Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Books+Publishing magazine Issue 1 2015

Make sure you grab a copy of Books+Publishing magazine’s first issue of 2015! Inside you’ll find 21 reviews of adult books and 17 reviews of children’s books publishing between March and May.

Just one adult title was awarded five stars by our reviewers. Angie Andrewes wrote Panthers and the Museum of Fire (Jen Craig, Spineless Wonders) is ‘an experimental novella but surprisingly easy to read, and brilliant for the very ordinariness of its subject’. Two other adult fiction books, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine (Krissy Kneen, Text) and Anchor Point (Alice Robinson, Affirm Press), were awarded four stars.

All but one of the adult nonfiction books were awarded four stars by our reviewers. These include Bloodhound: Searching for My Father (Ramona Koval, Text); One Life: My Mother’s Story (Kate Grenville, Text); Mothermorphosis (ed. by Monica Dux, MUP); and Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather (Karen Lamb, UQP).

Among the feature articles, Gary Copeland reports on book industry supply chains; Matthia Dempsey asks publishers about their parental leave policies; audiobook narrator Humphrey Bower shares his career journey; Hilary Simmons looks at the Australian poetry scene; and Chloe Townson asks Oliver Mol about his memoir, Lion Attack! (Scribe).

» Junior Term 1

B+P_JUNIORMasthead_2015_PRINT.inddAmong reviewers’ top picks in the current edition of Junior is Alice’s Food A-Z (Alice Zaslavsky, illus by Kat Chadwick, Walker Books). Reviewer Tim White, who is an expert in cookbooks as co-owner of Melbourne bookstore Books for Cooks, has awarded five stars to Zaslavsky’s introduction to food, food science and health for young readers.

Eight Junior books were awarded four stars by reviewers. These were Billie’s Underwater Adventure (Sally Rippin, illus by Alisa Coburn, Hardie Grant Egmont); Bogtrotter (Margaret Wild, illus by Judith Rossell, Walker Books); A Curry for Murray (Kate Hunter, illus by Lucia Masciullo, UQP); Anyone but Ivy Pocket (Caleb Krisp, Bloomsbury); Johnny Danger: DIY Spy (Peter Millett, Puffin); A Single Stone (Meg McKinlay, Walker Books); The Hush (Skye Melki-Wegner, Random House); and Prince of Afghanistan (Louis Nowra, A&U). Frances Atkinson talks Meg McKinlay about A Single Stone here.

In this edition, Carody Culver investigates the effect of big-screen adaptations of children’s and YA books on the publishing industry; Mason Engelander explores how eco-friendly children’s books have evolved with the rise of the green movement; meet US author Laurie Halse Anderson, a guest speaker at the Reading Matters conference in Melbourne in May; and read about children’s bookstore and toy shop Three Four Knock on the Door from owner L-J Lacey, who opened the store with her sister Danielle.

All these reviews, interviews and stories, and many more, can be found at our website: www.booksandpublishing.com.au

 

Category: In the magazine