Reviews

When Grandma Burnt Her Bra

The dynamic video trailer for this trailblazing book should easily get your kids (aged 6 to 9 years) motivated to fight for equal rights. But the book itself is awesome too – and my favourite line is ‘She burnt her bra to make a PROTEST. This is what you do when something is not right.’

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Getting your kicks from ‘Backyard Footy’

A superb energy flows through Backyard Footy – carrying the reader into the lives and landscapes of some footy-crazed kids. The first image sets the scene beautifully. Houses are spread across the town which has a main street made of red dirt and is framed by red hills in the distance leaving us with no doubt

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Five mysteries to savour

Curl up with one of these clever crime novels as the Autumn chill sets in … Mortimer amuses If you like Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club Mystery Series then grab yourself The Satsuma Complex a cosy new crime novel from renowned British comedian Bob Mortimer. Mortimer brings his quirky humour and gentle humanity to his

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‘Runt’ is a mighty fine tale

Craig Silvey’s first book for children aged 8+ is a delightful tale of camaraderie and derring-do. It features 11-year-old Annie and her adopted stray dog Runt. Runt is the first real friend Annie has ever had. The pair live in Upson Downs in rural Australia with Annie’s family – an eccentric but lovable lot whose

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Sort your Summer reading here …

Summer time is reading time! Stock up on these gems before Christmas and you’ll sail into Summer-reading bliss. Happening by Annie Ernaux – ‘I began writing in my diary every evening – the word NOTHING.’ In Happening the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature winner recounts how life-changing it was in 1963 to have an unwanted pregnancy. Superb. Small Things Like These by

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Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here

‘Having a chronic condition is not akin to death,’ writes Heather Rose in her new memoir in essays Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. ‘It’s like living with a house guest who never leaves. Sometimes they mess the place up big time.’ Rose, the award-winning author of The Museum of Modern Love and Bruny, has ankylosing spondylitis, which

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Five books to praise and prize

Drop everything and read! Start with one of these …  Courage to act? Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is the shortest book recognised in the history of the Booker Prize. Longlisted in 2022, it probes the terrible truths that underscore our societies and systems and how easily we can get caught up in them.

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Music builds friendship in Greer’s ‘Violin & Cello’

Every Wednesday, when I was in First Class, I had to leave school early so my Dad could drive me to piano lessons. I remember carrying the hard little case that held my sheet music and theory book across the hot asphalt of the playground. It was a long, solitary walk (or so my memory

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Five books worth stopping for

It’s icy outside. Find a sunny spot behind glass or a fire to warm you – and grab one of these fine books to keep you company. ‘Black and Blue’ A proud Gunai/Kurnai woman, Veronica (Ronnie) Gorrie was gutsy enough to think she could change Australia’s racist and sexist law enforcement system from within. One

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