Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe


  • Thunderhead – Sophie Beer

    Allen & Unwin October 20249781761180958 RRP: $19.99 I do know I’m repeating myself but truly, 2024 has been a bumper year for Australian MG novels – they just keep on coming. This is another one that I ate up in two swift sessions. Thunderhead is not your usual protagonist. They are definitely in the unusual…

  • Into the Ice: Reflections on Antarctica – Alison Lester & Coral Tulloch.

    Allen & Unwin October 2024 ISBN:9781760526061 Publisher:A&U Children’s Imprint:A & U Children RRP: $35.00 Honestly, it is a little hard for me to define this sumptuous book, but I am putting in here as a picture book – although, it is patently so much more than that. Really, it is an illustrated journal with these…

  • 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…