CATEGORIES

Many of my generation (sadly not all) and those of the next, fortunately have not endured the atrocities of war like those seen during the Holocaust. That we are able to feel its impact, appreciate the drama and acknowledge its implications is the unique potency of a picture book. Margret Wild and Freya Blackwood exploit [...]

The life of a modern day family is buzzing and full to capacity – swimming lessons, practice for the spelling bee, signing the homework book, playing the violin, getting the grocery shopping done, working late . . . It’s a whirlwind of activity almost all of us know so well. Some of it is a [...]

Outgoing global CEO of Pearson (parent company to Penguin and The Financial Times) Dame Marjorie Scardino reckons that 50 years from now, her company is unlikely produce any more printed products – quite a statement considering many in the industry believe ebooks will never replace the printed book entirely.

Author Ursula Dubosarsky? Check. Illustrator Andrew Joyner? Check. Elephants? Check. But not too many at all. In fact, this book wouldn’t be even half way as cool if it didn’t have simply too many elephants, which raises the question: can anyone really have too many elephants? Eric really likes elephants. He has them everywhere. In [...]

‘Woohoo! I’m going to Antarctica!’ Can you imagine? Hang the snow-white ice, I’m turning jungle green that this nine-year-old is in for the experience of a lifetime – something many adults would knock polar bears over for. Oh wait – make that penguins – because there are no polar bears in Antarctica, you see. Only [...]

Loving any book set in Paris, but even better when an adorable little puppy dog named Pom Pom is involved. Pom Pom lives in a tall building in the heart of Paris. Every day, Henriette and her parents, walk him down the Rue Sainte-Geneviève to the post office. Keen to see ‘more of the world’, [...]

Okay, I’ll admit it – if there’s one book series I wish I wrote, it’s Ursula Dubosarky’s The Word Spy. And to have Tohby Riddle illustrate, too – well. Yes, I’m green. I love Dubosarsky’s enormously clever take on the English language via her Word Spy character. Not only has she made grammar, punctuation and [...]

It’s so nice to hold a new Stephen Michael King book in your hands. It always has that squeal-with-glee feel to it. The illustrations are so iconic, the language is always utterly heartfelt, and the characters that lovely combination of meltingly sweet, and strong. Ren is outdoors, sitting under her favourite tree. She is a [...]

Google has announced that it will power ebook offerings from national retail chains The Co-op Bookshop (which sells primarily academic and trade books on-campus) and QBD The Bookshop (a clearing house and discount specialist) soon (in addition to those of launch partners Dymocks and Booktopia, whose Google eBooks-fed sites went live three weeks ago). Like [...]

I’ve got to admit I didn’t expect to be laughing at myself while reading Penguin 75, but then again, but I guess that’s what you get for doing something by halves (I almost wrote ‘half-assed’, but then told myself this was a family-friendly blog). I’d vaguely heard there was a book about the history of [...]

Irony is finding out that after months of moaning and moping about (and subjecting others to it) that there’s a new book coming out in the series you desperately love, then realising that you will neither be in the country when it’s released. Nor will you—even if you somehow manage to get it into your [...]

iHarry is a hilarious new children’s book by Australian author, Laurine Croasdale. It hardly seems fair. Harry’s dad designs mobile phones and Harry must be the only kid on the planet who’s not allowed to have one. So when Dad is bedridden for a week after an accident on Harry’s skateboard, Harry makes the most [...]

Today at Kids’ book Capers, we’re talking with Australian Children’s author, Laurine Croasdale, about her writing journey and the inspiration behind her new Aussie Chomp, iHarry Laurine has published around fifteen books in a range of genres and topics. ABOUT LAURINE * Laurine started by selling ideas for non-fiction for kids, such as game books [...]

MEET LETTY’S CREATOR, ALISON LLOYD Alison Lloyd is an immigrant Australian girl too. She came on a plane from the USA with her family and enjoyed making mud pies, playing dress-ups and reading. Writing the four Our Australian Girl Letty books felt a lot like pretending to live in the olden days and travelling by [...]

News has surfaced this week of two surprising defections from rapidly entrenched sides in the Great Publishing Wars of 2011™. In the red corner is the reluctant indie/self-publishing darling Amanda Hocking, author of several self-published ebooks and POD (print on demand) dead tree titles. Hocking recently announced she had sold over a hundred thousand copies of [...]

It’s hard enough being a twelve-year-old and having to deal with teasing from the school bully because your parents have given you the unfortunate name of Lily Padd. But when Lily is forced to give up her bedroom for the French exchange student and share with her younger and annoying twin sisters, she thinks that [...]

Today we’re pleased to welcome debut author, Angela Sunde to Kids’ Book Capers. Angela is stopping here on a blog tour with her new book, Pond Magic and she’s going to be chatting with us about her life as a writer and where her ideas come from. Hi Dee, It’s so nice to be here [...]

Wow – look at this demo of digitised books on the iPad… I think I just got sold on the concept (well… on all books except novels). [via Gizmondo].

This month, Boomerang Books are giving you more chances to win! Alongside our regular monthly giveaway and our Facebook-exclusive giveaway, to celebrate August being the month of the Children’s Book Council Australia’s Book Week, we have a special children’s prize pack to giveaway. AUGUST MAJOR GIVEAWAY This month’s prize pack is an eclectic mix set [...]