5 Fabulous - Picture Books

1. How to Put Your Parents to Bed by Mylisa Larsen, Illustrated by Babette Cole:

A fun bedtime story with a twist - it's time to put the parents to bed!  A story about role reversal between parents and a child; the child certainly isn't tired but the parents look exhausted, so it's off to bed for the parents. Follow the hilarious antics as the child tries to encourage mum and dad to go to bed! 

2. Tidy by Emily Gravett:

A delightful rhyming story about the perils of being too tidy.  

Pete the badger likes everything to be neat and tidy at all times but sometimes it's good to know when to stop!  Pete begins cleaning the forest by picking up just one leaf and then he can't stop.  Will there be any forest left when Pete's finished?  And what are the consequences of his big clean up?

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3. Mr Nodd's Ark by John Yeoman, Illustrated by Quentin Blake:

Mr Nodd is the world's most enthusiastic carpenter and he loves to construct almost anything from wood.  But when he builds a huge boat in his garden, Mr Nodd has finally gone too far. Who needs a giant boat in their garden? The weather forecast for serious floods gives Mr Nodd hope that his boat will at last be useful!

4. Seasons of Love by Janet Parson, Illustrated by Claire Richards:

Seasons of Love is the second book in the international award winning "Love Series."  The book shows us how love can be found in many different ways in all seasons.  "Winter Love is being warmly snug in bed listening to the gentle hum of the rain on my roof." 

5. The Nonsense Show by Eric Carle:

From Eric Carle, creator of the classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, comes a book to make children laugh and think.  Filled with words of nonsense and illustrations that are a work of art, The Nonsense Show is sure to become a favourite!

Feature Author - Garry Disher

Garry Disher is one of Australia’s best-known authors, renowned for his crime fiction.  He has published 50 books in a range of genres from crime thrillers to fiction for children and teenagers.  His novels Chain of Evidence and Wyatt won crime novel of the year awards in Australia.

The Wyatt series follows the twists and turns of professional thief Wyatt, in his methodical pursuit of jobs to bring in easy cash with as little fuss as possible.  Wyatt is cool under pressure and doesn't suffer fools lightly; you can't help but admire his work ethic! 

The Inspector Challis series centres on Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry.  Set in and around the Mornington Peninsula, this crime series combines the thread of the personal lives of the main characters with the intriguing cases that are presented to them.

The Heat by Garry Disher is the latest in the Wyatt series.

 

 

Feature Author - Helen Garner

 

Over the coming weeks we are featuring Australian authors who might be new discoveries for you. Today's author is Helen Garner. Helen is a novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist.  She has received numerous awards for her fiction and non-fiction works.  She generates compelling, thought provoking writing.  Her novels include Monkey Grip, The Children's Bach and The Spare Room.  Non-fiction writing to note includes Joe Cinque's Consolation and most recently, This House of Grief: Story of a Murder Trial.

 

Her latest contribution, Everywhere I Look, is another brilliant example of her skill as a non-fiction writer.  Comprising a collection of essays, the writing is insightful, honest and displays raw emotion.  The written word from Helen Garner never fails to have an impact. 




 

 

 

 

 

The Summer Read - The Secret Son

What's it about?

An Australian historian determined to find the truth, a stolen inheritance, a wishing tree, a long-lost grandmother, and an unlikely sweetheart come together in a dazzlingly original, audacious and exhilarating novel about love, honour and belonging, and what it means to be a good person.

I know that two men are coming up the mountain, at this moment, including the boy from far away. I wonder what my grandson's face will look like.This is a boy in the skin of a man.I know the boy is innocent, that it's his family soul which is guilty.

An old woman sits waiting in a village that clings to a Turkish mountainside, where the women weave rugs, make tea and keep blood secrets that span generations. Berna can see what others cannot, so her secrets are deeper and darker than most. It is time for her to tell her story, even though the man for whom her words are meant won't hear them. It is time for the truth to be told.

Nearly a hundred years before, her father James had come to the village on the back of a donkey, gravely ill, rescued from the abandoned trenches of Gallipoli by a Turkish boy whose life he had earlier spared. James made his life there, never returning to Australia and never realising that his own father was indeed the near-mythical bushranger that the gossips had hinted at when he'd been a boy growing up in Beechworth.

Now, as Berna waits, a young man from Melbourne approaches to visit his parents' village, against the vehement opposition of his cursed, tight-lipped grandfather. What is the astonishing story behind the dark deeds that connect the two men, unknown to each other and living almost a century apart?
The Secret Son is a remarkable debut, a dazzlingly original, audacious and exhilarating novel. At once joyous and haunting, it is a moving meditation on love, honour and belonging, as well as a story about the strength of women and what it means to be a good man.

Why should you read it?

Goodreads reviewers said:

This was so well written and full of stories!
This is written from a few characters points of views but in third person which gives a very interesting insight into events and the characters themselves.
Each of the characters has a story, an answer to find or some truths to reveal.

From Beechworth to Turkey this book was a great read. Loved the characters of Jack and Cem and wanted to see where life took them. This is a book about love, honour and belonging and finding out who they were and whether the gossips in Beechworth were true, who really was Jack's father. Highly recommend this debut novel. 

The Summer Read - Leap

What’s it about?

Joe lives—despite himself. Driven by the need to atone for the neglect of a single tragic summer’s night, he works at nothing jobs and, in his spare time, trains his body and mind to conquer the hostile environment that took his love and smashed up his future. So when a breathless girl turns up on the doorstep, why does he let her in? Isn’t he done with love and hope?

On the other side of the city, graphic designer Elise is watching her marriage bleed out. She retreats to the only place that holds any meaning for her—the tiger enclosure at the zoo—where, for reasons she barely understands, she starts to sketch the beautiful killers. 

LEAP is a beautiful urban fairytale about human and animal nature, and the transformative power of grief. While at its heart is a searing absence, this haunting and addictive novel is propelled by an exhilarating life force, and the eternally hopeful promise of redemptive love.

Why read it? 

Review courtesy Alan Vaarwerk (editorial assistant at Readings Monthly http://www.readings.com.au/review/leap-by-myfanwy-jones)

Three years on from a tragedy that claimed the love of his life, twenty-something Joe loses himself in menial work, parkour and his mentorship of a teenage delinquent, using burnout and exhaustion as a coping mechanism. When a beautiful nurse temporarily moves into his spare room and a mysterious Facebook profile wants to reminisce about his dead girlfriend, he begins to wonder if there is more out there for him.

Meanwhile, middle-aged artist Elise becomes obsessed with the tigers at Melbourne Zoo, visiting them in a secret weekly ritual that allows her an escape from her crumbling marriage and her own spiralling sense of loss that threatens to overtake everything.

Myfanwy Jones’ writing pulses, pushed along with an irrepressible dynamism that echoes its protagonists. Rather than wallowing in self-pity or drug-addled self-destruction, what makes Joe’s character so compelling is his nihilistic energy and battle against his own ambition.

Jones captures with a real clarity the swirling mix of rage, hope and world-weariness of the millennial male. This energy make’s Joe’s narrative arguably the stronger of the two, but it’s thrown into relief by Elise’s quieter, more introspective storyline.

The women in Joe’s life, to varying degrees, seem intent on redeeming him – pushing back against his guilt, grief and insistence that he’s not worth their trouble. The nurse who moves in is unnamed and interacts with no-one else in the novel – deliberately one-dimensional, transient, barely real. But then there are other characters, like Joe’s co-worker Lena, so vibrant and full of life they practically leap off the page.

While the narrative at times feels a little crowded with motifs and characters, some left unresolved, each element is enjoyable and contributes to the boisterous, buzzing tone of the novel. Stylistically similar to the most recent novels of Chris Flynn and Chris Womersley, Leap is a pleasure to read and a compelling piece of Australian contemporary fiction.

The Summer Read - Bad Behaviour

What's it about?

It should have been a time of acquiring confidence, building self respect and independence, of fostering a connection with the natural world through long hikes. A gripping, compulsively readable memoir of bullying at an elite country boarding school.

It is night. They move with such stealth they could be almost floating along the road. I can't see faces, just the outline of their movement. But when the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, bathing the road in an urgent sort of light, I see how they're all gazing up towards me.

'They're coming back,' I murmur. I turn to Kendall, and she puts her sewing aside, eyes on me. They never waiver.

It was supposed to be a place where teenagers would learn resilience, confidence and independence, where long hikes and runs in the bush would make their bodies strong and foster a connection with the natural world. Living in bare wooden huts, cut off from the outside world, the students would experience a very different kind of schooling, one intended to have a strong influence over the kind of adults they would eventually become.

Fourteen-year-old Rebecca Starford spent a year at this school in the bush. In her boarding house sixteen girls were left largely unsupervised, a combination of the worst behaved students and some of the most socially vulnerable. As everyone tried to fit in and cope with their feelings of isolation and homesickness, Rebecca found herself joining ranks with the powerful girls, becoming both a participant--and later a victim-- of various forms of bullying and aggression.

Bad Behaviour tells the story of that year, a time of friendship and joy, but also of shame and fear. It explores how those crucial experiences affected Rebecca as an adult and shaped her future relationships, and asks courageous questions about the nature of female friendship.

Moving, wise and painfully honest, this extraordinary memoir shows how bad behaviour from childhood, in all its forms, can be so often and so easily repeated throughout our adult lives.

Why Should you read it?

Review by Annie Condon (bookseller at Readings Hawthorn http://www.readings.com.au/products/19009467/bad-behaviour-a-memoir-of-bullying-and-boarding-school). 

This is one of the most anticipated Australian books of 2015. Within minutes of reading, I was hooked. Rebecca Starford writes about her experience as a fourteen-year-old at a prestigious Melbourne school’s outdoor education campus. Rebecca was a scholarship student – clever, obedient, but with wavering confidence and the feeling of being an outsider. She shared a campus house for a year with fourteen other girls, including two, Portia and Ronnie, who were rumoured to be trouble makers. Rebecca found herself drawn to Portia, who was confident, loud, and manipulative. When Portia sought out Rebecca’s friendship, Rebecca was thrilled and her behaviour changed. She talked back to teachers, broke campus rules, and was regularly in detention. Rebecca’s father was called to the campus for a meeting, and together they were told her scholarship was at risk. When the girls begin victimising another girl, Kendall, Rebecca felt uncomfortable yet powerless. The bullying was relentless, and culminates in some shocking events.

Starford weaves the drama of that school year with her post-school life. This is a brave memoir as she examines her history of being enthralled by female friends with strong personalities and how this affected her during that particular year, and later in sexual relationships. I had expected the book to feature Starford solely as a victim of bullying (and she does become a victim for a period when Portia inevitably turns on her) but she demonstrates little self-pity. This is a wonderful book, and will provide great fodder for book groups. It raises thoughtful questions about the nature of female friendships, the realities and repercussions of bullying, and the role of schools in monitoring and maintaining student wellbeing.

The Summer Read - Certain Admissions

GIDEON HAIGH WILL BE APPEARING AT THE KILMORE LIBRARY ON 24 FEBRUARY at 6.30pm. BOOKINGS VIA EVENTBRITE

Why should you read it?

This is a true crime book based on a famous 1949 murder trail in Melbourne. John Kerr the man accused denies he confessed to Beth Williams murder. 

The trails drew unparalleled public crowds. As a prisoner Kerr became a celebrity for rehabilitation. The after his death another man confesses to the murder. Was he guilty?

Well researched and very readable it l leaves you to draw your own conclusion based on the facts and information available at the time.

What's it about? (from penguin Australia)

Certain Admissions is Australian true crime at its best, and stranger than any crime fiction.  It is real-life police procedural, courtroom drama, family saga, investigative journalism, social history, archival treasure hunt - a meditation, too, on how the past shapes the present, and the present the past.

On a warm evening in December 1949, two young people met by chance under the clocks at Flinders Street railway station. They decided to have a night on the town. The next morning, one of them, twenty-year-old typist Beth Williams, was found dead on Albert Park Beach. When police arrested the other, Australia was transfixed: twenty-four-year-old John Bryan Kerr was a son of the establishment, a suave and handsome commercial radio star educated at Scotch College, and Harold Holt's next-door neighbour in Toorak.

Police said he had confessed.  Kerr denied it steadfastly.  There were three dramatic trials attended by enormous crowds, a relentless public campaign proclaiming his innocence involving the first editorials against capital punishment in Australia.  For more than a decade Kerr was a Pentridge celebrity, a poster boy for rehabilitation – a fame that burdened him the rest of his life.  Then, shortly after his death, another man confessed to having murdered Williams.  But could he be believed?

'Haigh's work is a mesmerising detective story itself . . . [it] finds a new twist in the archives.' The Saturday Paper

'A beautifully written, tirelessly researched and ultimately very compelling and true story . . . Fascinating and tragic.' Herald Sun

'The trial of John Bryan Kerr was the first murder trial that I read about in detail, as a boy of eleven. I longed, even then, to know the whole story.   Gideon Haigh's book has made the wait worthwhile.' Gerald Murnane

'Gideon Haigh understands the real tragedy of murder - it is never really solved.'  P. M. Newton