 Hi everyone, my name is Steph. This is Little Bookish Teacher and today I'm back with the next installment of my CBCA shortlist readthrough and review. So we're up to the Eve Poundall category, which is a non-fiction category. So all of the books in here must contain mostly factual information and consideration must be given to imaginative presentation and interpretation, which is great. So we have the six books that we're going to talk about. Well I have five here and the sixth one I do own but I think it's at school. So the first book is Deep by Jess McEachon and this one is subtitled Dive Into Hidden Worlds. This one was published by Wellbeck Publishing and it is a really glorious book because it looks at the different worlds on earth like deep sea, deep earth, deep space, and it highlights really interesting factual information from each world. My favorite section was the deep inside because it actually goes inside the body and in that way this book is very much sort of a general non-fiction book because we are covering lots and lots of different topics. It is not topic specific but each section is topic specific. So we learn lots about animal life and plant life and rock life and about buried artifacts and about sustainability through this really cool information text. All of the information is laid out in a really interesting way so we find out a little bit about you know the section so the deep ocean and then lots of little facts about that particular deep world. There's a couple of pages for each deep world so you begin to explore lots of different things but it does make it really easy to just sort of take chunks of this text rather than reading it straight through. It's not necessarily one of those books that as a teacher you would use from start to finish because one there's a lot of information in there but it also covers lots of different topics so you might go okay well we've been learning about the ocean. Let's pull out that deep ocean section and let's start looking at the facts and the information that is presented to us and then do we need to go further and explore more about a particular subject that we've learned about. In that way it is a great taster, it's a great jumping off point but the illustrations in here are just stunning. It is very visually appealing. Then there is Amazing Animal Journeys by Jennifer Cossens. This is an information book on animal migrations and it is fantastic because it covers animals from across the earth. It is very beautifully illustrated and it goes by animal so each animal that has a migration pattern has its own page, beautifully illustrated, lots and lots of information about that animals migratory process. It does feature an introduction and a conclusion that do talk about climate change and impact on migration as well and it does look at animals that have migratory paths from land, sea and sky so you do get a huge variety in here. I think there's about 25 different animals that we follow. The other really cool thing is the endpapers do have these migratory paths as well so it can be a really fun one to explore. There is A's for Australian Reefs, a fantastic tour by Franny Lesek and this one is an A to Z book with a difference. The focus is specifically on animals, plant life and other life on Australian reefs. So there are plenty of facts. Each page begins with the link to the letter and a general explanation and then you get information about other little parts that link to our main title. So this one is fish so you get lots of information about the fish that live on the reef or sometimes you might even get specific information about a particular animal or life form that is mentioned. So this one is about leafy sea dragons so we learn lots of little facts about leafy sea dragons. While this one is still fairly text heavy it is probably a little bit more accessible to younger readers than something like Amazing Animal Journeys which is quite text dense but this one has beautiful bright illustrations. It does touch on different reefs around Australia, not just the Great Barrier Reef which is the most well known one and it is a great jumping off point for finding more information about a particular topic of interest and like I said beautiful bright illustrations. Next is Wild Australian Life by Leonard Cronin and illustrated by Chris Nixon. This one is a much bigger book, it is very very text heavy and therefore it is for older readers and this one does focus very heavily on specifically wild Australian life. It is broken down into categories and as you can see lots and lots of text, gorgeous illustrations and it does then start deep diving into specific things about each subcategory. It covers land sea and sky animals, you have reptiles and mammals, you have birds, you have things that live in dark places, animals that come out during the day, like it's very very comprehensive and text heavy and again this would probably be one that you would pull out certain sections of, you wouldn't study it as a whole text, you would have to be very specific in your intention for using this with a classroom although kids would love flipping through this because it is a gorgeous book and it does have a lot of design elements particularly in illustration style which I love but again it's not a photo information text, it is very much stylistically done. Then there is Opal and Dart written by Vianne Brain and illustrated by Claire Brady. This book I had trouble tracking down because it went out of print but this one is the story of Opal and Dart who are a pair of swallows who migrate from Queensland to Tasmania. This is a fictional nonfiction text in that there is a narrative through here but the narrative is giving us facts and information about swallows and about introduced bird species as well that have an impact on the way that the swallows live their lives. So Opal and Dart have been together for ages and they find themselves being pestered by a sparrow which forces them to change up their habits and move their nest. It is a really interesting story because I don't know much about bird life, it's not necessarily something that I have spent a lot of time learning about except for you know noticing a lot about native birds here in Australia but while the majority of this book is a narrative there is a section at the back of the book that has information on swallows and sparrows and other birds that are featured within the story. So there you have your information text that you can pull out and then talk about how that information has been woven through the story and it's a great way to talk about native and introduced animal species and the impact that that has on an ecosystem and on top of that I just I really love these illustrations they feel very old school. I don't know if it's oil paint but it has that very artistic style to it so it is a beautiful book to look at too. And then the last book that was shortlisted in this category was Come Together by Isaiah Firebrace which I have talked about before. This is a really gorgeous Aboriginal Indigenous picture book that is again a book that features lots of information on lots of different topics in a really simple format for kids so that it's one easily accessible and also is a great jumping off point for learning more. It is told through Isaiah Firebrace's own experiences so they're our places where the author refers to their connection to the different topics which is great because it makes it very relatable. The illustrative style in this is just bold, colourful and beautiful and it covers all sorts of topics from art to music to sport to famous people from Aboriginal history and it is just a really gorgeous book and I think what I really loved about this was because it's not a text heavy book every topic gets a one double page spread which makes it really great for kids to be able to pull out information and just to spend some time exploring it. I appreciate books like those because not every student or child wants something that is just a one book on one topic anymore. They want to learn a little bit about a lot of things and then find what is of interest to them so I appreciate that. Alright so those are the books that have been shortlisted for the Eve Palinal Award. I will leave links to the official CBCA website down below as well as links to all of these books so that you can find more information about them. In the comments I would love to know if you've read any of these shortlisted books or if you have any suggestions for other children's non-fiction texts that feature a range of really great topics. If you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave any kind of sea animal emoji down below. I hope that wherever you'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.