Just So Stories

Hardie Grant Australia

July 2026

Our Flowers

ISBN:9781761216541

Price:AU$19.99, NZ$22.99

Our Marsupials

ISBN:9781761216558

Price:AU$19.99, NZ$22.99

Two new extremely attractive board books from Bundjalung woman Bronwyn Bancroft in her series introducing Australian wildlife to Smalls. Each image is paired with a rhyming couplet making this both a visual and auditory experience for little humans and with Hardie Grant’s customary assiduous attention to detail the books are beautifully designed and presented.

Our Flowers includes some of our most iconic specimens as well as not-so-common ones. From billy buttons to flowering gums, Christmas bells to kangaroo paw and native bluebells to native hibiscus to native violets among others. The illustrations, as you would expect, are readily recognised as Bronwyn’s work – her style really is inimitable.

Our Marsupials follows the same pattern: numbats and bilbies, greater gliders and pygmy possums, Eastern bettong and fat-tailed dunnart along with koala and kowari and more, including two of my favourites, pademelon and brushtail possum.

Both these are highly suitable right up to Prep and would inspire individual art creations and excursions to native nurseries or animal sanctuaries and for older children a perfect introduction beginning informational writing along with creative writing or anecdotes.

They are just delightul with their vivid colours, rhymes that are a pleasure to hear and their sturdy, vibrant bindings. They make for a wonderful early introduction to caring for Country and discussions of the role that our First Nations people have as custodians, encouraging us all to do likewise. A very enthusiastic 5 🖤💛❤️🪃👣rating.