 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher, and today I am here to share some recent reads with you. All of these books were sent to me for review by Alan and Unwin, so thank you very much to them for the review copies. One of these books came out on the 1st of August, the others are all coming out today on the 29th of August, so I thought it would be a great time to talk about them. The first one that I'll talk about is the book that came out on the 1st of August. It is Baby Day by Jane Godwin, Davina Bell, and Freya Blackwood, who are my like dream team author-illustrator combo. This is a children's board book, and it is written for younger readers. It is all about a baby's birthday, and the party that is held, the sort of the things that happen on birthdays, the highs, the lows, when kids get very overtired. There is so much fun and beautiful whimsy in this book. It is absolutely gorgeous. There's some great descriptive language, very, very short sentences for very small children, and it's about all of the friends who come over to celebrate this birthday, and it is just delightful. It is just a really beautiful little book, and it would make the perfect gift for someone who has a baby or for someone who has a baby who is, you know, maybe turning one. And it's just so lovely. Like the language in here is beautiful. It's a really gorgeous book. It's probably a bit young to have in a primary school setting, but definitely in early childhood. It will be a really wonderful book to have. I will be giving this to my niece, who is, when this video goes up, nearly three weeks old. So she's getting a very big collection of board books from some of my favorite authors. I also read a graphic novel called Lily Half Moon, The Magic Gems by Xavier Barnet, which I think is a translated work. This is a really gorgeous middle fiction graphic novel. It is full color. It has some really beautiful illustrations and a really lovely color palette. This is about Lily, who has recently moved with her family and is starting at a new school, and strange things have been happening to Lily. And it turns out she has magic, but she doesn't really know how to tell her family. She doesn't really know what to do with it. But when she starts at her new school, she makes some new friends who induct her into a magic school, which runs parallel with her regular school. She begins to learn how to use her abilities and there are some trials that she has to go through. And part of the trials is finding an animal companion and the special stone that sort of has properties that highlight what someone's abilities, magic abilities are. There is a little bit of action in here. There is a magical creature who sort of gets out of hand that has to be stopped and Lily and her friends get involved in that. But mostly it's a beautiful friend story of friendship, of finding out about yourself, growing into your powers, and it is really just a lovely graphic novel. There is a second one called The Witch's Council, which I wouldn't mind reading. So stay tuned, you'll probably hear more about this series from me because I thought this was great. Then we have two new Ando books. So the first one is Pow Pow Pig Six Snow Action, which is the next book in this serial series. So this series features a group of animal friends who were training to be heroes who can, you know, help save the world, but they don't make any of the first teams. They make the Z team and it just so happens at the start of the series that every other team is busy saving people and saving the world when a catastrophe strikes. And the only team available is the Z team. And they are tasked with traveling back in time to save the world. The only problem being that every time they get into their time travel machine they never end up in the right time period. So they've been way, way back in the past and in this one they end up back in 2010 and they end up at the North Pole where Santa is having a bit of a crisis because some of his reindeer have been taken. There is something wrong with the sleigh and also Santa is quite unwell at this point. And so Christmas is threatened and the Z team have to try and solve the mystery and help save Christmas. It's really fun. It's really entertaining. This is more of a junior fiction serial series. The text is quite big. Lots of words have been bolded and highlighted for kids so they know where the emphasis is. You also get stickers with the characters. It's really fun. I actually really enjoy this series. I think it's, it's really entertaining for younger readers. And then there is Rise of the Mythics. This is also book six in this series. It's called Prophecy's End. This one is more for middle grade readers in that it does have more text on the page. It has a slightly more complex storyline. We have the Mythics who are a group of humans who have special abilities. And throughout this series they are going up against the collector who collects human beings and basically freezes them in portraits. And so some of the Mythics have had people close to them taken and so they are trying to get them back. In the case of this book the mentor for the Mythics has dreamed of a prophecy around his partner who was taken and so they set off trying to free her. And along the way they meet some new allies, potential allies, and they have to go up against their enemy. All of Arndo's books are very action adventure focused. They are fast paced. They have lots and lots of things happening on each and every page. And they all end off on a cliffhanger because it's a serial. So you are designed, they're designed to keep you reading. They are also incredibly popular here in Australia. And then the last book that I have to talk about is A Friend for Ruby which is by Sophie Laguna and Mark McBride who write really awesome quirky picture books. I have talked about many of their collaborations before. If you're not familiar with Mark McBride he does the cover illustrations for the original Del Torre Quest books by Emily Rodder. This is the story of Ruby who is walking along the beach, so here's Ruby, and she stumps across this creature on the beach. And it looks lonely and it looks sad. And she is lonely and she doesn't have a lot of friends and she ends up taking this creature home with her and hiding it in a cubby. She doesn't tell any of her family that it's there and she spends a lot of time trying to look after it but it still looks sad. And eventually she needs to enlist the help of people around her including someone who she begins to build a friendship with, her family members as they try and find a way to get this creature home. And it was just a lovely book about friendship and about demonstrating compassion and kindness for others. And also just for recognising when people are trying to be your friend as well because that's an important part of the story. Hold it up here. The illustrations are really cool and intricate and you spend a lot of time sort of looking deep into them because there are a lot of components to them. It is quite text heavy for a picture book so it's written predominantly for an older audience but it was a really enjoyable book to read. There's some really lovely messages in here. All right so those are my recent reads. I'll leave links to them all down below. Everything except for baby days comes out on the 29th and I would also like to say a huge thank you to Alan and I'm one for sending me these books because I had the best time reading them. They were so fun and enjoyable and I love seeing the new kids books that are coming out because there is such great variety just even in this collection. In the comments I'd love to know if you're planning on picking any of these up or if you have recommendations for books that are similar. If you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave an ice cream emoji down below. Otherwise I hope that we're on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.