Fly on the Wall (Remy Lai, Walker)
8 July 2020
When Henry Khoo isn’t trolling his school as anonymous cartoonist ‘Fly on the Wall’, he is being babied at home by an overprotective family. To correct this, Henry devises a...
Found (Bruce Pascoe, illus by Charmaine Ledden-Lewis, Magabala)
11 June 2020
The first foray into picture books for Bruce Pascoe (author of the wildly successful Dark Emu) is deceptively straightforward: a frightening separation (don’t worry, there’s a happy ending) between a...
The Lost Soul Atlas (Zana Fraillon, Lothian)
28 May 2020
The Lost Soul Atlas marks Zana Fraillon’s triumphant return to middle-grade after a stint writing YA and picture books, with Fraillon once again tackling significant social issues in this exploration...
The End of the World is Bigger Than Love (Davina Bell, Text)
2 April 2020
Davina Bell’s first young adult novel is unlike anything else written for the target audience. This becomes clear almost immediately upon beginning the book, when the identical twin protagonists, Summer...
The Vanishing Deep (Astrid Scholte, A&U)
6 February 2020
Tempest ekes out a living scavenging the sunken cities of a future flooded world, alone now after the death of her sister Elysea. But death is no longer the end....
Beautiful Eggs (Alice Lindstrom, Scribble)
22 January 2020
In this board book, Melbourne-based artist and illustrator Alice Lindstrom uses her stunning cut-paper style of illustration to introduce the tradition of egg decoration across a number of cultures around...
Beetle and Boo (Caitlin Murray, Puffin)
8 November 2019
Beetle is not scared of anything. Monsters? Ghosts? Bad dreams? Wild storms and cracking thunder and lightning? Nope. Uh-uh. Not ever. Caitlin Murray’s Beetle and Boo is a story of...
Euphoria Kids (Alison Evans, Echo)
8 November 2019
Euphoria Kids is a tender, contemporary fairytale about magic, friendship and gender identity. A departure from the horror elements of Alison Evans’ previous novels, this book focuses on the wonder...
The Medicine: A doctor’s notes (Karen Hitchcock, Black Inc.)
15 October 2019
When discussing modern medicine there is a lot to consider. There are the complexities of the doctor/patient relationship. The wellbeing of doctors. How responsible treatment and the law sometimes intersect...
Cherry Beach (Laura McPhee-Browne, Text)
15 October 2019
When best friends Ness and Hetty move to Canada together, it seems as though a new phase of their lives is beginning—but their shared past won’t relinquish its grip so...
In the Clearing (J P Pomare, Hachette)
15 October 2019
If J P Pomare’s Call Me Evie was a slow-burner of a psychological thriller, his follow-up, In the Clearing, is a pared-back firecracker where the danger is clear and present—even...
Fauna (Donna Mazza, A&U)
15 October 2019
Donna Mazza’s Fauna is set in a near-future Western Australia, recognisable but markedly bleaker. Stacey and her family have signed up to an experimental research procedure in which Stacey’s embryo’s...
