Just So Stories

Fremantle Press

February 2026

ISBN: 9781760996314

RRP: $24.99

For years now we have seen children and schools becoming more actively interested in conservation and caring for the environment and wildlife. It’s now well over 30 years since my first teaching gig with Year 5 when I created a literature-based unit of inquiry based on Fern Gully, we wrote a (published) letter to the editor of the Courier-Mail regarding the threatened destruction on Mt Warning and started an enthusiastic Environment Club.

But it is far more recently that we have begun to share and teach the cross-cultural perspectives of how our First Australians have always been custodians and caretakers of the land, water, plants and creatures.

Now we aim for this more inclusive approach to our conservation efforts and thus welcome any support for these endeavours including books such as this one. I’m not terribly familiar with wildlife of Western Australia beyond the most well-known and these meelyu – spiny-tailed skinks – were new to me entirely. But what gorgeous lizards they are!

Dr Holly Bradley, environmental biologist, devoted her PhD research to these lesser-known critters – read more about them in this article about her work. Partnering with Darryl Fogarty, Badimia Elder, whose family totem is the meelyu has resulted in this book, simply told but redolent in significant meaning and information.

Written in both English and Badimia language, this presents a gentle but powerful message to all young readers, no matter if Western Australia based or not, about the need for all humans to become caretakers of our precious wildlife and country.

The illustrations by Darryl’s daughter, Corinne, convey the sense of Country and the meelya’s habitat with boldness and a glorious palette of colours that reflect the desert location.

Land-clearing and feral predators are the top dangers for almost all of our native animals and this is a book that underlines this clearly. While children cannot do much to stop this, they will understand the vital importance of minimising these risks and, we hope, grow to become adults willing to accept the challenge of protecting even the smallest and scaliest and not-so-pretty of our fauna. See more about Holly’s research here. It’s a 5 🦎🦎🦎🦎🦎for readers from Prep upwards and would provide some terrific springboards for older students in their UoI on conservation/environment/issues.