Reviewed by Clare Brook Boori Monty Pryor is a multi-talented performer with experience in film and television as an actor and writer; he has also worked in theatre-in-education. Boori is the author of several award-winning children’s books, including the Prime Minister’s Literary Award winner Shake a Leg. Story Doctors is his latest book, illustrated by
Reviewed by Gerard Healy Another great effort by renowned Australian children’s author and illustrator Graeme Base. You may be familiar with his earlier works including ‘Animalia’ (1986), ‘The Eleventh Hour’(1988) and ‘The Sign of the Seahorse’(1992), which were all beautifully coloured and intricately detailed. This one is finely detailed but it’s in black and white,
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke A Fire Inside – The Power of the Human Help Reflex is the 23x30cm hard covered book which accompanies a feature-length documentary of the same name, scheduled for nationwide release on 7th October 2021. The documentary was commissioned by NRMA Insurance as a legacy and in celebration of all those who
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke The latest book by Australian writer, Caroline Overington, is called The Cuckoo’s Cry with the additional rider, ‘when a stranger comes to stay’. Immediately I thought of the saying a cuckoo in the nest. According to Wiktionary, the word ‘cuckoo’ can have a couple of meanings when applied to human behaviour.
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve Christmas, time for celebration, in my childhood saw the arrival of the Christmas beetle in droves. With a gleaming, gently striped carapace and vivid blue eyes, it was an added delight to those December days. Sadly, I have not seen one in decades. Like the windscreen no longer splattered with insect
Reviewed by Ian Lipke When I first read the story of Larrimah, I formed the opinion that once again someone had taken the stereotypical characters of a bush town and attempted to cash in on the gullible American market. Present in large number were the old standbys: drunken men and women in sun-suffused conditions that
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Chris Hammer introduces the practice of ‘ratting’ in the opening pages of his new novel, which bears the rather pedestrian name of Treasure and Dirt. Finnigan’s Gap, a tiny town little more than able to meet the needs of impoverished miners, is rocked when the body of Jonas McGee is found
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Lutheranism retains more than respectably large congregations five hundred years after Martin Luther and his followers founded the movement. Yet the Luther name has always carried some sort of atmosphere, not as specific as a slur, but rather a feeling of grubbiness somehow. This leaves Luther a man of great interest.
Reviewed by Norrie Sanders A 1943 US short film entitled “Bismarck Sea Victory!” is an object lesson in not letting the facts interfere with a good story. Comparing it to Michael Veitch’s written version of the same battle is the perfect advertisement for why we still read books. The battle took place in March 1943
Reviewed by E.B. Heath The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Wilfrid Sellars. Philosopher Tim Dean tells us that we are paragons of civilized behaviour compared to our closest hominid relatives, the chimpanzee,
Reviewed by Antonella Townsend 100 Remarkable Feats of Xander Maze, by Clayton Zane Comber, is written for young adults, but even if readers are decades older, they will enjoy being immersed into the world of Xander Maze and his friends. Xander is clearly ‘on the spectrum’, his father died when he was a toddler so
Reviewed by Rod McLary Thomas Mann — the subject of this biographical novel by Colm Tóibín — is regarded as a major 20th-century German writer, perhaps one of the best known of the so-called “Exilliteratur” writers — Germans in exile who opposed the Hitler regime. Author of works such as Buddenbrooks (1901), Death in Venice
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke This book deserves a place in all primary schools in Australia as it introduces concepts, not only important for Australia and the world today, but issues which will need to be addressed well into the future. It is presented as a sturdy, colourful, hard covered 27x27cm book using good quality paper
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve The arresting title of this book comes from a 1928 account of an Aboriginal job applicant who had ‘escaped’ from Annie Lock’s mission because there was ‘too much Jesus Christ and cabbage.’ This is an indication of how cautious one must be in examining Annie Lock’s work in the missions. Sources
Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve When I see books like the Noni series, I cannot but wish such gems had been available when I was a child. Today there is a wealth of wonderful children’s books; offerings for all, from babies to young adults. It is the much-loved books by Alison Lester that justly belong to