The Space We're In by Katya Balen illustrated by Laura Carlin

The Space We're In by Katya Balen illustrated by Laura Carlin
November 2019 Bloomsbury

Blurb:

We are her world and her universe and her space and her stars and her sky and her galaxy and her cosmos too.

Frank is ten. He likes cottage pie and football and cracking codes. Max is five. He eats only Quavers and some colours are too bright for him and if he has to wear a new T-shirt he melts down down down.

Sometimes Frank wishes Mum could still do huge paintings of stars and asteroids like she used to, but since Max was born she just doesn't have time.

When tragedy hits Frank and Max's lives like a comet, can Frank piece together a universe in which he and Max aren't light years apart?

This jaw-dropping, heartbreaking and hopeful novel from debut author Katya Balen will remind you we are all made of stardust. For fans of thought-provoking, moving middle grade from Wonder to Skellig.

This would have to be one of my favourites from this year, a real stand out.

I have said it before.  My favourite books are the ones that kind of come out of nowhere, where there’s no expectation, and WHAM…you’re hit with a book that makes its way into your heart.

Reading the blurb again now, I know that I should have known what was coming, but I was so absorbed in the story of Frank and Max, that I forgot something terrible was going to happen.

So let’s start with Frank and Max.  I loved reading Frank’s story about what is was like to have a brother like Max.  Max’s autism, that rules the lives of the family.  Frank’s frustration, embarrassment and anger, that’s it’s always about Max…but also the love, care and thoughtfulness he shows his brother.  It made me think of Via’s chapter in Wonder (RJ Palacio) giving a real insight into what it’s like to be the sibling of a child that takes up so much of the parent’s time, and the conflicting emotions.  Max’s joy at spending time with ‘just his Mum’ or ‘just his Dad’ is heartbreaking, especially when he breaks his arm, and he is in excruciating pain…but he’s also happy because it’s just he and his Mum in the car.

Then there’s the terrible thing.  By the time it happened, I was expecting it, but I still felt it.  

I read a digital prof of this, but having seen a finished copy, I call tell you it has lots of illustrations strewn throughout, as well as interesting shaped text, almost like shape poems.  The other cool and quirky thing about this book, is that Frank loves codes.  That's one special thing that he and his Mum had.  She would leave messages for him and talk to him in their special code  Frank's favourite code is the number spiral cipher and each of the chapters have number headings, not words, so you have to crack the code.

For example:

Chapter 1 is:
13 5 12 20 4 15 23 14 = MELTDOWN

Chapter 2 is:
3 18 15 19 19 = CROSS

As I said, this is a stand out for me this year, not in the least because of it's sensitive and honest depiction of autism, and how autism affects a family.  There have been a few other books with autistic characters that I have read recently, see below for other books with characters on the spectrum. 

Meerkat Christmas by Emily Gravett

Meerkat Christmas by Emily Gravett
Published October 2019 Pan MacMillan

Blurb:

A young meerkat travels the world looking for Christmas in this festive card-packed picture book, perfect for fans of The Jolly Christmas Postman and the modern classic, Meerkat Mail. 
Sunny isn't quite sure if Christmas in the desert with his meerkat family is the right sort of Christmas – there's no snow, no fir trees and no figgy pudding! So he heads off on a journey round the world looking for the picture perfect Christmas . . . before realizing he might have left it at home after all.

The Christmas Pageant is on today in Adelaide, so that means the countdown to Christmas is on.

What better way to get into the Christmas spirit than with our favourite meerkat, Sunny. Who you may remember from the earlier picture book Meerkat Mail.

Christmas is coming, and Sunny has found a checklist in a magazine, Perfect Magazine Xmas Extra outlining what it takes to make a perfect Christmas:

• The Perfect Weather
• The Perfect Tree
• The Perfect Presents
• The Perfect Dinner
• The Perfect Music

Thinking that he can't possible have a perfect Christmas in his Kalahari home he sets off around the globe, hoping to find a place that ticks all of the boxes.

We get to travel the world with Sunny, and he sends Christmas cards back to his family from each destination.  The text never states exactly where Sunny is, but there are clues in the cards, or in the illustrations, and young readers will love to guess where Sunny might be.  You might even want to get out the atlas or a globe to track Sunny's trip.

The first one is pretty easy, (well I can say that being from Australia)...at the beach, hot, prawns on the barbie AND there's a koala!

All of the cards open up (as you can see below), kids will love it, and unlike the every popular Jolly Postman, these cards are stuck down, so they can be opened, but won't get lost.  There's even a Christmas Cracker joke in every card.

Fauna by Tania McCartney

Fauna by Tania McCartney
Published November 2019 National Library of Australia

Blurb:

Did you know that platypus have retractable webbing on their hind feet to enable an easy transition from swimming to digging? That kangaroos can’t sweat and that the cassowary has no tongue? In Fauna - Australia’s Most Curious Creatures, readers are constantly introduced to facts that delight, amaze and induce sheer wonder at the clever design and adaptability of our much-loved native fauna. 

The information on each individual species is presented in small ‘bites’ to hold the interest of younger readers, while the information taken in total gives a comprehensive summary of each species, including breeding and feeding habits, physical characteristics, habitat and other unique and quirky features. Fauna also has a strong conservation message with an ‘extinction roll call’ and a rating for the vulnerability of endangered species. 

The stylised illustrations in Fauna are lively, colourful and informative, highlighting facts that lend themselves more to pictures than words e.g. the actual size of crocodile teeth, or the mechanics of the echidna’s beak. There is also humour in the illustrations – is that kangaroo with dark glasses actually from a different kind of mob? Readers young and old will be delighted and informed by Fauna.

I love Tania McCartney's work, so I was pretty sure I would love this...

Now it has arrived and I absolutely love it.  It's just my kind of information book.  Beautiful to look at, with bite sized facts across each double page spread.  The information includes the straight forward facts that you would expect what the animals look like, where you can find them, what they eat.   Then there's the quirky facts, like, the Western Grey Kangaroo smells like curry. Or that echidnas can carry the world's longest flea, which can get to 4mm long.

Kids love anything that shows the 'actual size' and that's in here too...actual size of joeys and puggles, actual size of an echidna's spines and the actual size of a crocodile egg to name just a few.  

I personally have a thing for collective nouns, I love them...and guess what they're here too. There's a collective noun for each of the featured animals. I did not know that a group of echidnas is called a flock...now I do.

There is a more serious content included, and  we can see the current conservation status of each animal, from those that are extinct EX to those that are of Least Concern LC.  There's also a list of extinct, critically endangered and recent extinctions in the back.  

And finally...though I could go on, at the back there's a double page of Early Curiosities, with paintings that show early impressions of our unique fauna, along with some initial misconceptions, it also talks about how, to indigenous Australians,  these creatures were not so odd at all.

My Folks Grew Up In the 80s by Beck and Robin Feiner

My Folks Grew Up In the 80s by Beck and Robin Feiner
September 2019 Harper Collins

Blurb:
Travel back in time to the era no one has ever forgotten - the '80s - because those outfits were so rad you had to wear shades.

Welcome to the 1980s - a time when crimped hair and perms were cool, kids listened to cassette tapes, thought dancing on your head was the ultimate, and synth-pop ruled the school. 

My Folks Grew Up in the '80s is a stroll down memory lane for the kids who grew up then, and a hilarious chance to share the decade's outright weirdness with a whole new generation.

My folks may not have grown up in the 80s, but I certainly did. Well I was a teenager in the 80s. I am a self confessed 80s tragic.  To be honest as far as music and movies go, all of my favourites pretty much all came out in the 80s.

This book is a real walk down memory lane...complete with fluro colour palette.  

So many memories...

• Old school 'jaffle' toasted sandwich maker, I remember the tomato used to get so hot in those things, that you would get third degree burns when it dripped on your chin. (I actually bought one again quite recemtly!)
• Plenty of posters on my wall..although I was more Bon Jovi  and Bananarama than Kylie and Devo.
• Leg warmers and aerobics with Jane Fonda
• Trips to the video shop to borrow VHS movies, that had been watched so many time the quality was less than perfect.
• Having my finger on the record button on Sunday nights listening to the Top 40 radio show, ready to record my favourite songs...onto a cassette tape
• ...and hairspray...so much hairspray...I get flashbacks to New Wave Discos, every time I smell TAFT hairspray.

For 24 hours only, you can head over to my Instagram page and see the slightly blurry 80s photo version of the real What's Rebecca Reading in my stories!

Adults will smile fondly when reading this one, and kids will ask 'what's that?' and 'really?', and the answer will be 'Yes, really"

On a more serious note, it fits in really well with the Australian Curriculum,

HASS Year 1 - 

How has family life changed or remained the same over time
How can we show that the present is different from or similar to the past?

HASS Year 2

How have changes in technology shaped our daily life?

Beverley, Right Here by Kate DiCamillo

Beverley, Right Here by Kate DiCamillo
September 2019 Candlewick Press/Walker Books

Blurb:

Revisiting once again the world of Raymie Nightingale and Louisiana's Way Home, twice winner of the Newbery Medal Kate DiCamillo turns her focus to the tough-talking, inescapably tenderhearted Beverly Tapinski.

Beverly put her foot down on the gas. They went faster still. This was what Beverly wanted – what she always wanted. To get away. To get away as fast as she could. To stay away. Beverly Tapinski has run away from home plenty of times, but that was when she was just a kid. By now, she figures, it’s not running away ... it’s leaving. Determined to make it on her own, Beverly finds a job and a place to live and tries to forget about her dog, Buddy, now buried underneath the orange trees back home; her friend Raymie, whom she left without a word; and her mum, Rhonda, who has never cared about anyone but herself. Beverly doesn’t want to depend on anyone, and she definitely doesn’t want anyone to depend on her. But despite her best efforts, she can’t help forming connections with the people around her – and, gradually, she learns to see herself through their eyes. In a touching, funny and fearless conclusion to her sequence of novels about the beloved Three Rancheros, #1 New York Times bestselling author Kate DiCamillo tells the story of a character who will break your heart and put it back together again.

This is the third book in what has now been called the Three Rancheros series.  Each book following one of three girls.  Raymie Nightigale, Louisiana’s Way Home and now Beverley Right Here.

The blurb says that this book will break your heart and put it together again, and that is most certainly true.  As an adult reading this, my heart breaks right from the get go, because what must a child’s life be like if she chooses to leave home at 14, after the only thing that means anything to her dies…her dog. 

Beverley is only 14, and she makes a decision to leave and then leaves.  She has this air about her that everything will be alright, when leaving home, getting a job and finding a place to live is a daunting prospect for many, let alone a 14 years old girl.  The book is set in 1979, so maybe that plays a part, but her cool calm demeanor probably has a lot to do with the fact that she had to be the grown up form an early age, as we can see here.

Page 37

“I’ve been driving since I was ten,“ said Beverly.

“Ten?” said Iola. She blinked.

”My uncle taught me.  My mother was drunk all the time, so he figured it was a good idea for me to know how to drive.”

On the face of it, this book should be depressing and heartbreaking, but it’s not.  It’s full of love and friendship and understanding.  It shows that the right people can come into your life when you need them.  It shows that there are good people in the world, and that you can make a difference in someone's life, just just by being there.  It's easy to say that Beverley would have been lost without Iona, but Iona, who suffered from her 'blue days', needed someone just as much.  

I read a digital ARC courtesy of NetGalley, and there was a note to readers at the start. This is what Kate DiCamillo had to say about the books as series, and I could have just posted this because she says it all!

Raymie Nightingale is about the saving grace of friendship. Louisiana’s Way Home is about deciding who you are. And Beverly, Right Here is about acting on that knowledge of who you are. They are all stories of becoming, I think. And all three of these books are about the power of community - the grace of someone opening a door and welcoming you in, and maybe most of all, having the courage to walk through that door once it’s open.

Thanks to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for the opportunity to review.

Being Black 'N Chicken, & Chips by Matt Okine

Being Black 'N Chicken, & Chips by Matt Okine

Published September 24th 2019 Hachette

Blurb:

A heartbreaking and often hilarious story about trying to grow up when everything is falling apart from one of Australia's leading comic talents.
Mike Amon is a regular teenager. All he wants is to fit in. He wants to sit at the cool bench. He wants to be a star athlete. He wants his first kiss.
He also wants his mum to survive.
When his mum is suddenly diagnosed with advanced breast and brain cancer, Mike knows it's a long shot, but if he manages to achieve his dreams, maybe it'll give his mum enough strength to beat an incurable disease.
In the meantime, he has to live with his African dad whom he doesn't really know, a man who has strange foreign ways - and who Mike doesn't really feel comfortable sharing his teenage desires and deepest fears with. He doesn't even want to think about what it might mean if his mum never comes home from the hospital.
Based on his award-winning stand-up show, and the loss of his own mother when he was 12, Matt Okine's coming-of-age novel, Being Black n Chicken and Chips, is a funny, heart-warming, and sometimes surreal look at how young people deal with grief, the loss of loved ones, and becoming an adult - all whilst desperately trying to fit in with the other kids

I found this one really interesting. I am coming from a children's and YA background, and I wanted to see where this book might fit in a High School library, as the protagonist is a 12 year old boy. 

This book is published as, and marketed, as an adult title, but to me it read like a YA.  The only thing that will jump it up the age bracket for me, is the language (swearing), and maybe Mike's preoccupation with his penis :)

It's a coming of age story, a story of first love, schoolyard bullies and a story of the most heartbreaking loss you can imagine at 12.  It has a good blend of humour throughout the story though, and that helps to take the edge of the tragedy that is unfolding for Mike.

The loss of his mother, and the confusion and questions surrounding growing up were honest and believable, if sometimes uncomfortable to read...but that's life, sometimes uncomfortable, especially if you are a 12 year old boy I would imagine.

The 90s setting was fun to revisit, for someone who lived through it, and I don't think it will jar with any readers who may not even remember a corded telephone!  

As someone who sells books to schools, I would have loved this to to be toned down slightly on the language front, and maybe a few less penis scenes....but that's just me being greedy, because I liked this book, and I would love for it to be a story for ages 11+, as well as adults and older teens.

Thanks to Hachette and Net Galley for the opportunity to review.

Just Desserts by Charlotte Ree

Just Desserts by Charlotte Ree
Published October 2019 Pan MacMillan Australia

Blurb:
You'd butter believe this is the only baking book you'll need this Christmas!

Instagram sensation Charlotte Ree is famous for her simple and delicious sweets ... and her love of puns. Her easy, user-friendly creations are designed to taste amazing, rather than just look pretty (though pretty they most certainly are!).

Just Desserts showcases 30 of Charlotte's most popular and delicious cake, biscuit, slice and dessert recipes in one outrageously gorgeous little package. Featuring essentials, such as chocolate brownies, shortbread caramel slice and chocolate-chip cookies through to show stoppers, such as layered berry pavlova and chocolate ganache & blackberry bundt, Just Desserts is the ideal gift for the baker and sweet-lover in your life - even if that's YOU!

I got may hands on this beauty a few days ago.  

Not the kind of book I normally share, but it is gorgeous.

I have been lucky enough to sample the decadent Nutella Thumbprint Cookies, and they are as good as they look!

Check out my Instagram stories for a flick through, so see just how lovely the book is on the inside, even the end papers are stunning.

I plan to post a finished product as some point... I am thinking Charlotte's version of one of my favourites...the Kingston biscuit!