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Brightest Wild – Tania Crampton-Larking
Hachette Australia January 2025 9780734420657 | RRP $16.99 Imprint: Lothian Children’s Books This is a ‘bright’ start to a writing career for Tania Crampton-Larking, with a whole lot going on in this novel: loss/grief, moving/changes, mixed heritage families, family/changes to family, bullying, climate change, First Nations culture to mention a few. Alex and her mum move from…
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The First Sunrise – Nessa Stevens. Paul Seder
Magabala Books February 2025 9781922777553 | RRP $27.99 Hachette Australia I am always excited by First Nations books and I can’t think of a single one that hasn’t made me feel that way. But every now and then, one comes along that is really out of the box and this is one of those. There are a…
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Our Dance – Jacinta Daniher & Taylor Hampton. Illustrations by Janelle Burger
Hachette Australia Imprint: Lothian Children’s Books Apr 30, 2025 | 9780734423429 | RRP $24.99 As one might expect from this pair of collaborators this is cross-cultural learning made fun and exciting. Taylor Hampton, a proud Ngiyampaa/Wiradjuri man and Jacinta Daniher, an early childhood educator created Birrang Cultural Connections, to which I have previously made reference when I reviewed Our…
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Tubowgule – a Sydney Opera House History – Melissa-Jane Fogarty. Illustrated by Dylan Finney.
Hachette Australia Imprint: Lothian Books March 2025 9780734423351 | RRP $24.99 I’m old enough to have walked on Bennelong Point before the Opera House was built, and then walk around the construction site as the sails rose ever higher [not much WHS in those days, no fencing around the site!] picking up bits of broken white tile.…
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Young Dark Emu: a Truer History – Bruce Pascoe
Imprint: Magabala Books Hachette Books February 2025 ISBN: 9781922777508 RRP: $29.99 Eleven years ago this month, I had the great pleasure of reading and reviewing Dark Emu – Blackseeds: Accident or Agriculture? for Magabala and in that review, I commented on how much new information I gleaned from this detailed and knowledge-based account from a…
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Q&A with Lisa Fuller
Well folks, I promised you a Q&A with Lisa and wowzers! I reckon it’s one of the best I’ve ever had in the 10+ years of JSS!! Lisa, welcome to Just So Stories and thank you so much for taking time to share with my readers. I’m especially glad to have you visit as 30…
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A Good Kind of Trouble – Brooke Blurton and Melanie Saward
Harper Collins Australia January 2024 This is another great novel coming from WA with fresh new voices and perspectives, and one of my most enjoyable reads of last year [I was reading the proof to write the teaching notes]. Jamie is a lively and intelligent girl who is very at ease with both her Aboriginality…
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Washpool – Lisa Fuller
Hachette Australia Feb 26, 2025 | 9780734420756 | RRP $16.99 Let’s see. Take a little of Alice down the rabbit hole, and mix that with a smidgin of Oz. Then add in some snippets of lands reached using the Subtle Knife plus some of the strangeness of Nevermoor. After that, throw in some Upside Down and sprinkle it all…
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The Skin I’m In – Steph Tisdell
Pan Macmillan July 2024 ISBN: 9781760984977 RRP: $26.99 It took me a while to get to this one on the review shelf, but when I did, it didn’t take me long to read it – I chomped it up over 3 nights and loved every vibrant word of it. Then of course it was Picture Book…
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12 Days of Bush Christmas – Megan Van Den Berg & Emma Bamblett
Hardie Grant Australia September 2024 Imprint: Hardie Grant Explore ISBN 9781741179088 $24.99 As I started on the Xmas countdown, going through the books I’d been saving, and having shared a pic of a Blak Santa somewhere else, I was thinking we need more First Nations themed Xmas books. And we have one for this year!…
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