Kids

Tales from the Inner City by Shaun Tan

Reviewed by Angela Crocombe

We are very lucky to have a second Shaun Tan in one year – this time a companion piece to the beautiful short-story collection, Tales from Outer Suburbia. This is an extraordinary collection of mythical tales about our relationship…

Read more ›

A House for Mouse by Gabby Dawnay & Alex Barrow

Reviewed by Alexa Dretzke

Mouse decides it’s time to move house and ‘with a flick of his whiskers and twinkling eyes, he packed up his stuff and said his goodbyes’. Leaving the only home he’s known and all his friends, Mouse begins his exploring…

Read more ›

Louisiana's Way Home by Kate DiCamillo

Reviewed by Kathy Kozlowski

Though Louisiana, our plucky young heroine, appears in Kate DiCamillo’s Raymie Nightingale, this is a standalone novel and, in my opinion, even better than the first!

Louisiana is woken by her granny in the middle of the night and…

Read more ›

Rosie Revere and the Raucous Riveters: The Questioneers

Reviewed by Athina Clarke

Andrea Beaty and David Roberts – the minds behind such wonderful picture books as Rosie Revere, Engineer; Iggy Peck, Architect; and Ada Twist, Scientist – now bring us this delightful chapter book for young readers. It’s the story…

Read more ›

Everything I’ve Never Said by Samantha Wheeler

Reviewed by Angela Crocombe

Queensland author Samantha Wheeler is already a Readings’ favourite, with two of her middle grade novels previously shortlisted for The Readings Children’s Book Prize. Her latest is an incredible piece of writing that feels very personal and intimate. Written from…

Read more ›

The Skylarks' War by Hilary McKay

Reviewed by Alexa Dretzke

For all the children who loved The War That Saved My Life and its sequel by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, this beautiful story is an excellent addition to the genre.

Clarry and her brother live a dreary London life with their…

Read more ›

Zenobia by Morten Dürr & Lars Horneman

Reviewed by Kim Gruschow

This heartbreaking Danish graphic novel calls our attention to the thousands of people who each year go missing or die during migration, particularly those deaths that happen at sea. Millions of Syrians have fled their country since the onset of…

Read more ›

Pages and Co.: Tilly and the Bookwanderers by Anna James

Reviewed by Ford Thomas

Tilly Pages arrives home sopping wet on the last day of term. Pages and Co., the bookshop where she lives, is run by her grandparents, who are also her guardians ever since her mother, Beatrice, mysteriously disappeared not long after…

Read more ›

The Bromeliad trilogy

Reviewed by Dani Solomon

When you are tiny, less than 10cm small, and you have spent your entire life living as comfortably as generations before you in the walls and floors of a large department store, you might be forgiven for thinking the store…

Read more ›

All the Ways to be Smart by Davina Bell & Allison Colpoys

Reviewed by Bronte Coates

A radiant celebration of the many different talents children can have, All the Ways to be Smart is certain to be one of the picture books of the year. The third release from Australian duo Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys…

Read more ›