Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe

  • Dot! Scribble! Go! – Hervé Tullet

    Allen & Unwin September 2024 ISBN:9781761181214 Publisher:A&U Children’s Imprint:A & U Children RRP: $24.99 I’ve been in love with Hervé‘s work since I first discovered it, well over a decade ago, and so many of his books have been front and centre not only in my library classes but at home, especially with The Kid.…

  • Australia’s Greatest Stories: True Tales, Legends and Larrikins – Graham Seal

    Publisher:Allen & Unwin October 2024 ISBN:9781761471131 Imprint:Allen & Unwin RRP: $34.99 This is exactly the sort of yarning book that my Father Bear and I loved to read and share with each other, so in one sense it was quite a nostalgic trip for me. It was however, fascinating to be able to explore hitherto…

  • Landovel – Emily Rodda

    Allen & Unwin October 2024 ISBN:9781761069758 Publisher:A&U Children’s Imprint:A & U Children RRP: $39.99 A new Emily Rodda title is always a reason to be excited. When it arrives as a stunning 3 part trilogy in a very handsome slipcase, it’s like an early Xmas. A hero fights against the tide,Companions battle by his side.Danger,…

  • Bravepaw and the Heartstone of Alluria:#1 Bravepaw – L. M. Wilkinson. Art by Lavanya Naidu.

    Allen & Unwin September 2024 ISBN: 9781761180552 Publisher: A&U Children’s Imprint: Albert Street Books RRP: $16.99 I can never resist a good mouse hero – Matthias of Redwall, Mrs Frisby, Desperaux, Hermelin the Detective Mouse, William Brambleberry, Stuart Little, Hermux Tantamoqor [Time Stops for No Mouse] or Herbert from The Book of Wondrous Possibilities. All…

  • Buckham’s Bombers: the Australian airmen who hunted Hitler’s deadliest battleship – Mark Baker

    Allen & Unwin July 2024 ISBN:9781761471186 RRP: $34.99 First of all, I want to especially thank Allen & Unwin for giving me the opportunity to review this. Although my Father Bear’s squadron was the 514, it was still a Lancaster outfit with an almost entirely Australian crew – one of many who were the workhorses…

  • Pankration – Dyan Blacklock

    Allen & Unwin ISBN:9781864482959 Imprint:A & U Children RRP: $17.99 I was never a big fan of the Olympics but became completely disenchanted following the selection of Beijing as a host, for so many reasons- and now, for just as many the fact that Brisbane will host them and cause endless misery to so many…

  • A Very Secret Trade

    Allen & Unwin April 2024 ISBN:9781761066344 Imprint: Allen & Unwin RRP: $34.99 The great Australian silence In 1968, anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner talked in his Boyer lecture After the Dreaming about the “cult of forgetfulness” practiced on a national scale in Australia, which he termed “the Great Australian Silence”– where Australians do not just fail to acknowledge the atrocities of the past,…

  • How to Measure the Ocean – Inda Ahmad Zahri

    Allen & Unwin April 2024 ISBN: 9781761180361 Publisher: A&U Children’s Imprint: A & U Children RRP: $24.99 It’s always a pleasure to review a book from one of our talented local authors, and most definitely Inda Ahmad Zahri has made a big splash [sorry, not sorry 😂] in the Brisbane kids lit community. Most of…

  • When the Lights Went Out – Lian Tanner. Illustrations by

    July 2024 ISBN:9781761180019 Publisher:A&U Children’s Imprint:A & U Children RRP: $24.99 You know when you see these creators’ names on a cover, that you are going to get something quite special, and indeed, we do with this gorgeous new picture book. For many of us, an unexpected black-out is a trial… an annoying inconvenience…….a genuine…

  • Mawson in Antarctica: to the ends of the Earth – Joanna Grochowicz

    Allen & Unwin July 2024 ISBN:9781761180590 Publisher:A&U Children’s Imprint:A & U Children RRP: $19.99 This is another in a fantastic series by this author, polar historian Joanna Grochowicz, and with the news about the recovery of Shackleton’s lost last ship in this past week turning the spotlight once again to those redoubtable adventurers of earlier…