Carnival of the Animals by Marianne Dubuc

The title of this book did mislead me but in a good way. I immediately thought of the famous music Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns and so I thought this book could be linked to the 2026 CBCA slogan A Symphony of Stories. I do have a small collection of picture books that feature this famous piece of music in a Pinterest collection. 

I picked up this book by Marianne Dubuc at a recent charity book sale. It was published in 2012 and so is long out of print. This book is fun, but it does not readily relate to the famous music or the book week slogan. 

The elephant dresses up as a parrot

The parrot dresses up as a tortoise

Each double spread in this book shows an animal and then on the next page the animal is seen in fancy dress. Australian children will laugh over the platypus and everyone will enjoy the final party or carnival scene. I have put illustrations here are from the French edition of this book.

Carnical of the Animals was considered for the Governor General's Award for French-language children's illustration. The English version is called Animal Masquerade (2012). It was named an Outstanding International Book by the USBBY.

Marianne Dubuc (born 1980) is a talented Canadian writer and illustrator. She creates wonderful books for children. Marianne lives in Quebec, Canada. She was born in Montreal. She studied graphic design at the Université du Québec à Montréal. This helped her learn how to design and draw. Her very first book was La mer (2006). It was later translated into English as The Sea (2012). Her second book, Devant ma maison, became very popular. It was translated into more than 15 languages! Today, her books are available in 25 different languages around the world.

I previously talked about these books by Marianne Dubuc:

Up the Mountain

The Lion and the Bird

The Bus Ride

Here the CBCA 2026 poster:

The Moon's Revenge by Joan Aiken illustrated by Alan Lee

Seppy is the seventh son of a seventh son. His father is a coach-maker and he expects Seppy will follow this trade but Seppy's first love is music - playing his small, hand made violin. One night Seppy decides to visit an old ruined house in his small seaport town. He has the idea to ask the voices people say can be heard from inside:

"How can I learn to be the best fiddler in the country?"

The reply is strange:

"Throw your shoe at the moon. ... Each night for seven nights, throw your shoe at the moon."

Seppy's family are poor but he does have six elder brothers and his mother has kept all their shoes. They are inside the grandfather clock. 

I love the shoes that Seppy takes down to the beach each night: "a pair of tiny, soft, kid-skin shoes that he had worn when he was one-year old"; a "small rabbit-skin boot"; "a red crocodile-skin slipper that a lord's wife had given his mother"; "a doe-skin boot that a travelling musician had gien his mother in exchange for a plate of stew"; "a shiny calf-skin shoe with a pewter buckle"; "a sheep-skin slipper"; and on the seventh night he threw up one of his hog-skin clogs.

Each time he leaves the remaining shoe on the sea wall. And when he looks up on the final night he sees that the moon is now dirtied all over. Seppy has angered the moon. 

"Yes! I have to give you a wish, you impertinent boy! But you have marked my face for ever, with your dirt shoes, and for that I shall punish you. You must go barefoot for seven years. And until the day when you put those shoes back in the clock, your sister will not speak. And you and all your family will be in great danger, but I shan't tell you what it's going to be. You can just wait and see."

But Seppy does have a sister - or does he?

Things to think about - what does it mean to be the seventh son of a seventh son, and what about the word revenge, and the power of that curse, how the shoes might be linked to this, how Seppy (he is a hero of the story after all) might save the day or save his family and help his beloved sister to speak. And in the end will he gain his heart's desire and become a famous musician?

Here are some illustrations from this book:

I stumbled on an Instagrammer who is posting her favourite picture books from the past. She shared The Mirrorstone by Michael Palin illustrated by Alan Lee a couple of weeks ago. This book was one of two from a series - the other being The Moon's Revenge. I checked my blog and was slightly shocked to discover I had never shared this book here. I have read this book to hundreds of Grade 2 and 3 children in my school library. It is a winner as a read aloud and a terrific way to talk about fantasy stories. I also discovered I did not own this book and so I ordered a copy from Better World Books in the US and one week later my copy arrived. The Moon's Revenge was published in 1987 and so is long out of print. 

The Mirrorstone

The Day of Ahmed's Secret by Florence Parry Heide illustrated by Ted Lewin

Image from this video (well worth watching)

"Today I have a secret, and all day long my secret will be like a friend to me. Tonight I will tell it to my family, but now I have work to do in the city."

Ahmed rides on his small cart pulled by his donkey. The city of Cairo is noisy and filled with people trading and shopping. Ahmed notices the sounds and the colours. He enjoys a quick meal of beans and noodles, but he cannot pause for long because he has deliveries to make - heavy bottles of fuel. 

With older students I would like this book with the UNICEF Rights of the Child:

28. Education: Every child has the right to an education. Primary education should be free. Secondary and higher education should be available to every child. Children should be encouraged to go to school to the highest level possible.

32. Protection from harmful work: Children have the right to be protected from doing work that is dangerous or bad for their education, health or development. If children work, they have the right to be safe and paid fairly.

When I spied this book at a recent charity book sale I knew it would be a terrific choice. As is often the way with books I pick up at the fair, I do wonder how this book came to be here in Australia. Someone has inscribed it "to Leo happy reading love Grandma Bea". I wonder if Leo read his gift. I wonder if Bea knew the author or illustrator or if she realised this book (published in 1990) contains an important story about the power of education and literacy? 

Publisher blurb (spoiler included): Ahmed drives his donkey cart through the streets of Cairo, delivering butane gas cylinders to his father's customers. He knows everyone and has a part to play in the life of the city. He is proud to be strong enough to help his family, but most of all he is proud of his precious secret, a secret that he keeps until the end of the day. The book reveals a lot about Ahmed's life, and finally his secret - that he can write his name.

Florence Parry Heide died in 2011. She wrote over 100 books including the famous series about Treehorn. The co-author of this book Judith Heide Gilland is her daughter. Ted Lewin died in 2021. He illustrated over 200 books. (Kirkus have talked about lots of them). I have already talked about his book about puffins! Here are two others:

Read about Eve Bunting here

KOALA and YABBA awards short lists 2026

KOALA Awards and YABBA Awards

I am going to focus on the Picture Book short list and the Years 7-9 because these categories include books I have read. You might like to check out two previous posts (KOALA 2022) and (KOALA 2024).

PICTURE BOOKS

Bigfoot vs. Yeti: A Love Story by James Foley

Bob and Dob by Sean E Avery

Dropbear by Philip Bunting

Emmie Builds Something New by Marjorie Crosby-Fairall

Happy Barry Capybara: Gone Bananas by James Foley

Mum for Sale by Zannie Louise and Philip Bunting

O.M.G: Oh My G.O.A.T! (G.O.A.T #3) by Kate and Jol Temple, and Rebel Challenger

Shmoof by Heidi McKinnon (you must also read Floof)

Spiro by Anna McGregor

Valerie: Australia's Bravest Sausage Dog by Lucinda Gifford

FICTION YEARS 7-9 (Many of these will appeal to readers in Grades 5 and 6 in Primary)

Andromache Between Worlds (Andromache #1) by Gabriel Bergmoser

Drift by Pip Harry

The Midwatch by Judith Rossell (In the US this book has a different title and a different cover)

Respawn (Villain Book #2) by Adrian Beck

Romeo v Juliet by R.A. Spratt (blog post coming soon)

Run by Sarah Armstrong

Silver Linings by Katrina Nannestad

The 113th Assistant Librarian by Stuart Wilson

Villain by Adrian Beck

Waiting for the Storks by Katrina Nannestad

Details of the other shortlisted titles can be found here. I previously also talked about The Wicked Ship (Oceanforged #1); and Mim and the Baffling Bully. 

KOALA and YABBA part of the REAL Awards along with CROC from Darwin. REAL stands for Reading and Enjoying Children's Australian Literature. 

Meet the illustrator Jon Klassen

Photo source: Walker Books Australia

House held up by trees

Canadian illustrator Jon Klassen has won the 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. I wanted to share some background reading about this wonderful illustrator and show you many of his books. I discovered Jon Klassen came to the Sydney Writers Festival in 2016 - why did I miss this? My friends and I really hope we might be able to meet him at the IBBY Congress in Ottawa this year.

In 2011 Klassen's I Want My Hat Back became a runaway bestseller. With his sequel This is Not My Hat, Klassen became the first children's book illustrator to win the equally prestigious American Caldecott Medal and the British Kate Greenaway Medal for the same book.

Here is a profile of Jon Klassen by his friend and author Mac Barnett. And an interview with Owl Connected.

Read this interview with The Picture Book Makers

Extra Yarn

Klassen was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, in 1981 and grew up in Niagara Falls and Toronto, Ontario. He studied animation and graduated in 2005 and moved to Los Angeles.

Illustration from House Held up by Trees

Book list:

As author and illustrator The Hat Trilogy (this link has five videos about this series)

• I Want My Hat Back 
• This Is Not My Hat 
• We Found a Hat 

The Rock from the Sky 
The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale 

With Mac Barnett

The Shape Trilogy

• Triangle 
• Square 
• Circle 

Read my blog post about Square

Extra Yarn 

Sam and Dave Dig a Hole 

The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse 

The Three Billy Goats Gruff 

How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney 

How does Santa go down the Chimney?

Cats' Night Out, by Carolyn Stutson (won the Canada Council for the Arts Governor General’s Award)

House Held Up by Trees, by Ted Kooser 

The Dark, by Lemony Snicket 

New Board Book series published April 2026

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood 

• Book I: The Mysterious Howling 
• Book II: The Hidden Gallery 
• Book III: The Unseen Guest 
• Book IV: The Interrupted Tale 

Vanished, by Sheela Chari 

The Watch that Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic, by Allan Wolf 

The Witch's Boy, by Kelly Barnhill 

The Nest, by Kenneth Oppel 

Pax, by Sara Pennypacker 

Skunk and Badger, by Amy Timberlake 

Pax, Journey Home, by Sara Pennypacker 

Egg Marks The Spot, by Amy Timberlake 

The Lions' Run by Sara Pennypacker

Skunk and Badger

Here is a new book coming out in July - large sized board book:

Here are the things in this house: a chair, a clock on the wall, a stool, a lamp. And more. What’s missing from this house? Somebody. This is the house with nobody in it. 

Well, there might be something . . .

And this board book was published in January this year:

Question asked by Seven Impossible things in 2011: As a book lover, it interests me: What books or authors and/or illustrators influenced you as an early reader?

Jon: My favorites when I was little were P. D. Eastman’s books. As an illustrator, he was very straightforward and approachable, but as a storyteller I think he was pretty experimental. I’d love to be that same combination when I grow up. My favorite was Sam and the Firefly. Also Go, Dog. Go!, which isn’t even a story, it’s just a bunch of random stuff happening, but it had this weird way of all hanging together and building to an ending, and when it was done you really felt like something had happened.

I also really loved Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books. He’s going into such big problems and emotions in those books, but the language and the pictures are so comfortable and easy that you’re not scared away. There are a lot of illustrators I came late to that I wish I had known about when I was little, like Brian Wildsmith, Leo Lionni, and Tove Jansson.

Discover more books about fireflies

Watercress by Andrea Wang illustrated by Jason Chin

Watercress isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be.

The prose is spare and poetic. The watercolor illustrations are subtle, immersive, and rich with emotion. This book whispers truths: about shame and pride, about family and survival, and about the painful beauty of remembering. The Wardens of Magic

Understated, deep, and heart-rending -

bring tissues. Kirkus Star review

The big mystery of this Caldecott winning book is that it was not distributed here in Australia and yet this is a story that could easily translate to our context. AND this book won the 2022 Caldecott Medal. You can still buy this book but the hardcover edition of this book costs between AUS$35 and AUS$47 and so will be beyond the budget of most school libraries. Trove only list ten public and university libraries with this book. Luckily, I was able to re-read Watercress in a public library a couple of weeks ago - Green Square Library. I discovered it there a couple of years ago. You can see the whole book on this video. Here is an interview with Andrea Wang and Jason Chin.

Here is the synopsis from Wikipedia: A young girl is in the car with her brother and parents when they come across wild watercress growing on the side of the road. Her parents excitedly pull over and instruct the children to help them gather the watercress. The girl feels embarrassed to be seen by passing cars and disgusted by the mud and snails that are on the plants. The watercress is prepared for dinner that night, but the girl initially refuses to eat it because she is ashamed of their "dinner from a ditch". Her mother brings out a picture from her childhood and, for the first time, talks about the famine that her family suffered. Feeling guilty, the girl takes a bite of the watercress. She discovers that she likes the taste and reflects on the new memory she and her family have created.

My former school had a unit of study with the Grade 6 classes about our multicultural country here in Australia - Watercress is a book I would have loved to share as a part of this class topic alongside other books about The Refugee Experience Through Picture Books. 

You should also look for this book which is based on the years in China of the great famine.

Sparrow Girl

Author note from Andrea Wang: This story is about the power of memory. Not just the beautiful memories, like the ones my mother and father had about eating watercress in China, but also the difficult ones, the memories that are sometimes too painful to share. It starts with my own distressing memory of being made to pick watercress that was growing wild by the side of the road. As the child of Chinese immigrants, growing up in a small, mostly white town in Ohio, I was very aware of how different my family and I were from everyone else. It's hard to feel like you don't belong, and collecting food from a muddy roadside ditch just made that bad feeling more intense for me -- something my very practical parents didn't understand. When I was young, my parents didn't talk about their memories of China, of growing up poor, losing siblings, and surviving war. I don't blame them -- these are difficult topics to discuss with children. But it's important, too, for children to understand their family history. Perhaps if I had known about the hardships they had faced, I would have been more compassionate as a child. Maybe I would have felt more empathy and less anger. More pride in my heritage and less shame. Memories have the power to inform, to inspire, and to heal. This story is both an apology and a love letter to my parents. It's also an encouragement to all children who feel different and to families with difficult pasts -- share your memories. Tell your stories.

Prizes for Watercress:

• Caldecott Medal Winner
• Newbery Honor Award
• Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature
• Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award 2022
• New England Book Award Winner
• 2021 Boston Globe – Horn Book Honor Book
• 2021 Cybils Award 

See more here. 

I previously talked about these books by Andrea Wang and Jason Chin:

Luli and the Language of Tea

Life after whale

Be Kind to Spiders Week April 1st to 7th

Sorry to say I missed Be Kind to Spiders Week - it was from April 1st onwards and I guess it is more of a UK event, but I thought I might just pop a few of my 'favourite' spider books here and also link you to some very comprehensive lists of spider books from my friend at Kinderbookswitheverything. 

• October 6th 2025 Jumping Spider Day
• March 14th 2023 Save a Spider Day
• May 7th 2024 And so they build - Spiders

I saw this post on Instagram which is how I discovered this event. I have not read any of these books so I have put them on my 'to read/to find' book list.

Really you can talk about spiders any time and we do have some interesting ones here in Australia - yes I am talking about the deadly ones like the redback and the funnel web, but we do have others too. There is one tiny guy who never gives up on my balcony - he builds his web to catch insects attracted to the light, I sweep his work away, he rebuilds and so it has been going on for over 25 years. 

There are some terrific picture books that feature spiders and of course your library will have plenty of non-fiction titles. You could also revisit Charlotte's Web; The Magnificent Nose and other marvels and a new book which I adored called Growing Home by Beth Ferry. 

Aranea: A story about a Spider

Spiro

Fun Facts About Spiders (source: Birdtipper)

• A single spider can consume about 2,000 insects a year. That’s a lot of free insect control they’re providing us!
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• Some spiders have developed unique camouflage techniques to avoid predation by birds. For instance, crab spiders can change color to blend in with their surroundings, making them less visible to birds.
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• There are over 45,000 known species of spiders, found in habitats ranging from rainforests to urban gardens. This makes them one of the most diverse creatures on the planet.
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• Spiders are famous for their silk, a protein fiber they produce from spinnerets at the end of their abdomen. Spider silk is incredibly strong and elastic, and its uses vary from creating webs for catching prey to making cocoons for their offspring.
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• Spiders do not have a circulatory system like mammals. Instead, they have a hemolymphatic system, and their ‘blood’ (hemolymph) flows freely through their body cavity, moved by their heart pumping in a peristaltic manner.
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• Some spiders engage in a behavior called ballooning, where they release silk to catch the wind, allowing them to travel long distances through the air, sometimes covering hundreds of miles.
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• While most spiders have eight eyes, some species have six, four, two, or even no eyes! The arrangement and size of these eyes can vary greatly and are often used to identify different spider families.
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• The lifespan of spiders varies widely among species. Some may live for only a few months, while others, like certain types of tarantulas, can live for over 20 years.
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• Some spiders, like the water spider (‘Argyroneta aquatica’), can live entirely underwater. They create an air bubble web, which acts like a diving bell, allowing them to breathe underwater!

Spiders in Australia:

• Australian Museum
• Birdwatching HQ]
• Spider Zoon