I could tell by the cover that Backyard was going to be a gorgeous book, so I was delighted when Walker Books sent us a copy for review.


This one is an exploration of the sorts of things you might find in a backyard at dusk. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful, and the words are lyrical and read like poetry (but not in the rhyming poetry way of many kids' books) - with text like "one last-light dragonfly making infinite swooping eights" this one was also a great vocab builder for my mini-bookworm.


I feel like the joy of this book is in how lovely the words sound read-aloud, and how gorgeous the illustrations are, so I don't think it really has a minimum age for children to enjoy it. The gentle and peaceful tone of this book, along with the night time setting, and appearance of the moon at the end, make Backyard perfect for a bedtime story.

xo Bron

***Backyard***
Available now
Source: Sent to me by Walker Books
Ages: 0+
Themes: Nature

This weekend just gone was four weeks until the Canberra Writers Festival, and I've been pulling together a pre-festival reading stack. I'm always a bit torn before festivals and other events, about whether I want to read ahead of the event, or wait until I have heard the author speak, which gets me excited about the book, and read it with the extra info from the author in mind. So, for the CWF I've pulled together a couple of titles I thought sounded interesting, and maybe I'll pick up a few more after the event. Here's what I have (so far!).


We See the Stars - Kate van Hooft
This is (I think) the only YA event at the CWF. It looks excellent and I'm looking forward to reading it!

Every Lie I've Ever Told - Rosie Waterland
I'm a little bit embarrassed to admit I don't really know very much about Rosie Waterland at all, but some of friends were really keen on her event at the festival and her memoir looks really interesting. Also, this will count toward my Read Harder Challenge, for the prompt about a celebrity memoir.

Mullumbimby - Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko is going to be a part of the panel discussion at the event An Evening with First Nations Australians - this is one session that I'm sure will inspire me to pick up more books after the event.

Room on Our Rock and Are You My Bottom - Kate and Jol Temple
We've already read these two a bunch of times (I wrote a bit about them both in my post on Living Arts Canberra) and I think this event is going to be super fun!


These guys are all going on my August TBR - pop back next weekend when I will (hopefully!) have pulled together my August TBR stack!

xo Bron

One of my favourite picture books this year has been Some Girls by Nelly Thomas and illustrated by Sarah Dunk - this was one of the kids' books that made it into the book stack I talked about in my first post on the Living Arts Canberra website. I think I first saw this one on Instagram, and as soon as I saw the cover I fell in love with it and knew we had to have it!

I actually think this is pretty close to the perfect picture book. The text in this one is fantastic - it is all about how all girls can be whatever they want, look however they want, wear whatever they want, like all kinds of things, be gross sometimes, be mad sometimes, and all girls are really good at something. I love love love it!



Along with the amazing message, I absolutely adore the illustrations. It is so important to me that when we read picture books the characters in them don't all look like us. You can see just from the cover Some Girls features girls from diverse backgrounds, as well as including girls with disabilities. This books has given us some great opportunities to talk about how people are different, but how really we are also the same.

My daughter is at pre-school this year, so I feel like she is right in that age group where the kids are talking a lot about gender stereotypes - this is only for girls, or only boys can do that - so this one has been great for us to do some busting of those sorts of comments. We'll definitely be getting a copy of the follow up book Some Boys, which is out now! Go out and get them, people!

xo Bron

*** Some Girls***
 Available now
Source: I rushed out and bought a copy after seeing the cover on Instagram and falling in love!
Age: 3+
Themes: Gender stereotypes, identity
Find Nelly Thomas and Sarah Dunk at Some Kids Books here

Hello!
Here we are over halfway through the year, so I thought it was a good time to check in with how I'm doing with the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge! 

First, a little reminder of what the challenge is about. The Read Harder Challenge is an annual reading challenge hosted by Book Riot. The challenge encourages participants to do exactly what it says - read harder - by reading books to meet each of 24 different tasks, with a particular emphasis on increasing the diversity of books read, and reading outside one's comfort zone. (You can read more about it on the Book Riot website here).


You can see this year's prompts below - I've put the ones I've done already in bold font, and the ones still on my list are in italics. There is more info about the books I've read for each of the prompts over on my Read Harder page here.

1. A book published posthumously
2. A book of true crime
3. A classic of genre fiction (i.e. mystery, sci fi/fantasy, romance)
4. A comic written and drawn by the same person
5. A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa)
6. A book about nature
7. A western
8. A comic written or drawn by a person of color
9. A book of colonial or postcolonial literature
10. A romance novel by or about a person of color
11. A children’s classic published before 1980
12. A celebrity memoir
13. An Oprah Book Club selection
14. A book of social science
15. A one-sitting book  
16. The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle grade series
17. A sci fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author
18. A comic that isn’t published by Marvel, DC, or Image
19. A book of genre fiction in translation
20. A book with a cover you hate
21. A mystery by a person of color or LGBTQ+ author
22. An essay anthology
23. A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60
24. An assigned book you hated (or never finished)

If I've managed to count correctly, I've completed 11 of the challenges and have 13 left to go.

The easiest challenge for me so far has probably been number 16 - the first book in a new YA/middle-grade series. I have read at least 5 books that fit into this category already!

The most difficult one that I have managed to tick already off was number 20 - a book with a cover you hate. I chose Red Clocks for this one, but to be honest, the cover really grew on me as I read it!

I have some idea of what I think I'll read for some of the remaining prompts - I think Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia will count as the essay anthology, and Fremantle Press very kindly sent me a copy of The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, which will be my book with a female protagonist over the age of 60.

The two challenges that I am most unsure about are 2 - a book of true crime (I am such a wimp!) and number 7 - a western (although maybe this has more to do with not being entirely sure what comes under that genre). Any suggestions welcome for both of these ones!

I'd love to know how everyone else is doing!

I have some book stack news to share today! While I'll still be sharing regular stacks here, each month I'm also going to be posting about some of my favourite books over on the Living Arts Canberra website!
 
Living Arts Canberra is a new Canberra-based, not for profit arts media company, and I was thrilled to be asked to contribute to their website with a monthly blog. On my Bron's Book Stack posts I'll be sharing my favourite adult fiction, YA, and picture books from the month.

You can find my first post, featuring the lovely books pictured in the stack above, over on the Living Arts Canberra website now. If you do pop over to read it, I'd love if you came back and left a comment here to let me know what you thought!

xo Bron

I have another beautiful picture book from Walker Books to share today - Waves. This one is written by Donna Rawlins and illustrated by Heather Potter and Mark Jackson.


This book tells the stories of some of the children who have migrated by sea to Australia over tens of thousands of years. In all we get 15 stories from different periods of migration, starting from Anak who traveled to Australia with her family 50,000 years ago all the way through to Abdul in the 2000s. I know I say it all the time, but ooooh these illustrations are so beautiful.
 

I love narrative non-fiction books (both for kids and in my own reading time) and this is a fantastic example. While I felt like the words in here were a bit complex and sometimes heavy for my daughter (at 4 years old), it was still perfect for us to look at and discuss. We looked at the timeline at the from of the book, and the illustrations accompanying each story, and I used the text to guide our discussion about the places people came from and the sorts of reasons they might leave.


I think Waves is a gorgeous and important addition to any bookshelf, and I really love that this is a book that will grow with us, and continue to give us a starting point for discussions about refugees and poverty and war and the importance of welcoming people to our country, as well as the importance of recognising its the traditional owners.

xo Bron

*** Waves***
 Available now
Source: Sent to me by Walker Books
Age: As written, from 7 years, but this could be used as to discuss the themes from an earlier age
Themes: Migration, refugees, war, poverty, illness/death

I'm back today with another picture book review!
We love reading picture books so much, and I'm actually hoping to start sharing them here more regularly - I'm aiming for a weekly post (probably each Tuesday) on a favourite book (or maybe two) from the week. I have been sent a few picture books by publishers, so some of my posts will be reviews of those, and others will be books I've bought (there are so many gorgeous picture books around that I find it very hard to resist!). Like with the novels I review here, the picture books will be ones I've specifically requested because I think we'll enjoy them, and all of my thoughts and opinions are always my own.



So, back to today's gorgeous book! This is one that we were kindly sent, by the wonderful people at Walker books (they have so many great titles around at the moment!), and that has been catching my eye whenever I see it in store when I'm book shopping.

The title is Tropical Terry, by Jarvis, and we are both obsessed with the beautiful bright illustrations!
Tropical Terry is a sweet story about friendship and being yourself - some of my favourite themes for kids' books. Terry feels like the plainest fish on the coral reef, and none of the fancy fish want to play with him. After jazzing himself up he suddenly finds himself popular, and leaves his old friends behind, because discovering that his old friends - and old self - were actually what he wanted all along.


In case you can't tell, we loved this. There is so much to look at in the beautiful illustrations, the messages about everyone being special are my favourite, and it was lovely to read out loud. We first read this one for World Ocean day, which was perfect. I think Tropical Terry is a good one across a wide age range, since those themes of friendship and 'cool kids' stick with us pretty much forever.

xo Bron

*** Tropical Terry***
 Available now
Source: Sent to me by Walker Books
Age: 3+
Themes: Friendship, belonging, identity
Find Jarvis here

Hive introduces us to a community living under strict regulations in a sort of compound likened by the protagonist to a beehive, which, to its inhabitants, is the whole world. When Hayley starts thinking differently from the others things get weirder - and creepier - for her.
I know this sounds kind of vague, but I thought there were so many great twists that I just don't want to risk giving anything away!

It took me a chapter or two to get into this - in particular I found it a bit hard to get my head around the layout of the compound they live in - but after that I found myself completely immersed. This was one of those reads where I picked it up to read a chapter, then looked up and was surprised to find it was 2 hours later and the café was full of people I hadn't noticed were there!

Hive is getting some comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale, and while I think there are similarities(like it being set in a time that feels like it could be now and in a society with very different rules and construct to ours) I didn't think it was quite as heavy on the specifically feminist issues. I felt like this was more cult-y than dystopian Gilead-y. I do still think the feeling of it is similar enough to make it a pretty good read-alike for someone looking for that kind of vibe from a book


Overall I loved this. I thought it was different to other things I have read, and, like I said above, it has stuck with me since I finished it last week. Hive is the first book in a duology, and I don't know how I'm going to wait for the next one!

xo Bron

*** Hive ***
Available now from Pan Macmillan
On Goodreads
Source: Free book sent to me by Pan Macmillan for review (all views are my own)
Read it if you loved: The Handmaid's Tale, The Boundless Sublime, Gather the Daughters
Find A.J. Betts here 

One of the areas of my reading life I'm trying to do better at this year is reading more short form works. I have a bunch of short story collections, and anthologies of short stories, poetry, etc, but for some reason I rarely reach for them when I'm picking out my next read, almost always grabbing the next novel on my pile instead. It's really weird, since (as you can see from the photo there) I have some really cool books that I'm really looking forward to reading,


So to try and get into the habit of reading some of these shorter works I'm planning to read one or two pieces each night from one of the collections on my tbr. I think I'll start with Meet Me at the Intersection, which is an Australian anthology of short fiction, memoir and poetry by authors who are First Nations, People of Colour, LGBTIQA+ or living with disability, and which made my list of the books I'm most excited about reading in the rest of 2018.

Some others I have ready to read soon are: 

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, an anthology compiled by Anita Heiss in which a range of contributors answer the question What is it like to grown up Aboriginal in Australia?
 
The Radical Element is a collection of stories about women and girls changing the world, writer by 12 popular YA authors.

I'll keep you posted on how I go with these, and in the meantime I'd love to know about other people's short story reading habits! Do you read a collection cover to cover like a novel? Or read a couple of pieces at a time in between other reads?

xo Bron

Just popping in quickly today to share my July 'to be read' stack.

Again this month I have a pretty good mix of books for review, one from from the library, our July book club read and books recommended by friends.


A couple of these you might recognise if you read my post last week about books I'm looking forward to - Hive (A.J. Betts) and City of Lies (Sam Hawke) were both on that list.

I have actually already finished Hive and I thought it was brilliant - it had a creepy cult kind of feel that I loved. I'll have more to share on that one soon.

I'm adding the links to Goodreads in case there are any here you'd like to know more about!

A Thousand Perfect Notes (C.G. Drews) - this is a pretty new release #loveozya debut, and is one of my library loans right now.

Hive (A.J. Betts) - another newish release #loveozya novel, this is the first in a duology from the author of Zac and Mia. Pan Macmillan Australia sent me this one for review.

The Book Ninja (Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus) - who doesn't love a book about books? This is our book club book for July at my local Harry Hartog.


Boy Swallows Universe (Trent Dalton) - new release Aussie lit fic with a gorgeous cover - this was recommended by one of my favourite book sellers.

Vox (Christina Dalcher) - this is being pitched as being 'A Handmaid's Tale'-ish, and is set in a world where women are only allowed to use 100 words a day. Sent to me for review by Harlequin Australia.

The Shanghai Wife (Emma Harcourt) - another new release aussie fiction novel from the lovely people at Harlequin Australia.

I'd love to hear what everyone else is reading this month - leave a comment below!
Also, if you've read any of these - where should I start?

xo Bron