Author: Admin

Marisa Reichardt,  Underwater, Pan Macmillan Australia,  9 Feb 2016, 256pp.,  $16.99 (pbk),  ISBN 9781509818006 When our newspapers report those massacres in US high schools, we try to grasp the effects they must have on those who have undergone the experience. This book is about those people. Seventeen-year-old Morgan played an important part in just such an event. She attended Pacific Palms High School when a student with a gun attacked and killed those around her and himself, a student whom she had had a part in bringing to school. Morgan is traumatised after the event, and is unable to leave the…

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Helen Chebatte,  Bro, Hardie Grant Egmont,  1 Feb 2016, 240pp.,  $19.99 (pbk),  ISBN 9781760125509 Romes (Romeo Makhlouf) and Diz (Aziz Mansoor) are best friends and schoolmates at a Sydney Catholic high school, Christian Boys High, which has a multicultural population. There are Lebs (Lebanese), Fobs (Fresh off the Boat, but that includes Samoans, Maoris and Fijians), Rez (Asians, rez being the Arabic word for ‘rice’) and Ozzies. The latter can be called Bogans, Skips or Convicts – take your pick. Romes and Diz are Lebs, despite the fact that Romes’s mother was Australian and that he was born in Australia. The…

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Robyn Bavati,  Within These Walls  (My Holocaust Story #2), Scholastic Australia; 1 April 2016, 208pp.,  $16.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781760152857 Within These Walls is the second in a series, My Holocaust Story, the first being Hanna by Goldie Alexander. Bavarti has extensively researched written and oral material in her attempt to authentically portray the life of a Polish girl, Miri, before and during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Miri’s experiences are mirrors of the reality Bavarti discovered. It is a terrible reality, as we know. The story opens with a picture of the happy, fun-filled life of Miri’s family. She and…

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Sally Morgan (text), Ambelin Kwaymullina (illus),  Joey Counts to Ten,  Little Hare/Hardie Grant,  Feb 2016,  24pp.,  $24.95 (hbk),  ISBN: 9781760121266 In lyrical, rhythmic prose, a young joey learns how to count to ten by noticing the wonderful wildlife surrounding him in the Australian bush. The bright, colourful illustrations on each page were created by Aboriginal artist Ambelin Kwaymullina and will mesmerise children. Beyond numbers, young readers will be introduced to iconic Australian animals, the phases of the day, changing weather and various outback sounds. The natural beauty of a day shines through the sparse text on each page. In addition, we…

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James Lee, author of the Ghostworks series, gives us some insight in to what he is offering readers. In today’s world of TV, mobile phone apps and computer games, how do we get kids to read?  As an author, I believe that people will always read what they want to read.  Getting them started is the real challenge. As readers, kids are more open to new ideas than adults.  They are also sterner critics!  Which is why I often argue that I don’t write for kids as such — I write for “short adults”. Treating young readers with respect is essential.  It’s…

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Debut author, Cheree Peters muses on the origins of her first book, Time Catcher, and reflects on her writing process. Thanks Cheree for giving us your time and your insights. Like any sane person, I always find myself coming up with scenes in my mind, replaying them over and over. Amongst the countless scenes is one where the idea for my book first started. I began writing ‘Time Catcher’ in 2014, thinking it was the only logical thing to do after completing my creative and professional writing degree. I picked one of the ‘scenes’ from my mind that had stuck…

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We are lucky enough to have received a terrific piece from author, Jessica Walton about her just-released picture book, Introducing Teddy. Welcome to Reading Time. Jess. This week, my picture book Introducing Teddy, illustrated by the wonderfully talented Dougal MacPherson (15minutedrawings on Instagram and Twitter) will be released in the US, UK and Australia. It will eventually also be released in Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Japan. This seems completely unbelievable to me, considering that twelve months ago I wrote the book for an audience of just two: my dad Tina and my one-year-old son. Dad…

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Emma Dodd,  Together…  Nosy Crow/Allen & Unwin,  May 2016, 24pp., $15.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780857635792 This is the latest title in Emma Dodd’s Animal series following on from Happy, Love, Wish and Forever, to name just a few. Each one features a baby animal and parent.  Creatures in previous books have included polar bears, koalas, rabbits and wolves. This one has a sea otter and her baby. In simple rhyming text, the adult recounts what they have done during the day, such as watching the rising sun and playing together, and concludes by stating that the days she will remember are the…

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Holly Smale, Head over Heels (Geek Girl #5), HarperCollins Australia, 16 March 2016, 446pp., $14.99 (pbk.), ISBN 9780007574650 Holly Smale’s Geek Girl series has clearly hit a nerve in the popularity stakes—at the Hay Literary Festival in May 2016, for instance, readers queued for up to three hours to have their books signed by the author. The first book in Smale’s series, All Wrapped Up, was an instant hit in the UK becoming Britain’s top-selling young adult fiction title in 2013. It went on to win the ‘Best Book for Teens’ category in the 2014 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. The series is…

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Beck and Matt Stanton,  Did You Take the B from My _ook? (Books That Drive Kids CRAZY! #2), ABC Books/HarperCollins, 4 Jan 2016, 32pp., $19.99 (hbk.), ISBN 9780733334832 It seems only fair that this review should be written in the spirit of Beck and Matt Stanton’s Did You Take the B from My _ook?—that is, it should largely dispense with the use of the letter ‘b’. So, here goes… The narrator of the Stantons’ _ook thinks that the _est letter in the alpha_et falls neatly _etween the letters ‘a’ and ‘c’. Unfortunately for the narrator, this letter goes missing when a sensationally…

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