Just So Stories

Hardie Grant

December 2025

ISBN:9781761217661

Price:AU$24.99, NZ$27.99

Publisher:Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing

Imprint: Little Hare

Anyone with kids on holidays could easily relate to this with that pathetic moan of ‘I’m boooooored.’ But how about turning that boredom into busy-ness? Rita is bored. Really, REALLY bored. Sooooooooooooooo bored. So bored she can’t even think properly but has gone into some sort of suspended animation state where her brain is about to shut down completely and her body refuses to move.

But then little by little as she tries jumping up and down to see herself in the mirror, or seeing how she can stretch out the word ‘boooooooooooreeeeeeeed’ in her deepest voice, she starts to imagine all the other bored people in the world.

And then the next thing she’s imagining all those bored people travelling together to a non-boring place.

But then, when they get there it is boring after all so bit by bit, they start finding things that aren’t boring like playing in a band or travelling in time or digging deep down and finding a pirate ship and treasure [a la the Goonies!] until by the time her mum calls her for dinner, Rita is not one tiny bit bored, she’s very, very BUSY with her imagination.

We know the value of ‘boredom’ – the emptying out of other extraneous stuff to allow creativity, invention, discovery and exploration – and imagination – to flourish and bloom. I’m not familiar with this author/illustrator at all but the illos have that European graphic art style for me – reminding me of Miroslav Šašek and the like, and that mid-century feel that is so popular with us still.

This is a terrific book to read to your kiddos in the lead-up to the long school holidays. How will they harness ‘boredom’ to make it work for them in exciting new ways? It’s a non-boring 4 🥱🥱🥱🥱 for this one.