Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe



  • Thank You: how to turn a grey day into a Yay day – Josh Langley

    Big Sky Publishing May 2024 LIST PRICE: AU$ 14.99 / NZ$ 17.99 I am grateful for the beach. I am grateful for The Kid. I am grateful for mangoes.  I am grateful for our cat, even if she’s snarky. I am grateful for books.  I am especially grateful for Josh Langley’s books… and this new Read more

  • A Small Collection of Happinesses: : A tale of loneliness, grumpiness and one extraordinary friendship – Zana Fraillon. Illustrated by Stephen Michael King.

    Hachette Australia May 2024 Imprint: Lothian ISBN: 9780734422989 RRP: $14.99 Hettie is a smallish girl with a biggish imagination. She also has a biggish personality, that much is evident from the first pages of this new very different, somewhat off-beat new Zana Fraillon middle grade novel. She lives in a very unprepossessing block of flats, Read more

  • ANZAC Day 2024

    I thought I’d put together a few ANZAC resources purely focused on the service of our First Nations men and women. I feel confident that most people would already have plenty of other books, activities, resources but perhaps not so many that focus on Blak Diggers. If you know of any others, I’d love to Read more

  • The Sea Captain’s Wife – Jackie French

    Harper Collins Australia It really is a given, that a new Jackie French book means that all other books are put on hold (even if half-read!) until I have devoured the newest. And that’s exactly what has happened over the past few days. Just under 500 pages flew by over a couple of nights as Read more

  • Information Overload!

    Every now and then it happens. There’s been a gradual build-up on the review shelves, which I doggedly work through but then there’s a sudden rush of many parcels arriving (my postie and I are such good friends after him delivering to my last two houses!), and things go completely catawampus. So despite all my Read more

  • I Hear a Buho – Raquel MacKay/Armando Fonseca

    Scribble April 2024 ISBN: 9781957363653 RRP: $24.99 Given we have done a little bit of learning Spanish here over the last couple of years, I was well pleased to know that I could not only pronounce all the español in this striking picture book but could understand it. Hurra! This a quite simple rhyming picture Read more