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Etta and the Octopus

Sep5
Etta and the Octopus

Etta and the Octopus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Etta and the Octopus

Zana Fraillon

Andrew Joyner

Lothian, 2023

100pp., pbk., RRP $A14.99

9780734421685

FOUND!

One octopus!

Likes to eat tuna sandwiches.

Goes by the name of ‘Oswald’.

It all began when Etta decided to take a bath . . . And realised she wasn’t alone. In the bath sat Oswald. Etta had never had an octopus in her bath before. At first, Etta thinks it might be fun to have Oswald around. But she soon learns that octopuses are not very good at being tidy . . . or cooking . . . or sharing . . . or even playing nicely. Just as Etta has almost had enough, someone comes to claim Oswald. Oswald isn’t perfect, but does Etta really want to send him away?

This is another in the collection of books for emerging independent readers that focus on a young person being befriended by an unusual creature – in this case, an octopus.  It has all the structures like a larger font, short chapters and plenty of illustrations that a young person needs; it contains instructions for the game that Etta and Oswald play, and Andrew Joyner has included a step-by-step guide to drawing Oswald.  But what sets it apart is that Etta starts making a list of the pros and cons of having an octopus as a pet, a strategy that our young readers can learn and adapt as they venture into the realm of persuasive writing.  Their growing maturity allows them to view a problem or situation from more than their own perspective and to be able to stand back and look at the advantages and disadvantages and then list these so they can make an informed opinion is the basis of a quality  argument which is at the heart of persuasive writing and being a critical thinker.  

So, having shared the story with the students, it offers opportunities to set up similar situations such as a dragon having taken up residence in the school playground, so they can start to explore and develop this strategy for themselves.

The ending of this story sets it up to be a series so perhaps there will be more to come that those who like quirky adventures can enjoy. 

Jawsome

Aug11
Jawsome

Jawsome

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jawsome

R. J. Timms

Albert Street, 2023

304pp., pbk., RRP $A15.99

9781761068591

Deep under the ocean in the Shallow Side of Chumville Finley the reef shark lives with his dentist parents Su and Shi, and his siblings, Dash, Smash, Crash, Flash , Splash and Bash.  During the day Finley goes to school with his mates Hunter the tiger shark, Gnash the pointer shark and Gilleon the lemon shark, but at night, they are secretly the super-famous rock band JAWSOME!  But not everything is cruisy. Can JAWSOME get to the bottom of an ocean of shady shark-nanigans while keeping their secret identities watertight?

This is a new series for those emerging readers who like a light-hearted read, peppered with pun humour and plenty of illustrations.  Verging on a graphic novel because as much of the action happens in the illustrations as it does in the text, it will also appeal to those students who like to be seen with thick books – it has over 300 pages because of the large font and copious graphics.  But woven among the puns and other fishy jokes are facts about sharks that will de-mystify and maybe un-demonise these creatures so there is learning as well as laughing, as well as a strong lead character that has to learn to face his fears of singing in public step up to help his mates.

One to look for and perhaps give to some reluctant readers to determine if it is worth adding upcoming additions to the series to the library’s collection. 

A Friend for Ruby

Aug6
A Friend for Ruby

A Friend for Ruby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Friend for Ruby

Sofie Laguna

Marc McBride

A & U Children’s, 2023

32pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9781761067648

Ruby was unhappy – she was being ignored by the others girls at school and seemed to have no friends.  So as she mooched along the shoreline on her way home to Granma’s.  she was surprised and delighted to see a most unusual creature washed up on the sand, looking as lost as she felt.  Desperate for a friend she invites it to go home with her and hides it in her cubby. That night she keeps it company while it sleeps and in the morning, she feeds it leftover buns from the local bakery.  While she doesn’t want to share her discovery with her Granma, she does share it with Sonya, the baker’s daughter.

But is  her cubby the best place for a creature from the deep? Are buns its natural diet?  It is literally a fish out of water and her secret is discovered when it wrecks Granma’s garden…

Amidst McBride’s breath-taking pictures, here is a story about loneliness being so overwhelming that sometimes we will reach out to anything for company, no matter how unsuitable,  We forget that what we think we need is not necessarily the best thing for the other person/creature and so while one might be happy the other is miserable.  Friendship is best when both of you are happy in the partnership and so this is a story that can open up discussions about what it means to be a friend as well as making and maintaining friendships.  There is much to learn from both the creature and Ruby being happy when they are back amongst their own kind.  

But as well as that aspect for younger readers, this is also an opportunity for older readers to study the incredible artworks of Marc McBride to consider how an illustrator contributes to a picture book. What is the role of the illustrator and the illustrations in this format? Why, even for older readers, if this format often the best for sharing the author’s message and intent?   This is another collaboration between the husband and wife team which includes The House on Pleasant Street  and The Song of Lewis Carmichael , but he is also the illustrator of Deltora Quest as well as many others so there is a wealth of material available to investigate, as well as further suggestions from the NCACL’s Picture Books for Older Readers database..  

 

 

Meet Mim

Aug5
Meet Mim

Meet Mim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meet Mim

Sandra Severgnini

EK Books, 2023

32pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9781922539557

Where the cool river meets the warm ocean and the roots of the mangroves provide sanctuary for all sorts of creatures on the sandy seabeds of the Indo-Pacific region, lives Thaumoctopus mimicus. But what is this creature? Is it a brown=spotted flatfish? A spiked lionfish? A banded sea snake?  Perhaps it is a hermit crab, maybe a jellyfish or even a sea anemone. A seahorse? A feather star? A seashell or stingray… No? Wait, perhaps it is all of these things…

In this intriguing book young readers are introduced to a fascinating creature that can change colour, shape and skin texture at will mimicking those around it to deter predators.  For Mim, is, in fact an octopus!!  Discovered in 1998 off the coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia but also found around the Great Barrier Reef, this master of disguise is the first of the genus to be observed impersonating other creatures and is the first known species to take on the characteristics of multiple species.

Using a guessing game technique that is so much more engaging than a fact sheet, accompanied by detailed illustrations, this is a book that will captivate young readers who are interested in the miracles of Mother Nature, particularly how creatures protect themselves through camouflage.  The double-page spread that compares Mim to those she imitates is fascinating and the STEM activities of the teachers’ notes offer lots of suggestions that will encourage further exploration, including investigating the differences between “disguise” and “mimicry”. They also offer some suggestions for how we, as humans, can develop mindfulness strategies by mimicking Mim but perhaps older students could explore the concept of human disguise – who are we and what are we doing when we choose to use make up, follow a fashion trend, adopt a hairstyle and so forth. Why do we try to “disguise” ourselves and are our strategies successful?  

This is another of the new breed of non fiction that demands to be in the collection so that our students have access to all sorts of stuff that goes beyond the curriculum and into the worlds of wonder and curiosity to spark the imagination and investigation.  Seriously, who among us knew of this little creature let alone well enough to introduce it to our students?  

Do You Love Oceans?

Jun11
Do You Love Oceans?

Do You Love Oceans?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do You Love Oceans?

Matt Robertson

Bloomsbury, 2023

32pp., pbk., RRP $A14.99

9781526639646

Young readers can dive to the darkest depths of the deep blue sea, weave in and out of colourful coral reefs and learn about the incredible people who are trying to save our oceans in the fourth book in Matt Robertson’s award-winning Do You Love? series that includes Do You Love Exploring? , Do You Love Bugs? and Do You Love Dinosaurs? 

They can investigate shipwrecks where scorpionfish hide, dive down to the Mariana trench to meet a dumbo octopus, marvel at ocean giants and dart in between manatees in mangrove forests and explore the wonders of our underwater worlds on every page, from coral reefs, sharks and the deep to shipwrecks, weird fish and frozen seas through Robertson’s signature format of limited text and vibrant illustrations that make the information easily accessible..

 

A peek inside...

A peek inside…

They can discover that lobsters keep their teeth in their tummies, that there are rivers and lakes beneath the ocean and that sea stars have no brain or blood?

This is a series that taps into the interests of young readers and gives them a taste of what can be discovered once their interest is piqued.

 

Can We Really Help the Dolphins?

Mar22
Can We Really Help the Dolphins?

Can We Really Help the Dolphins?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can We Really Help the Dolphins?

Katie Daynes

Roisin Hakessy

Usborne, 2023

48pp., hbk., RRP $A19.99

9781474997881

When a group of children playing at the beach find a message in a bottle from a dolphin, they find themselves on an amazing adventure with a pod of talking dolphins who explain all the perils that they face daily in the ocean because of human activity. And, having been made aware of the issues, the children resolve to try to do something about it by making a video to show the adults in their lives that there are things that can and must be done to save the dolphins.

Written in a narrative non fiction style that speaks directly to the reader because the whole text is a conversation, this is an appealing book that alerts young readers to the dangers facing one of their favourite creatures.  This style engages the reader’s attention so they feel that while they are part of the problem, they can also be part of the solution making it more personal than just the usual facts and figures and appeals for help. For those who want to join the characters on their mission and want to know more  there are Quicklinks of assessed websites they can follow.

 

 

The Odd Fish

Feb8
The Odd Fish

The Odd Fish

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Odd Fish

Naomi Jones

James Jones 

Farshore, 2022

32pp., pbk., RRP $A14.99

 9780755504428

When Little Fish and her family encounter an odd new fish bobbing along on its own, they embark on an exciting journey to reunite it with its family. But young readers will immediately see what Little Fish cannot – that Odd Fish is a plastic bottle and just an infinitesimal piece of the millions of tonnes of plastic that find their way into waterways and oceans each year and which have also entangled Octopus and given Turtle a tummy ache because they can’t tell the difference either. 

The issue of everlasting plastic objects in our oceans is becoming one of the hottest environmental problems both for the planet and the curriculum, so this story which draws direct connections between action and consequence for young readers is important in bringing it down to a level that they can understand and appreciate.  And thus they can be empowered to do something, no matter how small that might seem.  

Created as a consequence of the authors watching Blue Planet II  with their young family, as well as building awareness of what might happen if we throw that bottle in the water it offers suggestions for ways that even they can do their little bit, even if it’s just collecting their soft drink bottles and taking them to the recycling centre, perhaps even taking advantage of the Container Deposit Scheme. 

Apart from building awareness of the global implications of the environmental issue, this would also be a good text for examining the authors’ purpose for writing and how the text has been created to spread a particular message to a particular audience…

The Octopus’s Trick

Jan30
The Octopus’s Trick

The Octopus’s Trick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Octopus’s Trick

Alexia Jankowski

Little Steps, 2022

28pp., pbk., RRP $A16.95

 9781922678768

Ollie is an octopus, and he might be smarter than you!
When Lucy and her friends decide to test how brainy Ollie the octopus really is by seeing if he can get prawns out of a sealed glass jar and photographing the action, they get a surprise when he steals the camera itself.  Can they get the precious footage back?

Told in rhyme, this is a story based on the author’s childhood snorkelling off the beach at Cottesloe, WA when an octopus actually stole their GoPro camera. Others have had similar experiences including one from NSW resulting in a photograph that won the 2020  Ocean Art Underwater Photo Competition 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The intelligence of these creatures has been recognised for some time and when one named Paul predicted the winners of the 2010 FIFA World Cup interest in them as a species soared, so this is a great introduction to investigate more about these clever creatures so we can understand and protect them better -they’re so much more than the monsters of the deep that fiction taints them. 

 

Yoshi and the Ocean

Dec11
Yoshi and the Ocean

Yoshi and the Ocean

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yoshi and the Ocean

Lindsay Moore

HarperCollins, 2022

64pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9780063060982

 

In 1997, a young loggerhead sea turtle was rescued from the ocean after an injury to her shell. The fishermen who rescued her named her Yoshi and took her to the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa. She was rehabilitated there and grew stronger—and larger!—every day. She also became one of the most popular exhibits at the aquarium.

But Yoshi was changing – she was becoming restless and the call of the ocean and her faraway home became stronger and stronger. After twenty years in captivity, Yoshi was released back into the ocean, fitted with a tracking device. And so began a journey that was full of danger, beauty, adventure, mystery, discovery and surprise. Over 987 days and 24 862 miles (almost 40 000 km) , she navigated the Atlantic and Indian Oceans  back to the Shark Bay region of Western Australia! 

In 2019, Lindsay Moore told us of the journey of Sea Bear, the remarkable journey of a female polar bear, and now, amongst the gloom and doom messages of climate change and environmental disasters, comes another heart-warming, hope-giving story of the magic and mystery of Mother Nature.  Yoshi’s story is told in both lyrical text and exquisite watercolour paintings, with the lightest touches  on topics such as conservation, oceanography, natural selection, the food chain, currents, and geography. But it becomes more than just the story of a remarkable journey with maps, information and even how the satellites tracked her included in the final pages.  On October 28, 2020 Yoshi sent her last transmission and her amazing journey is summarised on this blog post , complete with photographs and links to other posts that not only tell Yoshi’s story in greater detail, but also those of others released from the sanctuary.

Yoshi was “a fantastic ocean ambassador” while at the aquarium and her journey captivated so many more than just those able to see her “in person”, and although her whereabouts are not known now, her carers and scientists believe she is at last at home. Another amazing story of animal migration…

If you have young, or not-so-young, readers with any sort of interest in turtles, or just the ocean and its incredible creatures, this is a must-have in any collection.  Inspire them to learn more, do more, and start their own life-changing journey!

How We Came to Be: Surprising Sea Creatures

Oct14
How We Came to Be: Surprising Sea Creatures

How We Came to Be: Surprising Sea Creatures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How We Came to Be: Surprising Sea Creatures

Sami Bayly

Lothian Children’s, 2022

32pp., hbk., RRP $A19.99

9780734421364

Just as Earth’s atmosphere has five major zones –  troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere – so do it’s oceans-sunlight, twilight, midnight, the abyss, and the trenches – and within each live very different creatures, each adapted to the particular light, depth and temperature of the water they live in.  

“Evolution is the process of a living thing changing over millions of years to survive better in their environment and ensure their species continues” and in this stunning book by Sami Bayly, known to many of our younger readers as the creator of The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals, The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Dangerous Animals and The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature, we are taken on a voyage far below the sparkling surface to discover what lives there and why they are the way they are. 

In her special diving suit Sami takes the reader to the various layers, acting as a narrator interacting with the inhabitants in speech-bubble conversations while short fact boxes are scattered like bubbles to explain various phenomena that she encounters – sadly, including plastic bags in the very depths  of the darkness. 

In the first few weeks of this year, I reviewed a number of books  that focused on the origins of this planet and those that share it, and this is another to add to that collection.  With such an emphasis on environment and sustainability in our everyday lives,  if we are to have any hope of children growing up with a desire to protect what they have then they need to understand it and how it works – what they can’t see as well as what they can. Sami Bayly has made a significant contribution to both that collection and to that knowledge, and this is no exception – it’s a fascinating read even if the underwater world is not your scene.

(A category search of this blog for ‘environment and sustainability” will offer many suggestions to grow their knowledge).