Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe


  • Bin Chicken Goes for Gold – Kate and Jol Temple. Illustrated by Ronojoy Ghosh

    Scholastic Australia March 2025 ISBN: 9781760268275 RRP: $19.99 To follow up on the first of this week of birdie books, it’s another Queenslander. Yes, I know ibis are found elsewhere but these are so iconically Queensland that there is a strong push for them to be the Brisbane Olympics official mascot. We generally have at least…

  • Hedgehog or Echidna? – Ashleigh Barton and Amandine Thomas

    Hachette July 2025  9780734422682 | RRP $24.99 There are lots of ‘look-alike’ critters in the animal kingdom and your readers will take great delight in this book which looks at many of those. The lively rhyming text will engage them and, of course, enable some prediction as you or they read. And the fruitful discussions that can…

  • Happy Anniversary Tashi!! Tashi 30th Anniversary Edition – Anna Fienberg, Barbara Fienberg, Kim Gamble

    Allen & Unwin July 2025 ISBN:9781761181450 Publisher: &U Children’s Imprint: A & U Children Thirty years and over 100 millions of sales on, Tashi is every bit as entertaining, clever, funny and brave as he ever was. I can still recall how enchanted I was on first meeting him, and knowing that the kiddos in…

  • Because it’s Book Week…

    There are not so many days I miss being full-time in my libraries but, yes, Book Week with the insane preparations and the fun of dressing up [at one of my schools a different costume every day of the week!] has been one in the last couple of years. But honestly, this year I’ve been…

  • Lexie Moon & the Space Day Disaster – Melissa Garside and Lauren Mullinder

    Riveted Press August 2025 Distributed by Simon & Schuster ISBN13: 9781764007115 RRP: AU$ 12.99 / NZ$ 14.99 I’m quite sure that your young readers, those who are just starting to gobble up chapter books, will have really enjoyed the first Lexie Moon adventure. This is a great series for those kiddos just hitting their straps…

  • It’s a Sean E. Avery Special

    These two books have been languishing in the PBs’ tubs for way too long. But news of Sean’s recent visit to Canberra [so jelly of all my friends there who got to see him] has guilted me into attending to them pronto. And after all, Sean is a thoroughly nice guy it seems. When I…

  • Normal Women Making History for 900 years – Philippa Gregory

    Illustrations by Alexis Snell Red Shed March 2025ISBN: 9780008725075 I am quite familiar with Philippa Gregory’s writing. Those books I have read are marvellous examples of historical fiction with such elegant blending of fact and fiction. But the title of this intrigued me as soon as I saw it. I had, in fact, no idea…

  • Tomato Sandwich – an encore!

    Many of you will already have Tomato Sandwich in your collections [if you don’t – why on earth not? Get thee to the bookshop forthwith!] and will have seen my review of a few months ago. Now it gives me the greatest pleasure to tell you that there are now teaching notes available, to help…

  • Into the Bewilderness – Gus Gordon

    Hardie Grant July 2025 ISBN:9781761211287 Price:AU$24.99, NZ$27.99 Publisher:Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing Where to start with this piece of magnificence, I ask myself? I know! I’ll start with this anecdote. A week or so ago, the estimable Gus Gordon was going to be at Quick Brown Fox in Grange and I had determined I would go.…

  • Cock-a-doodle-doo! – Pamela Allen

    Penguin Australia August 2025 ISBN: 9781761354908 Imprint: Puffin RRP: $24.99 Or as Penguin have titled it on their website: Cock-a-Doodle-Doooo! What a living treasure is Pamela Allen! Now in her 91st year and still giving children such enormous pleasure. This is another of Pamela’s deceptively simple but so cleverly done narratives that will have your Smalls in…