The Pros and Cons of Being a Frog

Two shy kids discover the power of friendship in this charming picture book that celebrates being different. A boy likes to dress as a cat, but his best friend’s dog objects. What will he dress as now? A giraffe? A fox? A shark? When his best friend, Camille, suggests a frog, they work together to make the frog costume…until Camille runs out of patience. So the boy makes a list of the pros and cons of being a frog.

Child Convicts

At the age of seven, children in eighteenth-century Britain were tried in court like adults. For crimes such as picking pockets or stealing clothes, they could be sentenced to death by hanging or transported to the then-perilous and isolated colonies of Australia. Life in the colonies was often as difficult and dangerous as the poverty from which many of the convicts came, but the dreaded sentence of transportation could also present opportunities.

My Two Blankets

Cartwheel moves to a new country with her auntie, and everything is strange: the animals, the plants even the wind. An old blanket gives Cartwheel comfort when she’s sad, and a new blanket just might change her world.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 8, Issue 3

This book has been included in WOW’s Kids Taking Action Booklist. For our current list, visit our Boolist page under Resources in the green navigation bar.

The Hunters

Determined to recover the Adomal and to prevent the pirate Zavac from doing more damage, Hal and his brotherband crew persue Zavac to the lawless fortress of Ragusa where, if Hal is to succeed, he will have to go beyond his brotherband training and face the pirate one-on-one in a fight to the finish.

The Singer Of All Songs (Chanters Of Tremaris Trilogy, Book 1)

Calwyn, a young priestess of ice magic, or chantment, joins with other chanters who have different magical skills to fight a sorcerer who wants to claim all powers for his own. Calvin knows nothing about the world beyond the Wall. She’s never seen the golden stone of the city of Kalysons or the wide waters of the Bay of Sardi. She knows only the rounds of her life a a novice ice priestess in Antaris, tending her bees, singing her chantments, and dreaming.

Ranger’s Apprentice: The Burning Bridge

For years, the Kingdom of Araluen has prospered, with the evil lord Morgarath safely behind the impassable mountains. For years, its people have felt secure. but the scheming hand of the dark lord has not been idle, on a special mission for the rangers, will and his friend Horace, an apprentice knight, travel to a neighboring village and discover the unsettling truth: all the villagers have either been slain or captured.

One Minute’s Silence

On the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, David Metzenthen asks, “What is the true meaning of remembering?” This is a powerful and moving picture book for older readers about the “one minute’s silence” observed in Australia on Remembrance Day, and what Gallipoli means to Australians in this context.