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10 picture books to celebrate NAIDOC Week
Happy NAIDOC Week! NAIDOC Week celebrates the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Here are 10 gorgeous reads exploring Indigenous culture and history for you to read along with your child.
Shake a Leg by Boori Monty Pryor and Jan Ormerod
From pizza shop to bora ground, here is a joyous celebration of food, dance and cultural understanding. When three young boys go to a pizza parlour and meet an Aboriginal chef who can speak…
Our top ten bestsellers of the week
Fine by Michelle Wright
Ruins by Rajith Savanadasa
The Dry by Jane Harper
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith
Vinegar Girl: The Taming of the Shrew Retold by Anne Tyler
The Girls by Emma Cline
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
Firing Line – Australia’s Path to War (Quarterly Essay 62) by James Brown
Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner
Six of the reads in our top…
Our children's and YA top ten bestsellers of the week
Charlie and the War Against the Grannies by Alan Brough
Run, Pip, Run by J.C. Jones
The BFG (film tie-in edition) by Roald Dahl
Dragonfly Song by Wendy Orr
The World’s Worst Children by David Walliams and Tony Ross
The Treehouse Fun Book by Andy Griffiths, Jill Griffiths and Terry Denton
Tom Gates: Super Good Skills (Almost) (Book 10) by Liz Pichon
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
The Bolds by Julian Clary and David Roberts
The…
Wainwright Prize shortlist 2016
This year’s shortlist for The Wainwright Prize has been announced. Now in its third year, this prize awards £5,000 annually to the work that best reflects renowned nature writer Alfred Wainwright’s core values of celebrating the great British outdoors.
The six shortlisted titles are:
Common Ground by Rob Cowen
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
The Moth Snowstorm by Michael McCarthy
The Fish Ladder by Katharine Norbury
The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks
Chair of judges Dame…
What we're reading: Sean Rabin, Zoë Morrison and Emily Gale
Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.
Stella Charls is reading The Other Side of Summer by Emily Gale
I don’t read many books for kids and teens, but this gem by Emily Gale made me realise what I am missing out on. The Other Side of Summer completely stole my heart – I found myself caring so much for…
Dear Reader, July 2016
July’s Book of the Month is the superb Music and Freedom, a debut novel from multi-talented Melbourne-based writer Zoë Morrison. It is my long-held opinion that it’s incredibly difficult to write well about music, but this book’s accounts of piano and Rachmaninov make it look easy, and are truly sublime. I recently learned that my childhood piano teacher is a reader of this column: dear Mrs M, I must tell you that this book made me very sorry I…
June in review
This month, we were delighted to announce that the winner of our Readings Children’s Book Prize is Run, Pip, Run – a moving, tender, wonderfully wry story for readers 9 and up. You can read more about the Prize announcement here, as well as an interview with winning author J.C. Jones here.
June also saw Lisa McInerny named the winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Biting, moving and darkly funny, her novel The Glorious Heresies tells…
New editions of old favourites
The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
$22.99
Alexander von Humboldt is the great lost scientist. Napoleon was jealous of him, Simon Bolivar’s revolution was fuelled by his ideas, Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt, and Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, ‘the greatest man since the Deluge’. Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps – racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers…
Books for reluctant readers
Reluctant reader – it’s a label that gets thrown around a lot for kids who would rather do anything else than pick up a book. And if you’re a book-loving parent of a reluctant reader, it can be heartbreaking to see your child miss out on the joys of a good book.
It’s important to recognise why somebody is a reluctant reader, and the reasons range from low reading confidence to a lack of interest. Luckily there are countless books…
The most interesting books customers have special ordered this month
We love hearing new recommendations. Here’s 10 of the most interesting books customers have special ordered this past month…
Freshwater Aquariums Manual: A Beginners Guide to Keeping and Feeding Freshwater Aquarium Fish by Alkeith O Jackson
Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones and Multiple Media Engagements edited by Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart
Everything Explained That Is Explainable: On the Creation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Celebrated Eleventh Edition, 1910-1911 by Denis Boyles
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