Book Reviews
Zanni and I met at Children’s Book Council of Australia conference, where we walked around the garden of Jackie French together, and let me tell you, that is a wonderful place to…
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Belinda Murrell is one of my favourites in the kidlit world. Am I even allowed to have favourites?! She is a completely wonderful person and a damn great writer to boot. One…
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Emily Conolan has used the ever-popular ‘choose your own adventure’ format to put young readers at the centre of stories of immigration; utter.darned.genius. Why was this not done sooner? I spend so…
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Narrative non-fiction titles are one of the best ways I know to introduce young children to the joys of information books – they are a fabulous ‘smash up’ of story with true…
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Each year I look forward to the borrowing stats and borrower stats at the conclusion of the school year. Possibly this is a librarian thing, but I find it fascinating and of…
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Adam France has a bulldog, he’s a primary school teacher, he’s in a successful band and now he has his first book for middle – upper primary readers…he’s clearly kicking life goals.…
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A book for one? A book for two? A book for different points of view. Recently I had the privilege of meeting a newcomer to the kidlit world, author/illustrator/designer Robert Henderson. Robert…
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Raina Telgemeier has taken the kidlit world by storm and in my library her books actually never make it back to the shelves – EVER. They go from returns chute to next…
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The term ‘lyrical’ is not often used to describe books on the ever-popular topic of ‘rocks, gems and minerals’ and yet this is what I would say about ‘The Book of Stone’…
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Cooee mittigar. Tread softly on our lands. Know that this dreaming was here. Is still here. Will be forever. Jasmine Seymour is fast becoming known in the world of children’s literature and…
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Gosh I love this age group for reading. I was talking to some teacher librarian friends the other day and we were discussing our fav reading age for children’s literature. Mine is…
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There has been some amazing YA books published this year and some of them are on this list – almost all are new titles so you can rest assured that they probably…
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Lists! What is not to love? Lists make me feel calm and organised, especially at this time of year when chaos is more my daily reality! I’ve spent several weeks creating book…
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Can you believe that it is time to turn our minds to Christmas gifts? As you can imagine, I am a very loud advocate for buying book gifts for young and old…
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It would be easy to assume that with several teacher librarians and a few academics in the family, my journey with reading within my extended family has been *seamless* and full of…
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For starters – can we just all pause and take a moment to take in the glory that is the cover of ‘The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling’? It contains all…
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You will find my video review of Lisa Nicol’s latest book on my Youtube channel, but in a nutshell, ‘Vincent and the Grandest Hotel on Earth’ is for readers 8-88 who want…
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The latest book collaboration between Tony Flowers and Nick Falk is ‘Vognox the Viking’ and readers from 7+ are so going to enjoy this funny, clever and rollicking tale of a Viking…
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A tale so tall you will pinch yourself. Get set for one shell of a story, as this crabby crustacean grabs life by the claws! I’ve always wanted to be minimalist. One…
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Two years is such a very short time in #grieftown. When my brother died unexpectedly in 2012 I spoke about feeling like I was in a place, far from everyone else and…
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