Just So Stories

ISBN: 9781922858184 | $29.99
Picture Book | MidnightSun Publishing | October 2023
Distributed by NewSouth Books

I really can’t remember when I’ve read a picture book, with a central theme of adoption, quite as fanciful and positively playful as this one.

When Willow shares a ferris-wheel car with a little boy, she does not expect the fantastical encounter with hordes of fluttering moths. She is fascinated by the attraction the boy seems to have for the dusky winged critters, and even more when he explains that he was ‘raised by moths’.

She is astonished, to say the least, when he tells her that the moths took care of him until he was three, and that animals will often raise children until they are given to their human parents.

Willow can scarcely believe such an amazing story, but when they return to the ground, and she is leaving the fairground with her adoptive mum, she sees a herd of horses, who instantly move towards her. Then she remembers the tiny horseshoe she always carries – the same one that was in the blanket that wrapped her when she was adopted.

It is an extraordinary story, and I will guarantee will generate some interesting, and possibly far-fetched conversations, but what a delightful concept to consider. I would love to invite children to decide which animal might have raised them in their early years. I feel sure the answers would be wonderfully inventive and revealing, and certainly opens up much conversation around human/animal connections.

I was keen to read this one because the title alone aroused my curiosity. I am very glad I requested it and had the opportunity, because this is just lovely on all counts – text and illustrations working so beautifully together.

Highly recommended for Smalls from around Prep upwards.