Please grab an atlas or find a simple world map online to share alongside this book. You will begin in Australia then travel on to Chile, China, England, Italy, Canada, Japan, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Morocco, and South Africa. Each location is matched with a landscape and a colour. Purple grapes in Chile, white snow in Canada, and yellow sunflowers (see the cover) in Italy for example.
"Yellow, bold sunflowers and in neat rows. The Italian summer puts on a bright show."
Each landscape is a double page spread but the text placement varies. The children in each country change too. I especially loved the Japanese kids in their iconic school uniforms.
Our Beautiful World celebrates a rainbow of colours and these same colours are used across the front and back end papers.
I really like the cover of Our Beautiful World and, this might sound strange, but when I first saw this book in a shop in April 2025, I thought it looked like it came from a Japanese illustrator - I had no idea (at that time) that this was an Australian title.
I love books about concepts like colours, days of the week, numbers and the alphabet. Our Beautiful World uses simple colours and landscapes to explore the world. It reminded me of this truly exceptional book:
Our Beautiful World is a 2026 CBCA Early Childhood Notable title.
Margeaux Davis is the illustrator of a book I really loved - What Stars are for. Here is her blog.
I was sent one of Sarah Speedie's early titles when I was a previous CBCA judge. I am going to honest and say it did not really appeal to me. I gifted it to a friend for her library and she told me her students really enjoyed it so that's great!
Here are the previous books by Sarah Speedie:
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