 Hi everyone, my name is Steph. This is Little Bookish Teacher and today I'd like to share a quick review of My Brother Ben by Peter Cannabis. This is a middle grade fiction title. As you can tell it's been nominated and won a variety of awards, including being a notable for the CBCA. It was a finalist in the Queensland Literary Awards and won the New South Wales Premiers Literary Awards in 2022. It is a very gorgeous story about the bonds of brotherhood. I'm going to start off with the synopsis and then I'm going to share my thoughts with you. Luke and his big brother Ben spend the summer on the banks of Cabbage Tree Creek. Quiet Luke sketches birds while Ben leaps off the jumping tree. The boys couldn't be more different but they share the same dream, winning a boat so they can explore the creek properly. Then Ben starts high school and the boys drift apart. When Luke catches Ben sneaking out one night, he knows his brother's up to something. But what? A timeless story of birds and boats and of brotherly love that is bigger than a wedge-tailed eagle bigger than the sky. This, as I said, is an absolutely gorgeous book. So we start off in the summertime and we figure out pretty quickly that Ben and Luke are very, very close. Luke absolutely loves birds and spends all of his time learning about them and drawing them. We also learn that their parents have separated fairly recently and that Ben is still in contact with their dad but Luke is really struggling with that and he's not okay with contact at this point in time. Throughout the summer they get very excited about this competition but as Ben gets closer to starting high school their relationship dynamic changes quite a lot and once he starts they don't spend as much time together and this really upsets Luke because he's used to his big brother always being there. And throughout this book there's been this one book that Luke has been hearing that he can't identify because his way to enter this competition for this boat is to create a guidebook for all of the native birds in the area and this strange birdsong is just stumping him because he can't figure out what it is and that mystery sort of drives him through this story. And what I really appreciated about the book, aside from the beautiful language Peter Canaves is just a glorious writer, is one the way that Ben and Luke's relationship does evolve over time but also how Luke begins to come into his own and become stronger for it but also how despite the fact that so many things are changing in their lives they're still brothers and they still have each other's back and it was just lovely. So while we have Ben and Luke as our main characters Cabbage Tree Creek is also a huge character in this story and plays a really significant role in the book and it was really great to see the Australian Landscape showcased in that way. An absolutely glorious little book I will leave it linked down below. Thank you very much for listening to the review. I hope that you got something out of it and if you have any questions about the book feel free to leave it down below. If you'd like to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a bird emoji down below. Otherwise I hope that we're everywhere in the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.