Winner: Nature Book Week Prize Pack

Our lucky winner is ...

Michael De Giorgio, VIC

Congratulations!

You have won this awesome nature inspired book bundle.

Thank you to ALL who entered. 

Giveaway: Nature Book Week Prize Pack!

In celebration of Nature Book Week, hosted by the Wilderness Society, we’re excited to offer a fantastic kids nature book prize pack!

• The World's Most Atrocious Animals - Philip Bunting
• Australian Animals: From Beach to Bush - Brentos
• Hope is the Thing - Johanna Bell & Erica Wagner 
• The Turtle and the Flood - Jackie French and Danny Snell 
• Tamarra: A Story of Termites on Gurindji Country - Violet Wadrill, Leah Leaman, Topsy Dodd Ngarnjal

For your chance to win a copy of this outstanding nature inspired prize pack bundle of books, simply tell us in 25 words or less what is your favourite nature book and how has it inspired or influenced you?

Review: Design & Building on Country

Design & Building on Country is a fantastic book written by Alison Page, who is descended from the Walbanga and Wadi Wadi people of the Dharawal and Yuin Nations, and Paul Memmott, an anthropologist and architect who has worked with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for many years.

It's part of a First Knowledge series for younger readers, and based on award-winning adult books. 

Illustrations are by Blak Douglas, a Dhungutti man who is an illustrator and designer, and who has won the Archibald Prize. His work here showcases design fantastically, with lots of colour and a unique look and feel.

Review: Wurrtoo

Inspired by stories handed down by the author’s family and ancestors, through word of mouth and classic children’s literature, Wurrtoo, The Wombat Who Fell in Love with the Sky, is an epic adventure.

Fire, destruction, drought, and their effects on Country, are addressed through the personified animals’ point of view.

Nature and the land create stunning backdrops to the travel adventures.

 Lots of wonderful alliteration adds rhythm to the text.

Wurrtoo the hairy-nosed wombat, alone underground for years, is always expanding his burrow on Kangaroo Island. Although nocturnal, he uses daylight to go and picnic at the top of the lighthouse to be close to the Sky, with whom he has fallen in love.

Review: Ask Aunty Seasons

Aunty Munya Andrews is an Aboriginal Elder from Bardi Country in the Kimberley region, with a great deal of knowledge to share. The co-director of Evolve Communities, she runs classes on cultural awareness, which have a flow-on to this striking book.

Aunty Munya introduces First Nations Seasons, which will undoubtably be followed by more glorious books of this kind. Stunning illustrations by the extraordinary talent of award-winning artist and illustrator Charmaine Leddon-Lewis, complement the excellent text, and command the attention of the reader.

Review: For 60 000 Years

I am the first to say we are privileged to live in Australia, and I am grateful to have been born here.

There is so much for which to be grateful, but there are also times I am ashamed of our national behaviour and attitudes (there will be more on this in a review coming up in the next few weeks). 

Especially, given I am the mother and grandmother of Wiradjuri offspring, the national attitude towards our First Nations peoples is not only a disgrace, but shows no signs of improvement.

Review: The Trees: Learning Tree Knowledge With Uncle Kuu

At a time when our young people are engaging more and more with Indigenous knowledge and understanding, comes this stirring book about the significance and importance of our ‘Tree Elders’. 

Although set in Australia and referencing our First Nations peoples’ care for Country, the implications are global and reflect our maltreatment of precious forests.

Tree abuse and destruction threaten not just the survival of the creatures that call the tree ecosystems their homes, but by association, our very existence. 

The Aboriginals knew this and still practise their ancient lore via Songlines to ensure their mutual survival. It is this sacred tree knowledge that indigenous writer, filmmaker and musician Victor Steffensen endeavours to relay in The Trees.

12 Curly Questions with author Isobel Bevis

1. Tell us something hardly anyone knows about you.
I was kicked out of the school choir in primary school as my music teacher informed me I didn’t have the voice (which is why I write and don’t sing).

2. What is your nickname?
My family call me Bel, and my friends, teammates and work colleagues call me Izzy.

Review: A Footy Tail

A wonderful and timely rhyming story about working together and embracing difference, to move forward.

The fluffle of bunnies who play together as a footy team are dispirited, because all their adversaries are bigger, faster and stronger than they are. 

So, wily old Crow suggests a solution – he will go and find some other creatures to boost their side, and help the bunny team to play even better.

Meet The Illustrator: Helen Milroy

Name: Helen Milroy

Describe your illustration style in ten words or less.
Whatever works at the time, lots of colour and movement

What items are an essential part of your creative space?
Mess. I do like a lot of things to look at like cards, books, paintings, photos. I also like a lot of stuff like toys, pencils, paints, material, craft, canvases. I also like drawing in the garden. When travelling all I need is my iPad. I also love it when my cat sits with me.

Do you have a favourite artistic medium?
I love acrylic paint on canvas but now I use the digital medium. It is great to be able to take your artwork with you wherever you go.

Name three artists whose work inspires you.
Shaun Tan
Shirley Purdie
Leonardo Da Vinci

Review: Borderland

This is a really fresh perspective on First Nations YA, and was a hugely enjoyable and gripping read.

Jono and Jenny have known each other all their lives and have just graduated as the inaugural First Nations scholarship students. 

Both enrol at Brisbane’s APAC (Aboriginal Performing Arts Centre) and almost as soon as they have started their respective courses are given an opportunity to be interns with a professional film crew.

The unit is undertaking a documentary to promote a huge government mining country with the intent of making it acceptable to the traditional owners of the area. 

Both young people are elated at the prospect and not just because of the film aspect. 

Review: Listen

With a very timely arrival given the upcoming opportunity to make a momentous national decision, this is the new brilliant and beautiful offering from the team who gave us the sensational We Are Australians [CBCA Award for New Illustrator 2023]. 

Duncan Smith, proud Wiradjuri man, and Nicole Godwin collaborate again with celebrated artist and inspirational speaker, Jandamarra Cadd, Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Warung man, to bring this reflection on the importance of hearing the voices of our First Australians.

Junior Review: Wylah the Koorie Warrior: Custodians (book #2)

Wylah is a strong and kind girl, but she’s been through a lot. Her grandmother passed away and her family got kidnapped. 

In book 1, Wylah had to reunite the five guardians of the tribes so she could become the Koori Warrior. 

But her tribe and her family are still missing, captured by evil dragons.

In book 2, Wylah and her crew (her cousins Po and Merri, Merri’s new friend Jayden and the guardians) must travel through the most dangerous place — the Valley of Spirits — to get to the gold mines.

They’re hoping to trade gold for their people, but things don’t go to plan. Drop bears attack, a giant emu tries to trample them, and angry Yowies like to make trouble.

Review: Stand Up And Speak Out Against Racism

‘Yassmin Abdel-Magied answers real children’s questions about racism, giving them the confidence and the tools to work towards a fairer society for all.’

This important, colourful, magazine-style book contains loads of interesting info in a user-friendly format. Its language is clear and accessible. 

Complex ideas are presented simply where possible, aided by the use of boxes, images, different fonts and colours, speech bubbles and more. 

If you’re into brainstorming with fluorescent markers and colour-coding, then you’re in for a real treat! 

Review: Hairy Holes

It’s an outback adventure like no other when a ‘skinny’ stumbles across the secret lair of a Hairy Holer brother duo.

Beg and Red are a couple of Hairy Holers living life in the Australian bush. Cruising the desert. Drinking grub tea. The usual things.

But when outback explorer Joplin (a skinny) stumbles right into them, everything changes. Beg’s the friendly brother. He wants to show Joplin around. Teach him the hairy ropes. Red… well, Red wants to eat him, but that’s Red for you!

Beg and Joplin get to know each other and Beg lets Joplin in on some of the outback’s (and the Hairy Holers’ most secret of secrets).

Review: luwa tara luwa waypa

Down the vast eons of time, comes the story luwa tara luwa waypa, about the transformation of a boy to a man and the search for courage and inner strength. 

The book’s title roughly means 'Three kangaroos, three Tasmanian Aboriginal men’. 

Dave mangenner Gough, a proud trawlwoolway man, shares his family’s connection with tara (male forrester kangaroo), linking readers to ancient Tasmanian culture. 

Review: My Little Barlaagany Sunshine

A beautiful picture book featuring the stunning words and art of Melissa Greenwood, Indigenous artist and founder/ director of Miimi and Jiinda.

It explores life, family and adventure through day and night as Greenwood takes you on a cultural journey across the land to her bari (special place) where the ancestors live. 

Review: Go Home Cheeky Animals

In this second book by the award-winning team Johanna Bell and Dion Beasley , Go Home Cheeky Animals celebrates the diversity and indigenous culture of the Northern Territory.

The story centers on a family living in Canteen Creek in the Territory where there are cheeky dogs everywhere. 

Mum doesn’t like them and always shoos them away, but when her back is turned Grandpa continues to feed them until it gets out of hand.

Mayhem descends as feeding the dogs soon leads to a whole lot more cheeky animals arriving. 

Gangs of goats, droves of donkeys, herds of horses, bunches of buffalo, caravans of camels all arrive to eat, drink and cause chaos.

Review: Tales From The Bush Mob: The Cockatoo Wars

This brilliant, humorous story, the fourth in the Tales of the Bush Mob series, opens onto another daring adventure with a group of birds and their animal friends who live in Outback Australia. 

White Boss Cocky and Black Boss Cocky have been at odds with one another for a very long time. Their clans continue to fight about who is responsible for the protection of the ancient forests. There is no end in sight to the raucous they continue to cause.

A monumental fight occurs that causes two baby cockies to fall out of their nests. 

Due to the lack of feathers on the baby birds, their mothers are unable to tell them apart. They decide to move to the edge of the forest and raise them together as brothers. 

Review: The Heartbeat Of The Land

This stunning picture book takes us into the beauty and grandeur of Australia’s landscape as seen through the eyes of a young Cathy Freeman, whose destiny is to run.

Cathy ran barefoot every day across the great ancient land, as her people had done for sixty thousand years before.

As Cathy runs, she feels the heartbeat of the land through the very fibres of her being. 

So when this heartbeat stops and she asks the land what is wrong, young Cathy listens carefully and understands that she has a job to do. 

She must gather seeds from grasses and plants, and spread those seeds across the land.