Today (as I write this) is International Dog Day and many of my friends with doggos are sharing their pals. I thought it would be a good opportunity to write these two reviews to go up after the last of the Birdie Num Num titles this week. So here we go!
My Name is Jemima – Olivia Muscat and Allison Colpoys
Scribble Publications
June 2025
ISBN 9781761380457
RRP $24.99
This delightful title from Scribble has certainly been seen in a few places since its release and it’s a lovely way to introduce kiddos to assistance dogs, their training and their purpose, and how to interact (or not) with them.
During the year I put together a presentation for one of the YABBA Online follow-ups and as part of that, I gave some ideas for helping readers understand more about assistance dogs of different types and how they train. So this was a really welcome book to follow up on that.
Author Olivia Muscat is a disability activist and guide dog user, who works with the real-life Jemima, her wonderful labrador. The illustrations by Allison Colpoys are very much recognisable in her signature style, which you might recognise from other books she has illustrated [for me this was Under the Love Umbrella].
It’s not a complicated text by any means but it will certainly provide your readers with great insight into the life of a working guide dog, and what to to or not do when they see one. It also, of course, provides that entrée into a disability of which they might not yet have much knowledge. The addition of a QR code to hear the text read aloud is a significant inclusion and the audio can also be accessed here.
It would be wonderful to be able to follow this up with an incursion with someone and their guide dog, or a representative from Guide Dogs Australia or other associated organisation to give some more personal experience as well. For readers from around Prep upwards it’s a 4 🐶🐶🐶🐶 rating.
If We Were Dogs – Sophie Blackall
Hachette Australia
August 2025
Imprint: Lothian Children’s Books
9780734423641 | RRP $24.99
If we were dogs, what kind would we be?
I’d be a big dog! And you’d be a little dog.
Woof!
Following up on her hugely successful book If I Were a Horse, Sophie Blackall explores another aspect of friendship for Smalls in an utterly delightful, and quite hilarious, way.
Two friends are having their game of pretending with one dominating the entire shebang and dictating the many adventures they would have – all, of course, illustrated by gorgeously expressive and evocative illustrations. Your Smalls will have no difficulty in interpreting that these are not really dogs at all but two friends using imaginative play.
With big bossy dog leading the charge, it would seem that it’s all decided until small scruffy dog digs the paws and changes the narrative entirely. It’s just ducky!! And your Smalls will love the ending and completely ‘get’ the underlying meaning. It’s a fully bouncing 5 🦆🐶🦆🐶🦆rating for kiddos from Prep up.
Just So Stories 
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