POULOS, Nina (text) Cheryl Westenberg (illus.) Night Monsters NLA Pub, 2013 unpaged $17.99 pbk ISBN 9780642278333 It is good to see rhythm and rhyme surviving in children’s books. This book is full of colour illustrations of Australian fauna. We are introduced to the kookaburra, magpie, parrot, kangaroo, echidna, platypus, wombat, dingo and many others as the question is posed: are there night monsters? And if there aren’t ghosts and dragons and bears out there, where do all those night noises come from? I will leave you to discover the answer to this very interesting question. At the end of the…
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ORMEROD, Jan (text) Andrew Joyner (illus.) The Swap Little Hare, 2013 unpaged $24.95 ISBN 9781921541414 SCIS 1626348 Caroline thinks that her baby brother is smelly, no fun, dribbly and takes up all the room on her mother’s lap. When Mama decides to swap her new hat ‘for one that is just right,’ Caroline decides to do the same with her baby brother. Caroline goes into the Baby Shop to exchange her brother for a different baby animal. After trying out the new babies Caroline discovers that they are ‘No good.’ Ultimately Caroline finds exactly what she is looking for. Over…
ODGERS, Sally (text) Lisa Stewart (illus.) Rainforest Lullaby Scholastic, 2013 unpaged $24.99 ISBN 9781742838205 Deep in the rainforest, whether it’s the cusp of dawn or dusk or perhaps noontide, creatures are sleeping. If they aren’t already cuddled up with their siblings or parents, they’re settling down from hunting or gliding or laughing to their own peaceful lullaby. This sweet book, soft with hues of pastel blue and green, is calm and soothing, its rhythm simple and its double-spread pages uncluttered. The illustrations – a mix of collage and drawing – are gorgeous representations of Australian animals. Recommended for very young…
NOONAN, Diana (text) Robyn Belton (illus.) The Teddy Bear’s Promise Craig Potton Pub, 2013 unpaged NZ$19.99 pbk ISBN 9781877517792 This is a timeless book that, both in form and content, speaks across generations. Firstly, the story. The day that Dad helped Gran shift house, he found an old dusty box that (we later find out) contained a teddy. But before he opens the box for his son Max, he wants to tell a story. Dad then begins to recount his story about a bear who met a little boy and who also made a lot of promises. For every positive…
MORRISON, Yvonne (text) Heath McKenzie (illus.) The Three Wallabies Gruff Little Hare, 2013 unpaged $14.95 pbk ISBN 9781742977157 SCIS 1630347 The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a classic European fairy tale about three goats who come across a troll who guards a bridge. Its rhyming verse is a classic which has spawned many imitators over the years. This is not an imitation but an Australianised homage to that classic story. Instead of three billy goats we have a family of wallabies who have decided to move house. They come across a bridge under which lives not a troll but a…
MORONI, Lisa (text) Eva Eriksson (illus.) Watch Out for the Crocodile Gecko Press, 2014 unpaged NZ$20.00 pbk ISBN 9871877579905 Tora is blessed with a wonderful imagination that she needs to compensate for a city-based Dad who is always sitting at his computer and talking on his phone. He is a boring Dad. When Dad announces that they are going camping in the forest, Tora is overjoyed, but boring Dad goes to the supermarket to buy the necessities of life. How boring! In the forest you go hunting. Even when they are in the forest, Dad is preoccupied with his GPS…
MEWBURN, Kyle (text) Ali Teo & John O’Reilly (illus.) Chick’s Sick! Scholastic, 2013 unpaged NZ$19.50 pbk ISBN 9781775431220 SCIS 1615913 The terse verse here speaks of Chick who is thick as a plank. What comes first, the chicken or the eggs? When Chick settles down in a nest, ‘she’ is horrified that there are no eggs. All the animals come to help in a variety of comical ways. There is one animal that tries to help. the snake! The calm of the night is shattered when, with forked tongue, snake slithers to the nest, Chick squawks, jumps on the snake…
MEWBURN, Kyle (text) Mat Russell (illus.) Tumble Ted Scholastic, 2013 unpaged NZ$19.50 pbk ISBN 9781775431497 SCIS 1643066 This is a wonderful picture book to use for a pre-school/New Entrants class whereby the book can be directly linked with physical education. There are some children who are kinaesthetic learners with an innate sense of the body-in-space and there are some who have little dexterity at all. Tumble Ted is one of the latter. Be it cartwheels, handstands, flips, or creating a bodily pyramid, Ted is a walking, falling, collapsing disaster. But he has a redeeming quality; and this book is about…
McLEARY, Errol This Old Ram Bateman, 2013 unpaged NZ$19.99 pbk ISBN9781869538484 A kiwi take on the well-known folksong/nursery rhyme ‘This old man, he played one, he played knick-knack on my thumb’, this Old Ram is equally versatile in making a living. As farmers know, rams are not easy animals to subdue, and this Old Ram ‘set out to have some fun’ and consequently creates chaos. He chases every ewe, chews on cabbage trees, skates on poo in the cowshed floor, chases an SUV, leaps to heaven . . . No question: here is the ideal moral text to read to…
McKISSOCK OAM, Dianne (text) Phoebe Bakker (illus.) The Magic of Memories The National Centre for Childhood Grief, 2013 unpaged $35.00 + CD ISBN 9780987470911 Moon is lonely and needs someone that she can talk to. Wind suggests that Sun might be someone she could meet. Wind acts as a facilitator between Moon and Sun to meet in the sky at a special time so they both know that they are not alone. This is a message story with themes of loneliness, worry and empathy. It uses memories of the Sun to help Moon get though her difficult days. The book…