This is not an egg by Philip Bunting

Image source: Philip Bunting

There is a joyful and playful energy in this book. The narrative arc is perfect. We hum along to the beat of “this is not an egg” with more and more hilarious suggestions culminating in the decorated egg from Mexico and then boom! we turn the page and our bilby hero meets another bilby who wants to join in with this fabulous game of imagination and now the two can play with their Bilbot. 

Readers then enjoy two pages of night time robotic fun and until the authors wack in another boom! moment. The egg belongs to an emu. Of course, the reader sighs. That makes perfect sense. Or does it. I can hear the youngest children squealing with delight over the twist of the baby emu-dragon.  

This book has perfect end papers, a very engaging text, expressive digital illustrations and full-page spreads interspersed with four frame pages all created with a consistent and pleasing colour palette.

Here are the end papers:

This book will be a favourite with young children and it will be loved by schools at Easter who look for books about bilbies and eggs. The intertextual references are perfect but the Buntings have been restrained and not overloaded the text with too many of these. I was also interested to see the full stop used with the title - I wonder why they included this?

I love the way the colloquial dialogue is presented using different colours of text. I can imagine reading this book aloud with a group of readers taking different parts. (Readers theatre). I also appreciate the way the background changes in each illustration. 

The Philip Bunting book Wombat was our IBBY Australia 2022 honour book:

The IBBY Honour List is a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books, honouring writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY member countries. The IBBY Honour List is one of the most widespread and effective ways of furthering IBBY's objective of encouraging international understanding through children's literature.

The titles are selected by the National Sections which can nominate one book for each of the three categories. For a country with a substantial and continuing production of children's books in more than one language, one book may be submitted for writing and translation in each official language.

Important considerations in selecting the Honour List titles are that the books are representative of the best in children's literature from the country and that the books are suitable for publication throughout the world. The selection provides insight into the diverse cultural, political and social settings in which children live and grow and it can be used by all those involved with developing educational and literacy programmes and publishing initiatives to develop exemplary “international” collections.

Here is an interview with Philip Bunting about his work - with Joy Lawn.