Just So Stories

Hardie Grant Australia

April 2026

Series: Australian Geographic World’s Most

Publisher: Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing

Price:AU$19.99, NZ$22.99

You already know, just by looking at them, that your kiddos are going to go nuts for them. And they are exactly the sort of books that I would keep close to hand for break time browsing – you know what I mean, I’m sure. When you get that little knot of excited kids turning the pages and exclaiming ‘ Whoooah! just look at this one!’ …..’Oh wow, that’s just really WEIRD!’ etc etc etc.

Each one follows the same format as you would expect and by following the links you can see inside each one for yourself. This type of dip-in-and-out books is always a winner and when they are stuffed full of extraordinary animals, it’s an added bonus indeed.

When The Kid was still in her zookeeper younger years Steve Backshall’s Deadly 60 was one of her top viewing programs [along with her idol David Attenborough, Steve Irwin and Chris Humfries]. She would have eaten these books up and your kiddos will as well. Some of you will have them for borrowing but that will limit the kids who get to spend time with them, so for me, it would be ‘no borrowing’ at least for a month or so to give more a chance to peruse and then let them have the pleasure of taking them home for those endless re-reads and electrifying the family with funky facts.

They are beautifully presented as you can see, with wonderful photography and really well presented text, nicely chunked with sidebars and fact boxes, and well captioned. A winning combination all round as one would expect both from Australian Geographic and Hardie Grant.

Definitely a 5 🐆🐊🦇🦅🐗rating for all your budding zoologists – or just those who like the weird and wonderful,