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Mailbox Monday: 30 October
Hello and happy Monday everyone! I’ve had a run of lovely bookmail lately, which is both exciting and perfectly timed since I’m starting to work on some gift guides. One title that arrived last week that I’m particularly pleased to have in my hands is The Rest is History by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. I love Tom and Dominic’s podcast (also called The Rest is History) – it’s our regular commute listen, and we always find it super entertaining as well as educational. In fact, I’m such a fan that I’ve booked tickets to see the guys on their tour through Australia in November. Naturally I was thrilled to…
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KIDLIT :: THE BUSHFIRE BOOK :: Polly Marsden & Chris Nixon
My 6 year old has been quite nervous about fire since the bushfires that burned across Australia last summer – worrying about it even during the winter months. I wasn’t really sure how we would deal with moving into the upcoming summer and fire season, so I was really pleased to receive a copy of The Bushfire Book: How to be Aware and Prepare from Lothian Children’s Books – it was one of the books on our Aussie Bookstagang Best of 2020 picture books shortlist. The book is described on the back cover as being “a practical and reassuring guide to bushfires for kids so they can be prepared not…
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Review :: More Than a Kick :: Tayla Harris
I love footy. I grew up in Victoria, I barracked for the Hawks and was crazy for anything with brown and gold stripes. I obsessed over the games and the stats and the players. I never had a chance to play – it actually never occurred to me that I could! I can honestly say that seeing the creation of the AFLW, a national competition for women, and the development pathways put in place for girls to get there has been one of the absolute joys of my life for the past few years. I still cry at some point during most games. One of the less nice (totally gross)…
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Kidlit :: Fantastically Great Women Who Saved the Planet :: Kate Pankhurst
Hello and happy International Woman’s Day! I have always loved reading stories about wonderful women, and now as a mum it’s really important to me to share those sorts of stories with my daughter. Luckily there’s a bunch of amazing kids’ books around that put the spotlight on women and their achievements. This one, Fantastically Great Women Who Saved the Planet by Kate Pankhurst, arrived in my letterbox a few weeks ago and became an instant favourite in our house (my daughter begged my to read it with her literally the very moment we opened the package!). Here’s some info about it from the Bloomsbury website: From bestselling author and…
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Review :: Marvel Museum: The Story of the Comics
Another book that I think would make a fantastic gift tonight – Marvel Museum: The Story of the Comics, which is new out from Scholastic (who kindly sent me this copy). This book is a thing of beauty – it is a large format, with a hardcover, and really fun endpapers inside the front cover, which I think make it that bit more special. The book itself is filled with beautiful artwork from a range of Marvel comics including The Avengers, Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, and loads more. The text gives behind the scenes information about the artwork and history of the characters, as well as Marvel as…
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Book Stack :: Nonfiction November
I’m terrible at reading nonfiction. I didn’t realise quite how little of it I read until I was looking through my Goodreads shelves to see what titles I’d read lately and saw that I haven’t read a single nonfiction book this year, and I think I only one or maybe two last year. For the past week or so my Instagram feed has been filled with photos my friends are sharing of their tbr stacks for nonfiction November, and I’ve been inspired to make more of an effort to pick up some of the nonfiction books I’ve been meaning to read. I came up with this little selection of books…
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#kidlit :: travel books
One of the things we look forward to every month is the arrival of our Inspire Book Box. Each box is packed with books, activities, and ideas around a particular theme. There have been a few months where the theme has been absolutely perfectly timed for us – August was one of these. We had just decided to go on a holiday to North America over Christmas when it was announced that the month’s theme would be travel and adventure! With planning now well underway (we even have all our flights and most of our accommodation booked!) we’ve been collecting books about travel to read and discuss with Amelia (who…
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#BookishBloggersUnite :: Books for high school graduates
What is it with March? I feel like I’m at least a week behind in my life all of a sudden! Someone told me that they think March is kind of like the Monday of months, and everyone I’ve talked to about it since has agreed. In any case, here I am – a week since my last post – and today I’m joining in with last weekend’s #BookishBloggersUnite prompt, hosted this time by Katy at the Bookish Cronk, which was to talk about books you would give as gifts to high school graduates. Make sure you pop over to Katy’s post to check out the other responses. One book…
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True story :: non-fiction books & memoirs
This month I’m participating in Book Riot‘s photo challenge #riotgrams over on Instagram and today’s photo prompt is ‘True Stories’. To be honest, I’ve really only started reading non-fiction, including memoirs and biographies, pretty recently – and mostly thanks to tasks in the 2016 and 2017 Book Riot Read Harder Challenges. Today’s photo prompt got me thinking about some of the non-fiction I have really loved reading over the past 6 months or so, and so I thought I’d share here three of the best non-fiction books I’ve read recently(ish)… The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks I actually read this one almost exactly a year ago! The story of Henrietta Lacks is horrifying and…
