Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe

  • How to Have the Best School Year Ever – Jess Sanders. Art by Andrea Onishi.

    Simon & Schuster Publisher: Affirm Press November 2025 This one takes another tack altogether from the previous two reviews. This is intended for any child or class at the start of a new year and is, essentially, a primer in resilience, self-belief and growth mindset. All of that sounds quite serious and of course it…

  • Wombat Dreaming- Caz Goodwin. Illustrations by Zoë Bennett.

    Affirm Press May 2025 Dist: Simon & Schuster Imprint: Affirm Kids ISBN13: 9781923046603 As it happens just yesterday, [as I write this 24/05] at my twice-weekly Senior Sisters exercise class we finished off our hour with 15 minutes of yoga. I hasten to point that it was only standing yoga, as we all have made…

  • Pink Santa – Tanya Hennessy. Illustrated by Ben Whitehouse.

    Allen & Unwin August 2023 ISBN:9781761180392 Publisher:A&U Children’s Imprint: Albert Street Books RRP: $19.99 Most folks know I/we don’t really do Xmas in a traditional kind of way. Ever since we lost The Kid’s mum, it really has lost more and more appeal each year, even when K was still quite Small. So now we…

  • Worst. Holiday. Ever. – Charlie Higson

    Penguin AustraliaISBN: 9780241414781 May 2021 ISBN: 9780241414781 Imprint: Puffin RRP: $14.99 See, I associate Charlie Higson’s name with Young Bond, thrilling spy adventures, evil villains – you know the sort of thing so this absolutely hilarious book took me completely by surprise. Stan is the only child of pretty ordinary parents and lives in a pretty ordinary suburban house…

  • Embrace Your Body – Taryn Brumfitt. Illustrated by Sinead Hanley.

    Penguin Random House Australia Published: 2 June 2020 ISBN: 9781760895983 Imprint: Puffin RRP: $19.99 In another break-through move in her mission to change the global body-hating plague that is such a curse of modern life, Taryn Brumfitt has turned her sights to empowering children to be happy and confident in themselves – inside and out. The Embrace Kids documentary,…