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Koala Books

Fiona the Pig by Leigh Hobbs & Too Many Pears! by Jackie French, illus. Bruce Whatley

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March 2004, no. 259
Ruth Starke reviews 'Wolf’s Sunday Dinner' by Tania Cox, 'Too Many Pears!' by Jackie French, 'Fiona the Pig' by Leigh Hobbs, 'Trumpet’s Kittens' by Carolyn Polizzotto and Sarah Spinks, and 'Baby Boomsticks' by Margaret Wild

Where would the picture book industry be without animals? Talking or non-speaking, cute or obnoxious, mischievously alive or poignantly dying, animal characters can be utilised to teach life lessons, and to make complex issues accessible and less confronting for young children. Add humour, passion and strong original writing, and you have a winner.

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Jump, Baby! by Penny Matthews, illustrated by Dominique Falla & Baby Bear Goes to the Park by Lorette Broekstra

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April 2003, no. 250
Virginia Lowe reviews 'Baby Bear Goes to the Park' by Lorette Broekstra, 'Pigs Don’t Fly!' by Jackie French, 'Jump, Baby!' by Penny Matthews, and 'The Dragon Machine' by Helen Ward

Pigs don’t fly, but dragons and kites do, and possums can jump, which is perhaps just as scary if you’re a little one. These four picture books deal with flight, their authors and illustrators using more or less imaginary elements in the process.

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Wonderworlds

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September 2003, no. 254

Here we have five seemingly disparate books linked by genre: fantasy. Yet even fantasy, an often devalued term used to categorise a range of speculative and other fictions, doesn’t quite describe these entertaining and evocative texts. Rather, the common thread running through these stories and uniting them in a continuous and universal yarn is that which weaves its way through many tales: the hero’s journey.

Whether drawing inspiration from epic and mythological pasts or contemporary issues around young people’s search for identity within and against mainstream forms, each story seeks to capture the reality of the timeless and often heroic search for the self using a fantastical backdrop.

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Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta & The Glass Mountain by Celeste Waters

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June–July 2003, no. 252
Sarah Mayor Cox reviews 5 Young Adult Fiction Books

The beauty of reading is that you can experience other people going outside their comfort zones with-out apparently leaving your own. This collection of novels, while varied in subject matter, genre, and age appeal, is similar in that they all present the reality of feeling unsafe in one way or another.

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