Just So Stories

Hardie Grant

December 2024

Imprint: Hardie Grant Explore

ISBN:9781741179231

Price:AU$24.99, NZ$27.99

Look out for this stunning new book heading your way in the next week or so. As part of the Ask Aunty series, this title will share an understanding of Country, and its integral role in the lives of First Nations People, and how those people would live in a traditional setting.

Would your Smalls ever need to know how to find water out in the bush? Who knows? But that’s not really the whole point. What this book will teach all children is the grace, knowledge and interconnectedness that our First Australians have carried for over 60 000 years.

This is a brilliant addition to your curriculum studies on the needs of living things. No matter what species, human or animal, we all need water, food and shelter. But this non-fiction treasure will take Smalls even further into knowledge, with information on how to find medicine without a pharmacy, how to start a fire without matches, and how to find your way without a map. And for those kiddos who have watched or seen programmes such as Bear Grylls or similar, there’s always an avid interest in ‘survival stories’.

In traditional First Nations communities the Elders are the ones teaching but so many of our First Nations people have become displaced from their original Country and families, that they are struggling with connection to culture and knowledge, so to have a surrogate Elder in a book such as this can be a real boon for the jarjums who have not got that circle around them.

Aside from Aunty Munya Andrews’ able, concise and engaging text, the illustrations from Charmaine Ledden-Lewis are evocative and offer equally as much information as the words.

All in all, this is a book that will encourage all young ones to become more closely connected to their own country – water, sky, land – and the people in their own circle. It’s deadly for sure and I have no hesitation in giving it a 5 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 rating and insisting that you put it on your ‘must have’ list.