Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe

  • Guess How I Was Born – Susanne Gervay. Illustrated by Carolyn Daly.

    Larrikin House June 2025 978192334510 I’m far from being the only educator who has worked with children from diverse family circumstances. Going right back to my first year of teaching and to the present day: same sex parents, single parents of either gender, trans parents, trans kids, kiddos raised by grandparents [like The Kid], blended Read more

  • The Hat of Great Importance: Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody – Patrick Ness. Illustrated by Tim Miller.

    Walker Books Australia June 2025 Imprint: Walker Books ISBN13:9781529517965 Australia RRP:$16.99 New Zealand RRP:$18.99 When your copy of The Hat of Great Importance arrives with its own matched hat, it’s a red-letter day indeed! After the first in the series, I was looking forward to the second and another round of monitor angst, humour, diabolical Read more

  • The Haunting of Hindmarsh Hall – Kate Gordon

    Riveted Press Simon & Schuster April 2025 RRP: AU$ 16.99 / NZ$ 18.99 If you have kidlets who are mad for detectives and mystery, and particularly if they’re the ones who love an Enid Blyton ‘find-outer’ adventure, then you are going to need this one. In a small town of indeterminate location, two boys are Read more

  • Ebb & Flo series – Laura & Philip Bunting

    Hardie Grant Australia Ebb & Flo: Short Cut June 2025 ISBN:9781761214790 Price:AU$11.99, NZ$13.99 These are the first I’ve seen in this series but I’m sure they won’t be the last. And how good is it to see another set of titles for those emergent, newly independent readers that is FUN as well as providing some Read more

  • At the Movies

    With the holidays coming up there will be plenty planning movie outings, and also, I know I used to post something for my parents on the library webpage as well as in the newsletter. I had a prompt this week to do so again, but I’ll come to that. First up, last week (release day, Read more

  • Bodypedia: a brief compendiium of human anatomical curiosities – Adam Taor

    Princeton University Press Adam Taor 9780691256788 / June 2025 / AUD$29.99, NZD$34.99 Ok, so I’m bending my own rule here and reviewing this before I’ve completely finished reading it, because this delicious little volume is absolutely worth savouring at leisure. I’m underlining ‘little’ because this little jewel of a book is only about as big as my hand Read more

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