Just So Stories

Hardie Grant Australia

April 2025

Price:AU$10.99, NZ$11.99

Series:School of Monsters

Imprint:Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing

ISBN:9781761213502

Bee makes a wish. The monsters stare.
What’s that growing from her hair?

ISBN:9781761213519

Bill and Ben both love to sing,
but each one sings a different thing!

It’s more rhyming fun and reading confidence with two new instalments in the hugely successful School of Monsters series. Like our Laureate, Sally Rippin, reading came easily to me. I was reading everything put in front of me, including the newspaper at three, with my only memory of ‘learning’ to do so was leaning on my mother’s knee as she wrote C-A-T spells cat, R-A-T spells rat, M-A-T spells mat. I was lucky. There was something in my brain that went into some of kind of auto-understanding.

But for many kiddos, that’s not the case. The Kid, for example, with an intellectual impairment which was very heavily language-centred – both receptive and expressive- struggled for a long time to make sense of spoken language, let alone the written word. I’ve made no secret of the joy we both had with a breakthrough, when she was 15 – yes! FIFTEEN! – and suddenly, the Year 3 readers I had promoted her to during our home schooling, were too easy.

Now she reads Stephen King and has just finished the two Jurassic Park novels. She’s not a fast reader but she IS a reader – she reads every single day, sometimes for sustained hour or so. I cannot tell you how much my heart sings every time I see it.

With her own son’s difficulty in mind, Sally’s conception of this series which makes reading fluency and competence fun [I really love making learning fun] has parlayed into a set of books that every lower classroom needs IMO. And, of course, Chris Kennett’s lively cartoonish illos are the perfect accompaniment.

So pick up these latest and add to your book boxes. Highly recommended for growing readers from Prep upwards with a 5 👾👾👾👾👾rating.

Author Sally Rippin felt lost when her son couldn’t read. She wants other parents to learn from her experience

• BONUS CONTENT: Every book features a decodable word game based on the story, a guide to fostering early literacy, and a how-to-draw spread for the main character!

Readers will love other books in the School of Monsters series:

• Leggy Peggy
• Super-fast Skelly
• Hairy Sam Loves Bread and Jam
• Pete’s Big Feet
• Tish Learns to Swim
• Zorro’s Tasty Treat
• Milly’s Family Fun
• and many more!