Review: Once I Was A Giant

I was fortunate enough to see the drafts and incomplete storyboard of Once I Was A Giant when meeting Zeno Sworder in person for the first time some eighteen or so months ago. Both experiences were profoundly moving and memorable.

Which pretty much sums up this extraordinary picture book. With no preamble, the Giant’s story begins, at the ending, with a premise that could easily reflect a reoccurring dilemma for many creators; a stymie of creative flow. 

When the picture book maker, with a strong resemblance to the author himself, experiences this impasse, his trusty pencil inexplicably springs to life.

The wee stub shows him her life’s journey from germinating seed to grand dame of her forest kingdom. We are taken through life cycle after life cycle. From a sapling’s view point to that of a towering giant’s, residence to a whole eco-system of invertebrates, animals and birds. It is a wondrous and all-encompassing experience to stand before this giant and gaze skyward at her unfathomable brilliance, so strong, so assured, so steadfast.

Review: Powerful Like A Dragon

A dragon is proud, strong, kind. Be powerful like a dragon.

Words that bolster and build incentive to never give up. Never give in. Especially to the ravages and horrors of war. 

One would think that stories centred around this theme would be a thing of the past and yet, the plight of refugees displaced by senseless conflicts remains a global concern to this day.

Powerful Like a Dragon is a compelling piece of storytelling based on award-winning author, Christopher Cheng’s real-life family history. Caught in the grips of invasion in the midst of World War II, many of Cheng’s extended family made the life-saving decision to flee their homeland in Hong Kong and seek refuge in China.

Review: Mrs Claus

This review might be brief (I’ve pressies to wrap) but it comes full to the brim of hearty recommendation, mirth and, let it be known, yes – relief! 

I heard myself describing my seasonal anxiety to an unsuspecting shop owner recently after her husband offhandedly assured me, ‘everything will be fine’. 

She and I then confessed to each other, that ‘fine’ wholly depended on ‘us’. Meaning, ‘I am Christmas’.

So, imagine the mollification I just about drowned in after reading, Mrs Claus. In short, my pick of the fictional festive-flavoured picture book offerings for the kiddies (and their Santa-moonlighting mamas or papas) this year.

Review: A Barney Gumnut Christmas

‘What does Christmas actually mean?’

It’s a question that needs answering because Barney Gumnut and his bushland friends are tree-deep in Christmas Eve preparations. 

Each Aussie inspired critter including Wilfred the Budgie, has their own take on this festive time of year.

Suggestions are made. Convictions confirmed that Christmas is … 

Review: Where Shall We Go Today?

Summer holidays, a time of endless possibilities and unfettered adventures. Anything and everything are possible because holiday plans and expectations know no boundaries.

It’s precisely this spirit of joie de vivre that a closeknit group of neighbourhood kids invest on their holidays together. 

And just like the sensitively portrayed array of cultures and countries they embrace, so too do their travel aspirations take on an international flair.

Review: Childish

There’s a lot of childishness in this book. Also copious amounts of humour and heart which are the welcome hallmarks of Morris Gleitzman narratives. 

Like many of Gleitzman’s tales, Childish is a collision of inane and razor-sharp intellect, resulting in an invitation to think deeper and go further.

Arkie and Dot are phenomenal kid heroes. Arkie is from the bush. Dot is city minded and part of her family’s dumpling dynasty located within the city burbs. 

With things going sour in the bush, Arkie is jettisoned to live with Nan in the city until his parents can sell the family farm and join him.

Armed with typical Aussie bush stoicism, Arkie’s straightforward integrity matches Dot’s can-do, uncompromising disposition and grit beautifully. This is a merry match despite its infancy and one that is a delight to follow as the friends try their best shake local council and the utility companies into action.

Review: Reach For The Sky

Stories that quietly set your soul soaring are not always abundant. 

To relay a tale based on true life with the perfect balance of sensitivity and fact without sinking into a mire of sentimentality requires a deft narrative voice and strong will, attributes Singaporean author, Evelyn Sue Wong has in spades.

Reach For the Sky records the story of her father and his big sky dream; to fly. 

I am not unfamiliar with notions of ‘dreaming big and flying high’, being well acquainted with a plucky little pigeon (aka Pippa) with similar aspirations. The major difference between Robert Shun Wong and afore mentioned pigeon however is that one has wings and one had to build his own. And build them, he does.

Review: Drift

I’m not sure why but verse novels generate all the feels. Floaty, ethereal emotions that lure you in and linger long after the last word is read. Drift is one of those novels. 

Maybe it’s Pip Harry’s prodigious ability with words. Perhaps it’s Nate and Luna’s blossoming friendship. Perhaps it’s the bittersweet discomfiture of wanting more, missing what was and having to deal with an uncertain tomorrow that makes Drift so appealing.

Nate is in his mid-teens, an ex-pat child of Singapore, recently rehomed along with his physically challenged mother in Australia which he finds as alien and isolating as being on the moon. Luna, his neighbour appears a sensitive and understanding ally however is nursing her own darkness.

When over 20,000 swarming bees decide Nate’s home is the place to be, he and Luna unite to save them along with local surfy and ace beekeeper, Tyler. 

Review: Leo and Ralph

Just because you couldn’t see something, didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

This is the noteworthy phrase in Peter Carnavas’ latest multi awarded middle grade novel, Leo and Ralph. It sums up a multitude of wisdoms and ironically my theory that the more brilliant the writing, the more difficult it is to articulate an appraisal of it.  

Carnavas has created another one of those conundrums for me as this story is suffused with so many fine and memorable moving moments, I hardly know where to begin. 

Leo and Ralph possess a little more clarity. They both know exactly how it all started. With a white balloon, a shift in time and space, a shimmer of imagination and the realisation of a wish come true.

Ralph’s arrival is less perturbing for Leo than one might imagine for despite his alien appearance and raspy voice, his penchant for play matches Leo’s own. 

Review: The Giant

The magnificent simplicity of this latest picture book by Sophie Masson and Lorena Carrington belies its profound complexities. 

Which is exactly what you want in a picture book for kids that conveys some pretty big notions.

It begins in a cave, ostensibly the giant’s where he has been hibernating for some time. As he re-emerges into the world, the world reacts with alarm and fear. 

The giant heads out, dutifully announcing his return and greeting every one he encounters as graciously as a giant with an overgrown beard and foreboding appearance can.  

Review: Hedgehog Or Echidna? Animals Who Are The Same … But Different!

Dozens of cuter than cute echidnas troop across the endpapers of Ashleigh Barton’s latest picture book with one adorbs noticeable exception. No spoilers here but the clue to this character is in the title. 

Without further preamble, the two spiky critters meet, head-to-head in the first spread of this curious clash of comparisons.

One is surrounded by flowering gums and kookaburras. Clearly an Aussie original. The other is nestled in a forest of fungi and European song birds. 

They look alarmingly similar yet obviously different. Does this stand in their way of friendship? Most definitely not!

Review: Wind Atlas: Everything You Need To Know About The Wind

As a kid, the wind unnerved me. Wild, unpredictable, displacing. As an adult, the wind is still my least favourite weather phenomena but along the way to learning to sail and gaining a better understanding of meteorology, my appreciation of ‘wind’ is now more discriminating.

Wind Atlas, the third in the amazing weather series by Thames & Hudson, consolidates that appreciation and then some. 

Like its predecessors, Wave Atlas and Cloud Atlas, this guide into the world’s fascinating zones of pressure and air movements is both refreshingly informative while simultaneously easy to assimilate.

Review: We Saw What You Started

Creating an instant sense of place. Inviting an immediate connection with someone you’ve never met before. Enticing your nerves to tingle with curiosity. 

These are the elements of the holy trinity that a great story begins with and, I’m delighted to say, qualities Carla Salmon has nailed in her debut YA novel, We Saw What You Started.

Nightmares don’t need passports … lines like this set up a delicious air of intrigue and uncomfortable concern. What is it exactly that US teen, Otto is fleeing from? How does it influence his assimilation into his new Aussie coastal home in Red Sands and how will his past implicate his future?

Salmon deftly sows seeds of secrecy, while plunging the reader headfirst into a dire and dangerous situation; an unchecked bushfire. Now, any Aussie worth their salt knows this is not the sort of calamity to mess around with and yet as we dive deeper into this story, the threat of fire occurs, again and again.

Review: Sunny At The End Of The World

Predicting the future is a tricky thing. It is, invariably, one of the most inconstant of certainties. One never knows how one’s narrative will play out, either in life or between the pages.

Perhaps that is what I like best in Steph Bowe’s posthumously published, Sunny At The End Of The World. Even this ingenious title suggests something beyond utter hopelessness. Can an ending really be the start of something new? This premise forms just one part of Bowe’s YA fiction which prima facie, seems a straightforward dystopic foray into Zombieland.

We’ve seen that all before, right? An almost comic romp into the horror of the after dead. And yet, within Bowe’s capable and quirky hands, Sunny’s worlds, past and future, assume a reality that teens immediately warm to.

It’s 2018 just days after a global outbreak leaves the world afflicted and stricken. Zombies plague the major living centres, destroying civilisation as we know it, undermining any survivors’ sense of security and sanity. 

Review: Grandmother From The East Grandmother From the West

This book, with its mouthful of a title, is a pure delight to savour. The simplicity of this new picture book by Jacinta Liu and Freda Chui enhances a powerful underlying message which offers enlightenment and assurance in equal measures.

Grandmother from the East Grandmother from the West is the kind of picture book I wish I had access to when I was a kid, daughter of mixed cultures and parents, growing up in an Australia that didn’t quite feel like my true home but was more home than where either of my grandmothers came from.

Review: Trash-er Island & Mirelle's Mirror

Books about kids trying to save the planet are a plenty in this current climate of intense change and global abuse but these two Kids for Planet Earth picture books by Katherine Wallace possess a charm and allure that younger children will immediately warm to. No pun intended.

Trash-er Island is my fave incorporating the robust rambunctiousness of pirates in search of treasure and one of the planet’s most abhorrent yet oft overlooked environmental disasters; oceanic garbage gyres.

Out of sight, out of mind may be the case for the vast majority of us Earth dwellers but for Tilly, a young pirate determined to win the annual Pirate Regatta, reality couldn’t be more obvious. 

Review: Hatch

Did you know that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, nearly all animals laid eggs? Many still do, taking advantage of being able to accommodate more babies in each breeding cycle and being able to move around and leave them. How convenient.

Monotremes, birds, reptiles, molluscs, crustaceans and amphibians – all produce babies by laying eggs. 

Heidi Cooper-Smith’s latest picture book release, Hatch is a gorgeous foray into just how and where these (Australian) animals facilitate this egg laying / hatching phenomena.

Review: Wave Atlas: Everything You Need To Know About Waves

To say things have been a little turbulent weather wise lately (at least in my small part of the world) is a wee understatement. 

Much of that recent SE QLD tropical cyclone turbulence resulted in storm surge, disastrous beach erosion and record-breaking massive wave heights (12.3 metres off the Gold Coast).

You don’t have to be an ex-sailor, like me, or even a storm chaser to appreciate the wonders of weather however; the pulse and rhythm of waves has a hypnotic pull that most of us find difficult to resist. 

Which is why, Thames & Hudson’s latest atlas-styled publication about the phenomena of waves rates high on my barometer of brilliant reads.

Following a similar format to Cloud Atlas, Wave Atlas: Everything You Need To Know About Waves, takes young readers (and old sea dogs like myself) through a fascinating journey around our water dominated planet. We explore the hows and whys of our oceans’ existence and the global currents, tidal pulls and meteorological conditions that induce those great oceans to move.

Review: The Big Book Of Rights

Did you know 2024 marked the 35^th Anniversary of the adoption of the UNCRC? The UNICEF United Nations Convention on the Rights of A Child consists of 54 articles declaring the rights that each and every child on planet Earth is entitled to enjoy.

The Big Book of Rights is the genius collaboration between Queensland author, Dannika Patterson, illustrator Amanda Letcher, Children’s Rights QLD and dozens and dozens of young people.

After deep consultation and invitation to use the youngsters’ artistic and intellectual input, this big book is a glorious, colourful creation aimed at evoking curiosity and understanding of these rights in an age-appropriate way.

Review: The Hullabaloo About Elephant Poo

Somewhere, in the recesses of my memory, I recall the ancient use of animal poo for building dwellings and being burnt as fuel for heat. 

But I don’t ever remember there being such a hullabaloo about its multitude of uses. Until The Hullabaloo About Elephant Poo kersplatted onto my desk.

If you are in any doubt as to the sensationally sustainable qualities of elephant poo, look no further than this humorous homage to an elephant’s busy behind.

Renowned author, Dee White escorts readers through a giddy roundup all things great and glorious about the waste product of the largest mammal on earth. Facts and figures come fast and furious. Faster in fact than it takes for elephant poo to hit the ground! From how much they deposit daily to the number of times they need to do so.