Gregg Dreise, Hello and Welcome, Penguin Random House Australia, March 2021, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760898328 Musician and songwriter, Kamilaroi and Euahlayi man, Dreise celebrates First Australian people as he welcomes all to corroboree. He gives insight and understanding into Welcome to Country acknowledgements, generously sharing his culture with the widest of readerships. As with his previous title, My Culture and Me, his entertaining approach is filled with colour, light and joyful inclusivity. The words of thanks and advice are partnered with engagingly naïve illustrations that show school children and elders against patterned backdrops that extend the visual story with traditional motifs. Sometimes the children become…
Author: Admin
Jamie Russell, Invasion (SkyWake #1), Walker Books Australia, March 2021, 304 pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781406397512 You were right. I’m not a leader and we’re not a crack military team. It was fun while we were playing in our bedrooms with our headsets on. But this is something else. Fifteen-year-old gamer Casey Hendersen and her eleven year old brother Pete are at a London Mall to meet up with her team, the Ghost Reapers, for the first ever SkyWake tournament. All the best SkyWake gamers are there to compete, and the event organisers have really gone all out. They’ve…
Felice Arena (text) and Tom Jellett (Illustrator), Poo! and other words that make me laugh, Harper Collins, 2021, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760898328 A riot of colour, a list of words. This book celebrates verbal sounds and demands to be read aloud. From endpaper to endpaper the dynamic, playful graphics and carefully chosen descriptive text create a sense of energy and fun that dramatically builds to joyous crescendo. Scuttlebutt succotash skittles and skew. Phew! These words make me laugh. I’m sure for you too! Bright blue, orange, yellow and red, pop and bound across the page in a brilliant combination of traditional ink with…
Amani Uduman (text) & Kera Bruton (illustrator), The Plastic Throne, MidnightSun Publishing, March 2021, 32pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781925227802 When Denver doesn’t want to eat his parboiled broccoli, he decides to flush it away. Realising he’s on to a good thing, he looks around for other annoyances and problems that need dealing with. Unfinished homework, old shoes, a lonesome sock and even his sister’s bicycle. Although he thinks that’s the end of it, his eyes are opened when his sister asks, ‘Don’t you realise everything ends up in the ocean?’ And that’s when things get serious. Uduman’s book is…
Amie Kaufman and Ryan Graudin, The World Between Blinks, HarperCollins Children’s Books, February 2021, 336pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781460757628 There is much to love about this fast-paced book and I am eagerly anticipating the second in this series to be published in 2022. After following a map left behind by their recently deceased Nana, Marisol and her cousin Jake find themselves caught in a world that exists alongside their own. This world “is everywhere and it is nowhere”. It can be seen everyday but very few pay it any attention. For Marisol and Jake, it is a place of…
Myo Yim, Rajah Street, Walker Books Australia, March 2021, 32 pp., RRP $25.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760651480 Another fabulous picture book from Walker Books: a charming story about Junya who longs every week for the garbage truck to pass his house on Wednesdays. As he waits at the window his imagination makes the activities in the street extra fun such as a big dog he is sure is a lion, and the skateboarders whom he hopes might bring some waves and real surfers. The highly skilled illustrations in a child-like style include a map of Junya’s street and interiors of his…
Alison Lester, The Quicksand Pony, Allen & Unwin, March 2021, 155 pp., RRP $16.99 (pbk) ISBN 9781790526306 ‘Biddy, I’m sorry, we’re going to have to leave her.’‘What?’ Biddy struggled out of the quicksand. ‘You can’t leave her! The tide’s coming in. She’ll drown!’ The Quicksand Pony is a moving novel for intermediate readers from beloved Australian author and inaugural Australian Children’s Laureate, Alison Lester. It tells the story of Biddy and her beloved white pony, Bella, who becomes trapped in quicksand during a cattle muster. Biddy is forced to leave Bella, and when she returns the next day, the horse…
Mark Carthew (text) & Shane McG (illustrator), The Thing That Goes Ping!, Ford Street Publishing, February 2021, 32 pp., RRP $16.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781925804669 In the faraway town of Figgy-tra-ling there is a mysterious noise, a mysterious ping! What could it be? Where could it be? We check in with a range of different animals in different places to find it and eventually there’s a cold, creamy, delicious surprise! Carthew and McG have collaborated to produce a simple but charming rhyming book for young readers. The rhymes are clear and straightforward, meaning they are perfect for young children’s first experiments…
Chris Kunz, Penguin Bloom (Young Readers’ Edition), ABC Books, January 2021, 160 pp., RRP $14.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780733341670 Now a major Australian movie and based on a true story, Chris Kunz’s young readers edition of Penguin Bloom cleverly captures the devastation of a tragedy and its impact on a family along with the possibility for growth and renewal. When Sam, the mother of a young family has a near fatal accident in Thailand that leaves her unable to walk, her perfect life appears to crumble before her: A nurse and lover of the outdoors Sam’s days of surfing, skating, and…
Kathryn Apel (text) and Renée Treml (illustrator), The Bird in the Herd, University of Queensland Press, March 2021, 40 pp., RRP $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780702262944 There’s a bird in the herd that stalks as it walks, eating slugs and the bugs that the herd stirred… This bright, playful look at life on an Aussie cattle farm uses rhyme as the herd goes about its business in the paddock with the bird, the farmer, and his kelpie. But it’s more than fun language and illustrations when the cows are scattered by a noisy disturbance, readers have the chance to spot the hiding herd.…