Stephanie Kate Strohm, It’s Not Me, It’s You, Scholastic Australia, 1 Dec 2016, 288pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781743812211 Avery Dennis is approaching the end of her high school career. She is a smart and popular girl, President of the Prom Committee, involved in every activity under the sun, and she has never been without a boyfriend. Ever. Until now. Luke Murphy has just dumped her. Just before the prom. Obviously, this is serious! Well, not really. But it is a light-hearted, perhaps even silly, start to a funny book that will appeal to many teens. In an unlikely twist on the…
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Leo Gamble (text), Milan Ristic (illus.), Annette Kellerman: million dollar mermaid, Green Barrow Publishing, 1 Oct 2016, 70pp., $15.00 (pbk), ISBN: 9781925383874 This is an entertaining biography for younger children, recounting the amazing life of Annette Kellerman. Kellerman was a swimmer and entertainer born in Sydney 1886, but living her life on the international stage. There was a Hollywood movie made about her life in 1952, The Million Dollar Mermaid, starring another famous swimmer, Esther Willams. Stricken with polio as a child, Annette began swimming as part of her cure. The story of how she turned her swimming prowess into a…
Alison Lester, Hello Little Babies, ABC Books/HarperCollins, 1 Dec 2016, 32pp., $24.99 (hbk), ISBN: 978 0733330414 Hello Little Babies is a delightful book that follows six little ones through their early exploration, sleeping, eating, playing and moving, as each does in their different ways. It’s a simple book, highlighting the familiar things any young baby/toddler will understand and probably do. I particularly enjoyed the author’s use of a diverse set of babies. Now that I have two young 18-month nephews, I tend to view the success of such books through their eyes. While reading this to one of them, I turned to the…
Bernie Blackall, Learn to Play Soccer, Sportzbooks, Oct 2016, 32pp., $29.99 (hbk), ISBN: 97819255523 This is one in a series of sports books written by physical education teacher Bernie Blackall. It will benefit any child, boy or girl, who wants to learn more about the game and the skills needed. As with all good information books, it contains a contents page as well as an index page to make it easy to find the information required. One minor niggle is that the headings in the contents are not always the same as the headings in the body of the book. In…
John Flanagan, The Battle of Hackham Heath (Ranger’s Apprentice : the early years #2), Random House, 31 Oct 2016, 384pp., $18.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781742759326 This book is the second in the series, Ranger’s Apprentice: the early years, a prequel series to John Flanagan’s hugely popular Ranger’s Apprentice books. The book, a fantasy, is set in the imaginary countries of Araleun, Picta and Celtica. A map of these lands on the opening page is a great visual device to help cement locations in the reader’s mind. The protagonists, Halt and Crowley, are part of the Ranger Corp and, after playing major a…
Alison Lester, Hello Little Babies, ABC Books/HarperCollins, 1 Dec 2016, 32pp., $24.99 (hbk), ISBN: 978 0733330414 Hello Little Babies is the latest picture book by the phenomenal Alison Lester – former Australian Children’s Laureate (2012–2013) and winner of countless awards, including the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s (CBCA) Picture Book of the Year Award in 2005 and the 2012 CBCA Eve Pownall Book of the Year Award. A gentle story for the very young, Hello Little Babies welcomes six newborns, Alice, Ruby, Mika, Zane, Vikram and Tom to the world, and shares their progress over their first year of life. As…
Richard Platt (text), James Brown (illus.) A World of Information, Walker Books Australia, 1 Nov 2016, 64pp., $29.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781406370843 Ever since the publication of Stephen Biesty’s Incredible Cross-sections, Richard Platt has been a legend in the field of children’s information books. With more than 70 titles to his name, he has written on many subjects. This latest title is a compendium of facts, a miscellany of interesting titbits from a wide variety of subject areas. Each double-page spread features one topic area. These can range from different types of knots to music notation to Mohs scale of mineral hardness. There…
Kate Prendergast, Dog on a Digger: a tricky incident, Walker Books Australia, 1 Jan 2017, 24pp., $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781910646144 This is a wordless picture book telling the story of a loyal and resourceful dog. Dog wakes first in the morning and rouses his master with a lick. Both he and his master don yellow safety jackets and go to work with the digger, moving building debris. They buy lunch from the snack bar on site, followed by greedy seagulls. The snack bar owner has a small, fluffy dog which, after lunch has disappeared. After looking everywhere, Dog finds the…
Jackie French, If Blood Should Stain the Wattle, Angus and Robertson/HarperCollins, 1 Dec 2016, 537pp., $29.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781460753118 Jackie French’s new historical coming-of-age novel, for readers in the upper range of the Young Adult age span, covers the tumultuous political events in Australia from 1972-1975; from the election of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government until the dismissal of the government by then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr – a time that changed the political landscape in Australia forever. French sets the scene well, using the events in Canberra as a background to the lives of her main characters who live in Gibber’s…
Lian Tanner, Ice Breaker (The Hidden #1), Allen & Unwin, Dec 2016, 336pp., $12.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781760293178 A mysterious metal boy. A boat that has charted the seas for centuries. A secret that is about to awaken. Ice Breaker is the first book in Lian Tanner’s series, The Hidden, first published in 2013. Set in a seemingly post-apocalyptic future some three hundred (or so) years from our time, the story follows the exploits of a young girl named Petrel, an orphan who had grown up on the vast icebreaker called the Oyster, without a family, without a tribe, and with only…