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Children's and YA book reviews and interviews

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Feature review

 

The Wonderful Wisdom of Ants
Philip Bunting, Scholastic, February 2020, reviewed by Thuy On x

Ants. What exactly do these tiny, easily overlooked creatures have to teach us? Quite a bit, according to Philip Bunting, whose picture book is funny... Read more
 
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Interview

 

State of euphoria: Alison Evans on ‘Euphoria Kids’

Reviewer Jordi Kerr says Alison Evans’ YA novel Euphoria Kids (Echo, February) is ‘a tender, contemporary fairytale about magic, friendship and gender identity’ that follows... Read more
 

 

Dream team: Emily Rodda & Marc McBride on ‘The Glimme’ x

Author Emily Rodda and illustrator Marc McBride’s working relationship has spanned nearly 20 years, starting with the first ‘Deltora Quest’ book. Now, the pair are... Read more
 

Picture books

 

Beetle and Boo
Caitlin Murray, Puffin, February 2020, reviewed by Romi Sharp x

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... Read more
 
 

Coming Home to Country
Bronwyn Bancroft, Little Hare, February 2020, reviewed by Thuy On x

This picture book is bathed in a ‘palette of leaf green, red rust, yellow ochre, deep blue and crimson’ as the unnamed narrator returns home, back to Country. Bronwyn Bancroft’s... Read more
 
 

Extraordinary!
Penny Harrison, illus by Katie Wilson, New Frontier, February 2020, reviewed by Katie Haydon x

What a magical book this is! In Extraordinary! Penny Harrison, author of Emily Green’s Garden and Dance With Me, and New Zealand-based illustrator Katie Wilson take the reader on a... Read more
 
 

Jelly-Boy
Nicole Godwin, illus by Christopher Nielsen, Walker Books, February 2020, reviewed by Anica Boulanger-Mashberg x

In this deceptively simple story, a jellyfish falls in love with a plastic bag, having assumed that it’s a fellow jellyfish. The book’s aim is to teach children about the... Read more
 
 

Me and My Boots
Penny Harrison, illus by Evie Barrow, Little Hare, February 2020, reviewed by Romi Sharp x

Author Penny Harrison exemplifies the beauty in nature and the power of self-expression through her books, which include The Art Garden, Dance with Me and Emily Green’s Garden. Her latest... Read more
 
 

Morphing Murphy
Robert Favretto, illus by Tull Suwannakit, Ford Street, February 2019, reviewed by Louise Pfanner x

Murphy is a happy tadpole, quite content with his life eating algae and rotting water plants all day. So happy that he wouldn’t change a thing … until he slowly... Read more
 

Younger readers

 

Emergency Rescue Angel
Cate Whittle, Scholastic, February 2019, reviewed by Annie Waters x

Mitch is rudderless and lonely after the death of his dad and the upheaval of his best mate across the country. Max is a goth angel—an Emergency Rescue Angel, to... Read more
 
 

Evie and Pog: Take Off!
Tania McCartney, HarperCollins, February 2019, reviewed by Anica Boulanger-Mashberg x

Six-year-old Evie and her best friend Pog the pug live in a treehouse next to obsessively tidy Granny Gladys’ house. Evie is accident-prone, wildly enthusiastic about the world, and enjoys... Read more
 
 

Ready, Set, Code!
Heather Catchpole & Nicola O’Brien, CSIRO Publishing, February 2020, reviewed by Andrew Wrathall x

Ready, Set, Code! teaches computer programming skills to kids aged 8–12 using the open source Scratch language created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This book presents introductory programming concepts... Read more
 

Young adult

 

Euphoria Kids
Alison Evans, Echo, February 2020, reviewed by Jordi Kerr x

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... Read more
 
 

The Girl with the Gold Bikini
Lisa Walker, Wakefield, February 2020, reviewed by Alida Galati x

Lisa Walker’s second YA novel gives us a fun new spin on Nancy Drew and ‘girl detectives’. It will absolutely appeal to readers who love the mystery genre, with a... Read more
 
 

A New Kind of Everything
Richard Yaxley, Scholastic, February 2020, reviewed by Lefa Singleton Norton x

A New Kind of Everything picks up the story of the Gallagher family after the loss of patriarch Barney, his spectre still looming large over his wife Allison and their... Read more
 

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