There are now a few good sibling-issues picture books that tell it like it is, or can be when a new baby is brought home (The Swap, Bye-Bye Baby Brother, Stupid Baby) but none of them quite capture the true potential of outraged violence v. unconditional love that Aaron Blabey’s The Brothers Quibble does. Brilliantly confronting, the rhyme is perfect, it’s funny and Blabey’s trademark illustrations set the tone. Even if your children quite like each other, this one is a winner.

Another fun rhyming book about families is My Nanna is a Ninja, by author Damon Young and illustrator Peter Carnavas, which is a fine tribute to grans who don’t conform to the stereotype. The trend for bright yellow books continues in Max by Melbourne illustrator Marc Martin, about the friendship between a seagull and the owner of a fish-and-chip shop. It’s fantastic to see Marc’s success-story continue - I have a copy at home of his 2008 self-published picture book, A Forest, which was later picked up by Penguin.

For readers of 5 and up I recommend the new series The Tinklers Three, about three children who fend for themselves - but happily and relatively hazard-free. These three do all the things that normal children do with extra fiction-magic, which enables them to enjoy their experiences more imaginatively than reality would allow.

More confident readers are in for a treat with the new Do You Dare series, a companion to the Our Australian Girl series - I enjoyed The Bushranger’s Boys so much. (There’s also Tough Times which has a cricket theme and having thoroughly enjoyed John Marsden’s cricket novel The Year My Life Broke despite knowing next-to-nothing about about the sport, that one is next on my list). The writing is fluid, the pace is cracking and the level of historical detail is just right for ages 8 and up.

For upper-primary school and into YA readers I highly recommend Tristan Bancks’ Two Wolves. I loved unlikely hero Ben and I thought the father-son relationship (or lack thereof) was incredibly heartfelt. It was wonderful to find a book so full of suspense and atmosphere, with a carefully drawn main character who wasn’t at all afraid to share his emotional map along the way.

For Young Adult readers, two books in particular have made an impact on our children’s book specialists. One is Half Bad by Sally Green, about a teenage boy who is a half-blood in the witch world (half-White witch, half-Black) and is being used as bait to lure his much-feared, powerful father. And then, on an entirely different note, there’s Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, which is about identical twins who write fan-fiction and is reported to be as insightful and witty as her previous books.

Emily Gale