 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and today I'm going to be sharing some recent release kids books from Alan and Unwin. So these books were all sent to me for review and I'm really excited to share them with you. There are two Dune Fiction titles and a graphic novel picture book which I might start with because it's a really beautiful one. So this is Leaflight by Tracy Bella. This is a story about caring for each other and I've seen a lot of Tracy Bella's books around particularly in our school library and I thought they would just straight up picture books but they're actually graphic novels. There is so much detail and text on each page. I probably wouldn't recommend this one for reading aloud as a class unless you have a lot of time and you can actually put it under a projector or something like that to share it because it's quite text-heavy and quite detailed but it is a really beautiful story. So the blurb says, join Mary in her special spot high up among the dropped leaf light and below with her neighbour Wingo, two joeys, a wombat and a baby emu. A story about friendship taking down barriers and creating community, finding your own path in the world and inspiring others along the way from one of Australia's most unique creative talents. So this story is set on Jarrah Country here in Australia and it does include some really great references to First Nations culture and language throughout the book. So this is the story of Mary who lives in a really wonderful community and throughout this entire story this community becomes even closer and part of this is represented by the taking down of a fence and there are some really funny scenes about how these fence planks are used throughout the story. You have Mary who lives with her single mum, you have other members of the community who live in different family groups or in different ways. Not everyone lives in a house, there is a woman who lives on her own in a house truck and there is a family who foster injured wildlife and care for them and then release them to the community which is where all of the animals come into it. It's a really gorgeous story of community and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I especially love the thread of the emu. So one of the characters in the book finds an emu egg and together this community try to hatch it and to raise this emu and the emu plays a big part throughout the story and we get to see the emu grow throughout the story so that's a great way of you know creating a timeline. I absolutely love the illustrations in here. They're just very gorgeous to look at and I mean I love this. It's such a beautiful book and I am now planning on going out and reading as many other Tracy Ballard's books that I can find because clearly I have been missing out so I know what I'm doing next week at work. I am going to go and read the library so you will probably see more of these very soon. Then moving into the Junior Fiction titles there is The Champ versus The Werewolves by Arndo. This is the third book in the Champ series. This is another serial book and we have Summer who is a young girl who lives with her older brother who is in a wheelchair and they are raising each other. Her brother had plans I think of becoming a professional baseball player for memory but that has changed since his injury and since then Summer has also somehow acquired the super ability to be just pretty naturally good at any sport. When Summer's brother's birthday is coming up and she knows he needs a new phone because his is just broken and dying she sees that the local fair has a prize for a brand new phone if you earn the most tokens at the games throughout the day. So she hatches a plan to win this phone and that involves working alongside a friend to set up a stall and raise some money so that she has money to go and play the games and then win this prize for her brother. And of course there is another kid who is trying to beat her and goes about it in some unscrupulous ways as well as the magical antagonist who has been part of the series who will stop at nothing to reveal the identity of The Champ. This is a really fun series. I like the disability representation in this book and also the friendship representation in here is great. Summer is obviously battling between trying to outright win things while also trying not to reveal who she is as The Champ while also then having to try and save people in her Champ persona. But I do like that the main driver in this story was her doing something for her brother. They have a really great relationship. They take good care of each other and they care about each other and I appreciate that in the story. And the last book that I'm going to talk about is Jawsome by RJ Timmis. This is a bind up of two stories. The first one is Stagebite and the second one is Finvestigated. This is about a group of sharks who are friends and go to school together but they have a secret that people don't know about and that is that at night and on weekends they work together as the band Jawsome and they're very very popular, very very famous and their identities are a secret. In the first book, Stagebite, the lead singer of the band leaves them. She does not seem to be the nicest of sharks when she leaves but that leaves them with a gap and they have a show in three days and so they need someone to step up as the lead singer which enter Finley who is a fantastic singer but gets terrible terrible stage fright. And so this story is about him finding his courage and being able to take the stage. The second book is Finvestigated and it is about a new shark who has started at school who doesn't like Jawsome and is determined to uncover their identity and goes about it in some unscrupulous ways. There is also a mystery plot in the second book around the local chum factory being closed down which causes some distress to the characters. All of the sharks in this group are different types of sharks so we get shark information about them and their personalities really match the kind of sharks that they are. There are so many puns in here and I love a good pun. I think when they're done really well they can be really funny. This is a really entertaining, fun and easy read. The text is quite large, there's lots of illustration so it's very very engaging for those readers who are starting to read chapter novels and who enjoy you know entertaining stories with secret identities and particularly if they like sea animals. I mean this is great and I thought it was a whole lot of fun so I really really enjoyed this one. So those are some of my recent children's reads. I have thoroughly enjoyed them so thank you to Ellen and Unwin for sending them to me. Later this month I will have some other new releases that have come out as well as some other books that I have just recently discovered and I'm really excited to try so stay tuned. I would love to know in the comments if you have read any of these or any of these authors or if you're planning on picking them up or if you have recommendations that sound similar to what we have talked about today. If you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a shark emoji down below. Otherwise I hope that wherever you're in the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone!