How to Make a Movie in 12 Days (Fiona Hardy, Affirm Kids)
4 July 2019
Hayley, 11, has one mission in life: to make a movie. Ever since Grandma—who was going to make it with her—died, the need is much greater than before, especially since...
The Secret Science Society’s Spectacular Experiment (Kathy Hoopmann & Josie Montano, illus by Ann-Marie Finn, Wombat Books)
4 July 2019
Since Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, the trend for kids’ books celebrating perseverance, creativity and innovation has seeped from nonfiction into fiction. Kathy Hoopmann and Josie Montano’s chapter book for...
Monuments (Will Kostakis, Lothian)
4 July 2019
Award-winning young adult author Will Kostakis makes his first foray into urban fantasy with Monuments, book one in a duology that has a massive scope but a local setting. Sixteen-year-old...
Ollie and Augustus (Gabriel Evans, Walker)
4 July 2019
When Ollie (‘small—like a pickling jar or a shoe box’) starts school, he worries that his beloved pet Augustus (‘large—like a fridge or a table’; a vast creature of indeterminate...
The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling (Wai Chim, A&U)
4 July 2019
Sixteen-year-old Anna comes from a relatively traditional Chinese-Australian family. Originally from Hong Kong, her father owns a restaurant while her mother stays at home to look after the children. Anna...
Grace’s Secrets (Louise Park, Berbay)
4 July 2019
Having relocated to a Scottish castle with her mother, Grace discovers a way into the past and promptly sets about helping her predecessors, even as her actual life seems to...
Kulinmaya! Keep Listening, Everybody! (Mumu Mike Williams, A&U)
4 July 2019
Pitjantjatjara artist and activist Mumu Mike Williams, aka Kunmanara, sought to hold the government to account on Indigenous issues through his subversive artwork, which repurposed Australia Post mailbags into painted...
Cryptosight (Nean McKenzie, MidnightSun)
4 July 2019
Cryptosight is a fun romp through regional Victoria, following Raff and his younger sister as they try to track down their missing monster-tracking father, while out-swerving the baddies at every...
The Gift (Michael Speechley, Picture Puffin)
4 July 2019
Rosie is a lonely little girl who misses her mum. Across the street from Rosie’s place is a scary and neglected-looking house. Rosie has never seen the person who lives...
I Am Change (Suzy Zail, Black Dog)
4 July 2019
Suzy Zail's latest novel tells the story of young Lilian, who wants nothing more than to go to school. However, poverty, outdated traditions and the simple fact she was born...
Jinxed!: The Curious Curse of Cora Bell (Rebecca McRitchie, illus by Sharon O’Connor, HarperCollins)
4 July 2019
Rebecca McRitchie follows the success of her ‘Whimsy and Woe’ duology with a new middle-grade fantasy series, of which Jinxed! is the first instalment. Cora lives in the tumbledown city...
The Lords of Melody (Phillip Gwynne, Puffin)
4 July 2019
Suzi Lord lives on a street full of mansions in an old weatherboard house bought by her ex-rock star parents while they were at the height of their fame with...
Growing Up Queer in Australia (ed by Benjamin Law, Black Inc.)
27 June 2019
Mapped across a spectrum of ages and eras, sexualities and ethnicities, Growing Up Queer in Australia captures the resilience and strength of queer people coming of age in Australia. Edited...
A River with a City Problem: A history of Brisbane floods (Margaret Cook, UQP)
27 June 2019
Who can forget the image of a disheveled Premier Anna Bligh, in the midst of the devastating 2011 Brisbane floods, making her ‘We are Queenslanders’ speech? In the aptly titled...
Lucky Ticket (Joey Bui, Text)
27 June 2019
Lucky Ticket is the debut short story collection from Joey Bui, runner-up in Overland’s 2017 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize for ‘Hot Days’, which features in this collection. ‘Lucky Ticket’,...
The Trespassers (Meg Mundell, UQP)
27 June 2019
Meg Mundell’s second novel has been hotly anticipated since her debut, Black Glass, showed her to be a writer of extraordinary imaginative prowess, with a commitment to exploring themes of...
The Wooleen Way: Renewing an Australian resource (David Pollock, Scribe)
27 June 2019
David Pollock, a second-generation pastoralist from Western Australia, describes a wicked environmental problem in his memoir The Wooleen Way. Animals produced for food—beef in particular—eat native grasses and plants, degrading...
Going Under (Sonia Henry, A&U)
27 June 2019
Dr Kitty Holliday has just started her internship at a Sydney hospital and is struggling to stay afloat. The problem isn’t just the long hours or the emotional drain of...
Sand Talk: How Indigenous thinking can save the world (Tyson Yunkaporta, Text)
27 June 2019
Tyson Yunkaporta is a researcher, academic and arts critic. With ties to the Apalech clan in Far North Queensland, Yunkaporta combines his lived experiences and academic interests in this innovative...
Here Until August (Josephine Rowe, Black Inc.)
27 June 2019
A man reflects on a life-changing act his brother committed many years ago; a cab driver in America picks up a mysterious passenger who wants to be driven over the...
Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing (David Leser, A&U)
27 June 2019
Following on from his article 'Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing', which was published in Good Weekend magazine in early 2018, journalist David Leser once again positions himself at...
Bewildered (Laura Waters, Affirm)
27 June 2019
Bewildered, a memoir by Laura Waters about hiking the Te Araroa Trail in New Zealand, will inevitably invite comparisons to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. On a surface level, there are some...
Meet Me at Lennon’s (Melanie Myers, UQP)
27 June 2019
In her debut novel, Melanie Myers delves into an under-explored area of Brisbane history: the influx of US soldiers during World War II and how their presence affected the social...
The Rich Man’s House (Andrew McGahan, A&U)
27 June 2019
Andrew McGahan’s posthumously published The Rich Man’s House reads like an earlier draft of a more mature work. Though its premise of a billionaire who builds his home inside the...
It Sounded Better in My Head (Nina Kenwood, Text)
6 June 2019
Natalie is caught in-between: between year 12 exams and uni results, between her parents’ slow-motion divorce, between her two best friends, Zach and Lucy, who have been dating for a...
Bitsy (Nicki Greenberg, Affirm Kids)
6 June 2019
We all know that bats are nocturnal creatures, but writer/illustrator Nicki Greenberg’s latest picture book takes this fact and subverts it: her bat, Bitsy, dares to behave differently from its...
All That Impossible Space (Anna Morgan, Lothian)
6 June 2019
Lara Laylor just wants to get through year 10 without too much drama, but between a controlling best friend and the shadow of an older sister with a much bigger...
The Naughtiest Pixie in Disguise (Ailsa Wild, illus by Saoirse Lou, Hardie Grant Egmont)
6 June 2019
The Naughtiest Pixie in Disguise is the first book in a second series by Ailsa Wild, following her hugely successful Squishy Taylor series. Naughty, charming young pixie Jenifry Star lives...
A Boy Called Bob: Becomes an AFL footballer (Bob Murphy & Tony Wilson, Piccolo Nero)
6 June 2019
Bob is a boy from country Victoria who grew up loving footy. His first oval was actually a gravel-covered rectangle, but he dreamed of one day playing on the green...
Fashionista (Maxine Beneba Clarke, Lothian)
6 June 2019
The ever-versatile Maxine Beneba Clarke has worked within a number of genres (nonfiction, fiction, poetry, essays and children’s books) and now she is back with another picture book. The point...
