A book about books by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom. Explore inside the greatest library on earth!
A fascinating journey through literature via Shakespeare, Bronte sisters, Brothers Grimm, Dickens, Lewis Carroll and many others included at The British Library. Opening the pages of Books! Books! Books! is like stepping into The British Library itself in London. An enormous building full of hidden treasures and packed with books. Visit the cafe with a wall of very old books stretching from the ground floor to the second floor.
Mick Manning and Brita Granstorm work in partnership, this intriguing book is full of information and illustration; from man-eating monsters to lost children, from magical creatures to flying machines. Mick and Brita’s Facebook page shows some of their award-winning titles, such as What Mr Darwin Saw, The Beatles and William Shakespeare.
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Otter-Barry Books has created and published this beautiful hardback book, which children of many ages will enjoy reading and adults too.
The book will act as a pathway for children to venture into libraries and explore, to follow their imaginations learning along the way.
We recommend for all ages and for adults too!
Sue Martin
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
A magnificent visual retelling of the classic ballet story from a much-loved, award-winning Australian illustrator.
Swan Lake is an incredible book, in style, illustration and emotional involvement.
Taken from the iconic ballet of Swan Lake telling the tragic love story of a princess transformed into a swan by an evil sorcerer. In this atmospheric adaptation, Anne Spudvilas re-imagines the classic tale of passion, betrayal and heartbreak in the dramatic riverscape of the Murray-Darling.
Like a ballet the story emerges without words, and captures all the tension, heartbreak and love with the inevitable finale or end. It has a different twist in this adaptation! The book, as the ballet, is in three acts with an explanation of the events that follow.
The illustrations are truly magical, with many dark tones and a minimal use of a colour palette, enormously effective.
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Anne Spudvilas is one of Australia’s most talented visual artists. Her illustrations are full of emotion and beauty. Anne’s Swan Lake is simply enchanting and sublime!’ Li Cunxin, author of Mao’s Last Dancer and Artistic Director, Queensland Ballet
Anne Spudvilas is a multi-award-winning illustrator of children’s books and an established portrait painter and print-maker. Her first picture book, The Race by Christobel Mattingley, was awarded the Crichton Award for Illustration and was a Childrens’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book.
Anne’s move to the Murray River has inspired her latest book, an illustrated retelling of the classic ballet story Swan Lake. She lives in Wentworth, where the Murray and Darling rivers meet, surrounded by birds and river red gums.
Published by Allen and Unwin, it was released in the UK earlier this year. Allen and Unwin have a remarkable portfolio and list of amazingly beautiful books and this is one which we are lucky to have in the UK.
Whether you are also a ballet fiend or not, this book is one to have.
Sue Martin
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
The first things you will notice about ‘The Stuff You Should Know’ are the really good illustrations and the interesting use of text, there are questions that you never ask but the answers are fascinating.
What happens when you tweet on Twitter?
What happens when you recycle your drinks can?
What happens when you charge your iPad?
This book is packed with so many answers and you will become full of knowledge! There is a page, for example, on Sending Mail, with the issues around transport and deliveries to rural areas, using postcodes and barcodes to get the letter to the right place.
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The double page open spread on Using a Mobile Phone is amazing!
Fact – by 2015 around 2.7 billion people worldwide owned a smart phone and it is now one of the most important gadgets on the planet.
The book describes the operating system, the battery, USB connector, the Sim card, touchscreen technology, emails, apps, music, location services, games and much more. For instance, when you touch the screen it interrupts a current of electricity informing the phone where your fingers are, it’s called capacitive touchscreen!
John Farndon is an internationally known author, as well as a playwright, composer and songwriter. He has written hundreds of books, which have sold millions of copies around the world in most major languages and include many best-sellers, such as the award-winning Do Not Open.
Rob Beattieis a professional writer and life-long camper and angler. He has written numerous titles on a wide range of outdoor activities, including: The Pocket Survival Guide, The Campsite Companion: All You Need to Know for Life in the Great Outdoors, The Boating Companion: All You Need to Know for Life on the Open Water, and The Fishing Handbook(published in the UK as 101 Golden Rules of Fishing). All have been published internationally and translated into several languages. He lives in the seaside city of Brighton, England.
STEVE FRICKER is a renowned illustrator and painter. Awarded the Rhone-Poulenc prize for his illustrations for What Happens When? His work has appeared in many of the worlds leading newspapers and magazines as well as private and National collections. Steve studied painting at Chelsea School of Art .He worked for 25 years as a political cartoonist and illustrated comment pages by Tony Blair, John Major and Boris Johnson and many others.
This book, published by Marshall Editions, part of Quarto Knows, is a great way to find out information and then maybe find out more on the internet too. It will be great for the summer holidays and I think parents will have as much fun with this as any child.
And now to find out about jet engines!!
Sue Martin
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
Jumping betwixt Australia, China, Hong Kong and the UK!
Kellett School year 5’s had just returned from Beijing in May 2018 when they joined Books Go Walkabout ‘skyping’ to Carole Wilkinson, award-winning Australian author, her Dragonkeeper series is set in Ancient China.
The year 5 students at Kowloon Bay campus of Kellett School were intrigued with Carole’s presentation showing drawings and research, especially the drawing of an Emperor taking his dragon for a walk, his body curled around and walking side by side.
The hour-long session covered a whole host of creative writing thoughts and possibilities,conversations about writing, story ideas, and characters. Dragonkeeper is now being made into a movie, it is now two years from starting and two years until completion. Very exciting and maybe two years is not too long to wait?
There be dragons!
Dragonkeeper is a fantasy story about a slave girls who saves the life of an ageing dragon, and escapes her brutal master.
Pursued by a ruthless dragon hunter, the girls and the dragon, make an epic journey across China in 141BC, carrying a mysterious stone that must be protected. There are seven books in the series plus an introduction book, a great read and some of the students have already read the first five books.
Enjoying the book…
Kellett year 5 students had already completed some brilliant writing projects about characters and the story-line.
Books Go Walkabout provides more than just an author, we work with the school to ensure that there is great benefit to school and students and that there are curriculum matches to enhance attainment and enjoyment too.
Looking forward to more ‘skyping’ across the world.
Sue Martin
Skype is a trademark of the Microsoft Corporation
Discover a world of authors, illustrators and readers!
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
Welcome to the greatest show on earth, featuring the most tremendous trees and tiniest seeds, flowers masquerading as twinkling stars and very confused fruit and vegetables!
This is an incredible, non-edible, fun-loving and intellectually desirable book about plants! Plants from all over the world, chosen for their unique traits and characteristics, their abilities in disguise, and captivation, who is the cleverest, the plants or the insects?
Discover the ‘evergreens’, the ‘edibles’, the ‘elderly’ plants that have outlived the dinosaurs.
The budding naturalists among the students will be absorbed totally by the quirky text, wealth of fascinating information and stylish illustrations. Watch out for the section on poisonous plants, which is led by an illustration of a skeleton in clothes; it includes plants such as Feverfew, Henbane and Strychnine tree.
It is a book that I keep picking up and reading from, remembering the bite sized pieces of information.
Adrienne Barman is the author and illustrator and produces very colourful and stylish work. She lives in Geneva having illustrated many books.
WideEyed is part of the QuartoKnows publishing group and has an amazingly interesting list of children’s books.
We thoroughly recommend this book for schools and libraries and especially for the families kitchen table, a book to have and to dip into, it will be a joy to have.
Sue Martin
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
Are books too scary? Can we iron out the monsters? Should we face the monsters alone?
Some of the questions which Frances eloquently suggested to the audience, why do we think children should not be given answers, but left with the monster lurking, when we just want them to be safe and not to think about scary things?
Frances’s novels, which include The Lie Tree, The Cuckoo Song and A Skinful of Shadows are full of shadows and half glimpsed faces, things which in the dark are scary. Adults tend to come in and put on the light and explain that there is nothing to be scared of, but when the light goes out, Frances explained that the scary monster is back. Frances recalled how she had first read The Shadow Cage by Philippa Pearce and it had struck a deep chord.
Children’s fiction has a wealth of unseen things, some are cowed and shrouded, faceless and use of nonsense words and vague descriptions, for example the Jabberwocky the work of Lewis Carroll. In Victorian children’s books, Frances explained that monsters would be used to impose sanctions, e.g. the monster will get you. Stormtroopers of fear and imagination, the use of cautionary tales.
In today’s world of books for children there is a wealth of material which brings in darkness and scariness, the fear and the imagination of children and young people, for example, Harry Potter and the dementors. We can try to iron out the monsters, we can offer daytime explanations but there remains some uncanny gravitas which no electric light bulb can help!
Frances also pointed out that all children’s authors are adult but maybe it is the inner-self that is still part of the childhood.
A thought-provoking lecture and Frances Hardinge gave an excellent informative journey through the materials on the dark side.
Francis Hardinge at Homerton College, Cambridge to deliver the 2018 Philipp Pearce Lecture
Sue Martin
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
When Benji and Bel find a strange creature on a tropical beach they know it is a dugong. But the dugong insists she is a beautiful mermaid.
After many attempts to convince the children that she really is a mermaid the dugong swims away with her tail splashing into the warm ocean.
Bel believes her but Benji is very practical and just can’t make the connection. But they all play together with the turtles, and the fishes.
At the end of the day as the sun is disappearing, and the illustrations become gradually softer, the dugong says goodbye to Bel and Benji.
“I have to go,” she said. “Mermaids never stay out after dark!”
The last page is a beautiful purple colour and Ben and Benji walk home in the sunset along the beach to the little wooden cabin.
“I love mermaids!” said Bel. “Me too,” said Benji.
The first picture book from Candy Gourlay, whose acclaimed novels for young readers, Tall Story and Shine have been listed for the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian’s Children’s Book Prize and both won the Crystal Prize for Europe.
Candy Gourlay is from the Philippines and grew up in Manila. As a child she often wondered why the books that she loved reading were all about pink skinned children and snow covered mountains, it was not like that in the Philippines. So she was determined to become an author and make some changes to the stereotypes.
At Books Go Walkabout, we work in many countries and these aims reflect our own, for books and stories to be meaningful to all children. There are always stories to be told wherever you are.
Francesca Chessa has illustrated over 40 books, including Elliot’s Arctic Surprise and Library Lily. She lives in Turin and holds art workshops for children and adults.
Otter-Barry Books in London, is an exciting children’s imprint making a difference and pushing boundaries of the standard book publishers.
We strongly recommend, Is it a Mermaid? The text and the beautiful illustrations will make it a favourite in schools, libraries nurseries and at home.
Sue Martin
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
This is the first book from Action for Happiness, written Vanessa King and illustrated by Celeste Aires. It is packed with wonderful ideas, to feel happy and to sustain happiness.
Action for Happiness is a global, social movement to promote happiness and well-being. The Dalai Lama is patron and his book The Art of Happiness is also a great read.
The book is divided into sections including; giving,relating, awareness, exercising,resilience, emotions and acceptance. Each page is well crafted with ideas and good illustrations showing just how the ideas will work. Becoming a kindness detective for example or ‘trying a mindful moment’ will help your mind and body to relax and feel positive.
Well-being is something that we are all aware off now, and is included in PSE school curricula. 50 Ways to Feel Happy is an excellent book for schools and can be used as a tool for engaging all children , especially where children are not as positive as others. It will really help.
Vanessa King is an author and expert in positive psychology and has worked extensively on enhancing well-being and resilience. In this book she was supported by Val Payne a teacher and education consultant and Peter Harper a consultant clinical psychologist. Vanessa gives an excellent TED talk on The Ten Keys to Happier Living
Celeste Aires is an Argentinian born illustrator, her modern style uses geometric shapes and bright blocks of colours, which work really well in this book.
QuartoKids are the publishers and have a wealth of excellent non-fiction titles which are engaging and informative.
50 Ways to Feel Happy would be a great book for schools and for home, there are times for all of us when we need a little way into happiness.
Sue Martin
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
The whale and the bear are the latest books to join the ’10 Reasons to Love’ series. Beautiful books, in hardback with an endearing whale or bear shaped hole in the cover, just waiting to be opened.
The combination of text and illustrations works really well, providing facts and interesting features, things that you will remember.
Did you know that whales are the original globetrotters? They travel from the polar regions to the equator and on their way, eat 40 million krill every day!
Buy this book here…
Bears wiggle and dance scratching their backs against a tree and pandas even do hand stands to leave the right mark!
The books deal with environmental issues and conservation and enable the reader to understand and love more about the animal. They are a perfect match for school work or just for reading at home.
Catherine Barr is the author, and has a long running interest in environmental campaigns, working with Greenpeace and as an editor at The Natural History Museum.
Hanako Clulow, the illustrator, left Japan for Ireland in 1997 and studied visual arts and English. her art work draws on her huge interest in nature and animal kingdoms.
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
This is a book with a difference, it’s a graphic novel in hardback, with an incredible number of drawings, vividly brought to life in black and white to tell this amazing story of Kid, his music his kidnap and all the characters who appear on the way.
Kid Glovz is a musical genius. His gift is so precious that he’s kept under lock and key. But when a young thief helps him escape, Kid must embark on a perilous journey through which he will discover the terrifying nature of his talent. A spellbinding graphic fable about friendship and freedom.
The story is full of mystery, an adventure with real danger and otherworldliness, a gripping tug-of-war between the forces of good and evil. It is a beautifully produced graphic novel for children, and on Julie’s website you can read the background to the story.
The author, award-winning Julie Hunt has written some amazing titles, including Little Else and a Song for Scarlet Runner. She lives on a farm in Southern Tasmania, she has a love of dramatic landscapes and has used these to build stories full of imagination and intrigue.
Dale Newman’s stunning artwork is reminiscent of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival and has the same air of foreboding in many of the pictures. Kid Glovz is her first epic graphic novel and a stunning start to a career in children’s books. She lives in New South Wales, Australia and is also used to some amazing landscapes.
Allen and Unwin, Australian publishers have a star packed book list and KidGlovz is bound to be a great success. In Australia it has already won 2016 QLD Premier’s Literary Awards, Children’s Books and short-listed for 2016 CBCA Book of the Year, Crichton Award for New Illustrators
Books Go Walkabout recommend KidGlovz for children aged about 9+ and for adults too.
Sue Martin
Bookmonitor is our news source for reviews and project information.
Books go Walkabout is our international books and literacy project - connecting authors and illustrators with children and young people around the globe.
We use Stripe to handle your e-purchase. Buy with confidence from BgW. Customer FAQ's here.
