Just So Stories

CSIRO Publishing | June 2023 | $ 24.99
ISBN: 9781486315444

What a terrific book, and the timing is just perfect! Already, we have seen fires threatening homes, wildlife and people and it’s still so early in the season.

This is a super way to explain to children, that non-Indigenous people can learn from the First Nations caretakers of our landscapes, and work with the bush to ensure that animals and the habitats are as protected as possible.

I particularly love that this is essentially a ‘Queensland’ book, written by a local and taking inspiration from the author’s own professional and personal network with Healthy Land and Water and the Queensland Fire and Biodiversity Consortium.

Written in narrative format, the story features both familiar and rarely seen characters from our bush environs: Old Eucalypt, Wallum Banksia, Christmas Bells, Wallum Sedge Frog and Antechinus (my own personal favourite marsupial!), with cameo appearances from others such as the whistling kite, bandicoot, carpet python and fairywrens. As the humans tend to the bush with a planned burn, readers can discover the impact on each character and how such an activity, can help to preclude unplanned fires with their dreadful destruction.

Specialist vocabulary such as ecosystems, microorganisms, forage, hollow-bearing trees and species diversity is both highlighted and then defined in a glossary. The book concludes with two pages of well-written and easily understood information about fire in the Australian bush which, even if the book is shared with younger readers will be readily absorbed when read to them. Samantha Metcalfe’s illustrations are, in a word, superb and the endpapers equally as gorgeous.

I am definitely going to use this in my kitbag for relief teaching this term as there will be lots to which we can springboard, especially as there are some teaching notes, and even without those my brain is busily stockpiling ideas I can incorporate into a day.

While I do realise that for many in libraries, budgets will be closing down soon, if not already, but do try to make allowance for this one. It’s an important addition to your collection both as high-interest reading as well as curriculum support for HASS and Science. Highly recommended for your readers from Prep up to Year 3/4.