moves from the email form to prose to letters, constantly changing character perspective. We also learn that Summer is hearing impaired and that adds another layer to this teen romance. I really enjoy multiple perspectives and style…
Sophie Masson, Hunter’s Moon, Random House, 1 June 2015, $19.99 (pbk), 336pp., ISBN 978 0 85798 603 0 A reworking of the Snow White tale, Hunter’s Moon protagonist Bianca Dalmatin lives a glamorous life as heir to a department store empire, only marred by a loneliness that seems sated when she meets Lucian Montresor at the beginning of the novel. Her beautiful step mother, Lady Belladonna, seems to Bianca to be a close confidante and mentor but we readers are immediately suspicious of her intentions, especially when Bianca is named ‘Fairest Lady’ by the national media. This novel is engaging…
Frances Watts, The Peony Lantern, ABC Books/HarperCollins, 20 July 2015, 304pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 978 0 7333 3292 0 During the early years of the nineteenth century, following the Meiji Restoration, Japan was at the crossroads. After many years of isolation, the Emperor believed that his country should open its doors to foreign trade. There were opposing forces who wished Japan to remain closed in order to preserve its unique culture. Watts has shaped her story of a fifteen-year-old girl, Kasumi, against these conflicting forces. Kasumi is the second daughter of the keeper of a small inn in a regional village.…
Emily Rodda, Shadows of the Master (Star of Deltora #1), Omnibus/Scholastic, 1 August 2015, 176pp., $9.99 (pbk), ISBN 978 1 74299 062 0 Rodda has pleased readers for many years with her Deltora Quest novels. Now she has refashioned the world of Del in this new series. The novel opens with an account of Dare Larsett on the island of Tier. We then move to Del, where Britta is working in a small shop owned by her family, consisting of her mother and sister. But Britta longs for the larger canvas, to travel the seas as a trader. Gradually, Britta’s earlier experiences…
Paul Griffin, Adrift, Text Publishing, 29 July 2015, 240pp., $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 978192524 016 0 Matt and John have been friends forever, and particularly close since a tragedy struck their families. When the boys are selling ice-creams at the beach at Long Island, they meet Jo-Jo and Steph from Rio, and Driana, three rich kids. The two kids from the wrong side of the tracks go to Steph’s party and what happens after that is what this book is about. The five teenagers find themselves adrift on the ocean, one severely injured, one – perhaps two – emotionally unstable, and…