 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher, and today I am here with some reviews of new children's and young adult titles that are coming out from Fremantle Press this week. So Fremantle Press is a publishing house over in Western Australia, and they always have some really fantastic titles. And this month they sent me two for review, which is so nice of them. So thank you very much to Fremantle Press. Both of these released on October 31st, so they're very new books, and they are just wonderful. So I'm going to start with the picture book first and then go into the young adult title. The first book I received was Crow Baby by Helen Milroy. So this is a picture book, and this is an Indigenous or the writing and Indigenous story. This is Crow Baby, and she's born with two spirits, and so she lives across two worlds. She has her human family and she has the crow clan. She lives as a human, but in her dreams she's able to fly with her crow clan, and you know, she's content with that. She's able to visit her family in her dreams as a crow, and they know that it's her, and there's a lot of comfort in that. But then one day there's a tragedy, and she needs to warn her family, and the only way to warn them is to fly while she's awake. And to do that means risking never being able to turn back into a human. And so she makes the choice to save everyone that she loves, and so she flies and she warns them, but she is now a crow permanently, and so she lives with the crow clan. But just as she was able to visit her family as a crow in her dreams, that she's now able to visit them as her human self in their dreams. It was just a really beautiful story. I haven't read one quite like this. Helen Milroy's books are always beautiful. They're always very gorgeously illustrated. Like it's just a it's a beautifully bright story, despite the difficult decisions that Crow Baby has to make through the stories. She does it with love for the people that she cares about. For her family, she knows it's a tough choice. She knows it's one that she might have to make someday. In many ways, it's both a sacrifice and a gift at the same time. And it's the perfect book to talk to kids about embracing the gifts that you have in celebrating your strengths and celebrating family and friendship. And most of all, it's just a beautiful, beautiful book and beautiful story. Helen Milroy's writing is always fantastic. So thank you to Fremantle Press for Crow Baby. This was gorgeous. And then the young adult title they sent me is actually an anthology. This is an Unexpected Party, Queer Speculative YA Fiction. This collection is edited by Seth Malakari, and this features 18 different emerging young adult writers. And all of the stories in here highlight queer identity. They challenge stereotypes. They uplift these voices and look at the intersections of people's identities. And because it's a speculative collection of stories, we have magic. We have magical realism. We have sci-fi elements, dystopian elements in here. There would be a story in here for everyone. They're all fairly short and easy reads because it is a short story collection. And I think what is really interesting about this one is that for a queer YA anthology, this does not center romance as the major plot point. The speculative elements are the highlights, which is nice to see in young adult, because so often now we get a lot of contemporary YA exploring young romance and things like that. Whereas this is a collection of very unique stories, and it was just wonderful to read. Because this is an own voices collection, there are trans and gender diverse voices within the book. We have representation across the entire LGBTQIA plus spectrum in terms of both authors and characters, which is amazing. And I love to see it. And I think what's really exciting about this is that I was reading through the notes that Fremantle Press sent with this book. Some of the authors within here are also going to have further works published coming in the next couple of years, which is amazing. Because the great thing about anthologies is discovering new authors and new voices that you want to read moving forward. So I'm very excited to see the stories that are coming out of Fremantle Press in the future, featuring many of these authors. I love anthologies a whole lot, because there's so much opportunity to explore a wide range of topics and stories and storytelling styles. So yes, I had a great time with this. So thank you Fremantle Press for sending it to me. I didn't know I needed it in my life. And clearly I did. I will leave both of these books listed down below so that you can check out more information if you're interested in reading them in the future. Please add them to your TBR, they're great. I'd love to know if you are planning on picking up either of these books or if you have recommendations that are similar, feel free to leave those down below. If you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't leave a comment, feel free to leave a feather emoji. Otherwise I hope or if you're on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Bye everyone.