Mrs Whitlam by Bruce Pascoe

"I looked at the huge, hairy feet of the horse."

"Every now and then I could feel her soft rubbery lips and whiskers just touch my ear."

"She needed to be loved, this great heavy-footed horse. And I could love her."


I am reading the NSW School Magazine Bookshelf titles. I have mentioned these in previous posts. These are always interesting lists and often lead me to discover some terrific books.  Mrs Whitlam is on the Touchdown list for this year.  It is the perfect book for young horse lovers.

Marnie is given this precious horse but at the same time she has to endure racial discrimination in her small town. This is a short book with 75 pages but along with care of the horse, Marnie rescues a small child from a raging river, makes a new unexpected friend and she learns the importance of staying true to yourself.

There are some teaching notes available from the publisher web site.


Strong themes of place, family and country pulse through the book. Marnie’s narrative voice is smooth and natural on the page. There’s not one affected word to be found throughout the prose. It’s a highly enjoyable adventure ideal for middle readers.

Before After by Anne-Margot Ramstein and Matthias Aregui

This is  a challenge - describing a book with amazing illustrations all based on the concept words Before and After and describing a book with 176 pages a no words!

I won't say too much except to say - get your hands on this book!  I first saw Before After in a local bookshop and I knew straight away it had to go on my shopping list for our school library.

Here are some of the pages to look for :
King Kong in the jungle and then in NYC
Cake ingredients become a huge tiered cake which is eaten a few pages later and we are left with crumbs
Pumpkin becomes a coach
Rocking horse and rocking chair - there is so much to talk about here
Card pack Card tower
Cube of ice puddle of water

One hint you do need to begin at the beginning and work through this book from front to back.

You can read a description on the Walker Books web site.   Here is the web site of Anne-Margot Ramstein and Mathias Aregui. I think children of all ages and adults too will enjoy spending time with this curious and interesting book.  I am also happy to report this is a NSW School Magazine bookshelf title for 2015.

The billy that died with its boots on and other Australian verse by Stephen Whiteside

Issue Four of our NSW School Magazine will feature The billy that died with its boots on and other Australian verse in the Bookshelf section.

I am always pleased when I take time to read these selections.  Here is a amazing poetry book - one that would be a terrific resource for all teachers of Grades 3-6.

The themes in this book are so diverse there is sure to be a poem for every occasion.  Stephen Whiteside suggests the poems work best when read aloud.  Many would also work well as performance pieces.

Topics include : Dinosaurs, Around the house, In the garden and in the street, Dogs (and a cat), Anyone for sport?, Birds and beasts, At the beach, Out in the bush, Up in the snow, Out on the ocean, Rail, hail or shine?, A couple of heroes, Christmas, Here's something a bit different and finally Especially for performance.

Here is an extract from a poem about coffee cups which I think most teachers will relate to :

Mum's Abandoned Coffee cups

...  Mum's abandoned coffee cups,

With liquid brown and thick;

One's been standing there for days.

It has an oily slick.

Here's a new one, fresh and hot.

If I can be so bold,

I'd say that in an hour or two

It, too, will be stone cold.

The poem about Simpson and his Donkey would be perfect for an ANZAC assembly.  I also enjoyed the poem entitled The ice-cream that hurt.  Here is a detailed review.

Night Sky Dragons by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham illustrated by Patrick Benson

I have finally picked up a few books from the 2015 School Magazine Bookshelf selection.  These never disappoint and Night Sky Dragons is no exception.

This is the third book in a series by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham. I adored Mysterious Traveller and Cloud Tea Monkeys by this talented writing team.

For each of these explorations of culture, travellers and the power of the individual, Walker Books have selected a different and wonderful illustrator. Cloud Tea Monkeys was illustrated by Juan Wijngaard, Mysterious Traveller is illustrated by PJ Lynch and now with Night Sky Dragons we have the award winning Patrick Benson.  It is important to mention the illustrations because these books are not quite picture books and not quite novels.  The measure 19cm X 23cm which for me is a perfect size to give these books some prominence in the library collection.

If you enjoy Nigh Sky Dragons you should look for The Kite Fighters, The firework maker's daughter and for an older reader A Single Shard.

The setting for Night Sky Dragons is Medieval Mongolia.  Yazul lives on the silk road in a place of refuge called a han.  "Within the han's high walls travellers and merchant caravans found shelter.  A place to rest and trade. A place of safety, too."  Yazul's father is lord of the han but the loss of his wife has made him aloof and stern.  Yazul finds comfort through his special relationship with his grandfather and the kites they make together but when Yazul shows his latest creation to his father things turn sour.  His father bans the making of more kites and sends Yazul to work as a servant in the kitchens.  One afternoon bandits arrive chasing a small group of traders.  The traders rush into the han minutes ahead of the bandits and the gates are firmly closed but now a siege begins.  The people are trapped inside with no access to water and food supplies that are rapidly disappearing.

How will Yazul, his grandfather and a kite or two save the day?  Will this change the relationship between Yazul and his father?  How does this all connect with the magic of fireworks?  You need to read Night Sky Dragons where all will be revealed.

Kirkus describe this book as dazzling and heartwarming.  You can read the first chapter.

Here is a wonderful description of the bandits :

"The bandits, perhaps fifty or sixty of them, had reined in their horses just beyond the range of arrow-shot.  Fierce men with beards greased into rat-tails, swords sheathed on their backs, bows handing from their saddles, quivers of arrows close to their knees.  They sat silently on their horses, watching, while the dust settled around them.  Then they slowly circled the han, studying it. Looking for its weaknesses."

NSW School Magazine Bookshelf titles 2014

I have mentioned our NSW School Magazines in previous posts.  The final issues of the four magazines contain an index and I took a moment to review the books which were featured each month on their Bookshelf pages.    I do find this list is a terrific source of books to read.  Each year there are forty books featured.  Many are titles I am sure I would not discover if they did not appear as part of this selection.

Here are some I have previously reviewed:

The No. 1 Car spotter and the Firebird
Definitely no Ducks!
Book Uncle and me
Timmy Failure : Mistakes were made
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Flora & Ulysses
A very peculiar plague
The four seasons of Lucy McKenzie
Mysterious traveller
Wolf and Dog

Right now I am reading (and thoroughly enjoying) Creatures of Magic - watch this blog for a review coming soon.  You might like to read an interview with the Australian Author Maree Fenton-Smith.

Other titles featured in the magazines this year which I enjoyed but have not yet blogged are :
The Matchbox Diary, Journey and Fortunately the Milk,

Mysterious traveller by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham illustrated by P.J. Lynch

Twice each term the wonderful NSW School Magazine arrives in my library. There are four different editions and I always turn the pages to read the Bookshelf pages first.

This month one featured book is Mysterious Traveller.  I think the mark of a great story comes from a very satisfying ending and you will certainly find one in this book.

Issa earns his meager living working as a desert guide.  He awakes one morning and sees signs that all is not well.  "On this particular morning, however, the bottom edge of the sun was not as bright as usual.  Blurry. Veiled.  Issa squinted at it, then took a deep breath of the cold desert wind, testing it smell with his nose... he turned to go back to his house.  It was time for his prayers.  Then he stopped.  A flash of bright colour had tickled his eye.  A scrap of cloth fluttering from the thorn fence of his goat-pen... the pattern told him this. The ribbon had travelled a long way. And it was not the kind of thing that anyone would lose or throw away."

Issa heads out into the desert with his old donkey and half buried under the sands near a cliff he finds a camel.  While he tries to coax the camel back up onto its feet he hears a tiny cry.  A young child lies in a woven basket protected by the camel.  "This child, this baby, had huge black pearls for eyes.  Her body was wrapped in finest, softest cotton.  Something made from gold hung from a cord around her neck. something the shape of half a star. There were letters hammered into the gold, but Issa could not make sense of them."

I hope you can tell from these two quotes that not a word is wasted in this exquisite book.  Issa takes the baby girl , whom he names Mariama, and cares for her as though she were his own grandchild.  As his eyesight begins to fade, Mariama becomes his eyes.  All is well until one day when three strangers arrive at his door.  One of the men is clearly the leader or important one "and if Issa had been able to see, he might have recognized the pattern in the embroidery that trimmed his robes."

After reading this book you should also look for Cloud Tea Monkeys also by Mal Peet.

Peet and Graham have crafted an elegant story filled with gorgeous descriptions of the desert world and its storms.

Momo celebrates

Hello to all the people who read my blog.  I don't know who you are but I am celebrating!  I now have 300 book reviews and there have been 30,000 hits on my site!  I love numbers (and reading too of course) so the neat synchronicity of this makes me smile.

I thought I might use this post to talk about the books I am reading right now and the books I plan to read soon.  I have been a little distracted recently because I bought an ipad and a Kindle.  This means I can read books electronically but I have also found these devices to be quite sinister just like the grey men in the novel Momo - stealing all my time.

As far as print books go I am reading Jay by Elizabeth Laird, Alison's camels by Christine Gregory (a visitor to my school library in recent weeks) and The true story of Lilli Stubeck by James Aldridge which is a old book from my bookshelves.

On my Kindle I am reading Nanberry by Jackie French and over the next few months while I travel I will read (or re-read) Outlaw by Michael Morpurgo, Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt, The Present takers by Aidan Chambers, Over sea under stone by Susan Cooper, The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood, Septimus Heap book one by Angie Sage and Dicey's song by Cynthia Voigt.

Finally this is a big thank you to my 16 followers and to all those other people who have dipped into my blog.  We read to know we are not alone and I blog to know I am not alone as a reader. It is great fun sharing books through my blog. I have set a target of 500 titles by the end of the year.  I probably won't reach this but I do plan to do heaps of reading in the next few months so keep visiting to find books you might like to read too.