Lovebird Lou by Tammi Sauer

18 Apr 2025 Leave a comment

by Amy in 4 Stars, The Picture Book Corner Tags: , , , ,

Published: 1 March 2022Goodreads badge
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Illustrator: Stephanie Laberis
Pages: 32
Format: Picture Book
★   ★   ★   ★  – 4 Stars

A sweet, love-infused celebration of individuality and acceptance!

Lovebird Lou adores life with his family and friends on the island they call home. But when he travels to the other side of the island and sees the amazing abilities on display by different birds, Lou feels unfulfilled with the laidback lovebird lifestyle. With his adoring parents cheering him on, Lou decides to spread his wings and see what else he can accomplish. This sweet, funny story celebrates individuality, self-discovery, and the joy of community.

Another picture book I picked up for the cover and it 100% delivers internally as well. This is a wonderful book. It is funny, cute, and the illustrations are half the fun. I liked how Lou isn’t unhappy with being a lovebird, but he still wants to be more interesting and these new birds he hasn’t seen before are what he wants to become.

I loved how unequivocally supportive Lou’s parents are. He wants to be a flamingo, they are right behind him, he wants to be a pelican, they tell him he’s an amazing pelican. There are brilliant lines as Lou admits defeat in his quest to be a [different] bird, “Being a bird is for the birds” he admits and becomes a rock. This was the highlight of this book for me. There is nothing more adorable than a flock of supportive lovebirds helping this little bird start his journey to be a rock. There is nothing more fantastic than the greatest image ever of a bird sitting in a field with a sign beside him that reads #1 Rock. Laberis has added so much to this story with the illustrations and as much as I love Sauer’s story, the illustrations are divine.

You can purchase Lovebird Lou via the following

QBD | Blackwell’s

Dymocks | Wordery | Angus & Robertson

 Fishpond | Amazon | Amazon Aust

Fairest (#3.5) by Marissa Meyer

27 Mar 2025 Leave a comment

by Amy in 4 Stars, Audiobook, Fantasy, Young Adult Tags: , , , , , ,

Published: 27 January 2015 (print)/8 May 2017 (audio) Goodreads badge
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends/Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Pages: 272/5 hrs and 33 mins
Narrator: Rebecca Soler
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
★   ★   ★   ★ – 4 Stars

In this stunning bridge book between Cress and Winter in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles, Queen Levana’s story is finally told.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of them all?

Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her “glamour” to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lived a very different story – a story that has never been told…until now.

This is a bridge book between Cress and Winter, books three and four in the Lunar Chronicles, and the story explores Levana’s childhood and how she became the ruler we know.

It was amazing to see her use of her powers and read about the normal Lunar life as natural and as every day. Given our only perspective before has been through Cinder and other character’s perspectives, it was great to be able to see the regular lives of Lunars and how their gift is used among the community. It also shows us how the events in her past affected who she’s become and all those references and secrets in the previous three books are answered and it was absolutely fabulous.

There is a hard line being balanced where you feel sorry for Levana and her life growing up, but at the same time you know that there are different paths she could have taken and different decisions being made. Narrative bias is also a key factor and it was intriguing to see Levana justify things to herself and how, while she is leaving out certain things, she does show the reader a darker side to herself, one that gives a glimpse at what she is truly capable and how the young girl in this story becomes the queen we see later on.

In showing us a younger Levana we also see a glimpse of the younger counterparts of other characters as well, those who lived in the palace with her. I enjoyed seeing the younger versions of the key characters, from babies to children and beyond. It wasn’t their story but through Levana’s perspective you can see how they circled her world and were in her life in different ways. This is also true for characters only mentioned such as Queen Channary or Winter’s father. It’s a great connection to the main books and connects the series together really well.

Levana is both a victim and a villain and having these conflicting emotions when we see such a one sided view of her previously was a bizarre feeling. Not to justify bad childhoods for being a terrible adult, but Meyer makes us see that there is a lot more to Levana’s story than it first appears and the trauma and pain she’s suffered were bound to have an effect on her one way or another.

The story is third person but Meyer gets us inside Levana’s head and we see everything she thinks and feels, a clever move on Meyer’s behalf. We’re able to see that she is shameless in her actions but she also shows a lot of passion and pride, even hopelessness and loss which are interesting choices. Ironically it humanises her and you see the malice within but also the girl starved of attention and love. I loved this story a lot, it was great to see the rise to power and the changes Levana makes, something we can see even as she edits herself and we can’t entirely trust her thoughts.

This definitely works to be read between books three and four, but it is something I came to after finishing the series and it gave me a reflective enjoyment about the events in Winter and the relationship Levana has with the characters I had fallen in love with.

You can purchase Fairest via the following

 Dymocks | Booktopia

Wordery |  Blackwell’s | Angus & Robertson

Fishpond | Amazon | Amazon Aust | Audible

 

Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin

18 Mar 2025 Leave a comment

by Amy in 4 Stars, Audiobook, Fiction Tags: , , , ,

Published: 9 September 2005 (print)/11 October 2005 (audio) Goodreads badge
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)/Listening Library
Pages: 275/7 hrs and 3 mins
Narrator: Cassandra Morris
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Fiction
★   ★   ★   ★ – 4 Stars

Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvellous. It’s quiet and peaceful. You can’t get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere’s museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatric practice.

Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver’s license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she’s dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn’t want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?

Despite being well before The Good Place, this is a beautiful story that captures what I adored about that show: an afterlife that is still a life where you can grow and think and love before starting the cycle again.

There is a wonderful structure to the Elsewhere world while also being mystical. There’s rules and guidelines, there are things still bound by reality in terms of what is possible, but there is also a touch of the unknown, the magical, and the unexplained. The Benjamin Button aspect of the universe was really well conceived and I loved how Zevin ties that into relationships, living situations, and jobs.

We get to see Liz’s perspective mainly but around halfway through Zevin branches out and we see aspects of other characters like Betty and other key characters. I liked this balance because Liz’s story is what we want most, but the small additions of the other voices gives unique insights and great additions to the story without overshadowing Liz.

Stuck at 15 is a hard age, and I understand Liz’s fear at never growing up. She has a strong obsession with her breasts which was interesting, as well as never getting to take her driving test. I liked that despite being in an afterlife situation, she still felt bound by the fact she couldn’t accomplish life goals like getting her driver’s license. The exploration of the stages of grief and the yearning to return to the living, to live vicariously through them, to keep the connection alive is explored in subtle but powerful ways. I loved the gentle way Betty interacts with Liz, as well as Thandie and other characters who are often far more accepting of their fate than she is.

One interesting thing is, and isn’t a spoiler, but I doubt the reality of Marilyn Monroe being there given my understanding of the aging and rebirth system. Even with a vague setting of when this book takes place I think it is still unlikely Marilyn is still in Elsewhere and hasn’t been reborn. Just a curious observation. Other than that I do love the concept of Elsewhere. I love how jobs are viewed and how family reconnects, even the respect and ceremony of rebirth and the regulations around contact with the living is cleverly done. Zevin has created a beautiful story that is light-hearted but still explores the weight of grief, death, and what it means to be alive.

You can purchase Elsewhere via the following

QBD |  Dymocks | Booktopia

Wordery |  Blackwell’s | Angus & Robertson

Fishpond | Amazon | Amazon Aust | Audible

Beneath the Sugar Sky (#3) by Seanan McGuire

04 Mar 2025 Leave a comment

by Amy in 4 Stars, Audiobook, Fantasy, Fiction, Novella Tags: , , , , , , ,

Published: 9 January 2018 (print)/9 January 2018 (audio) Goodreads badge
Publisher: tor.com/Macmillan Audio
Pages: 174/4 hrs and 11 mins
Narrator: Michelle Dockrey
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Fantasy
★   ★   ★   ★ – 4 Stars

When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest – not when she has an entire world to save! (Much more common than one would suppose.) If she can’t find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she will never have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away. Good thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests…

A tale of friendship, baking, and derring-do. Warning: May contain nuts.

I love how we get introduced to characters in book one, and then as the series progresses we get their own individual stories, but scattered in between the original story arc keeps going as well. It is incredibly clever, and all the while revealing more about the rules of the worlds and the understanding of the system.

With the second book devoted to Jack and Jill’s story I was curious to see if the next book would pick another character we’d met and show their origins but I was delightfully surprised. We are back in the school as Rini literally lands at their door on a mission to save her mother, a character who died in book one.

This is why McGuire’s books are so fantastic, her rules on Logic and Nonsense, not to mention life and death are fascinating and primed for storytelling when put in the right hands. The nonsensical world works well with the nonsensical mission. Rini is as wild as her mother and the random nature of events only support the irregular world she’s come from.

I was delighted we got to revisit Nancy, especially in her own element, and it was great seeing characters deal with different land so unlike their own or their desired places. Given the world of Confection is a sugary light-hearted delight, there isn’t a lot of darkness or heavy themes, even with Rini’s possible demise. That isn’t to say there aren’t some wonderful things explored like understanding other people’s experiences and tolerance, but it is a much lighter story. Coming from Down Among the Sticks and Bones having something so sugary and nonsensical was probably the best call, and it is certainly a great reminder of the variety of doors and alignments people can be.

What makes these books so fantastic is they are relatively short reads but McGuire packs so much amazing story into so few pages. It’s truly a gift to be able have such real and complicated characters with such an involved plot and world while still keeping the page count short.

You can purchase Beneath the Sugar Sky via the following

  Dymocks | Booktopia

Wordery |  Blackwell’s | Angus & Robertson

Fishpond | Amazon | Amazon Aust | Audible

Jacob’s School Play: Starring She, He, and They by Sarah and Ian Hoffman

21 Feb 2025 Leave a comment

by Amy in 4 Stars, LGBTQIA, The Picture Book Corner Tags: , , , , , , ,

Published: 1 January 2021Goodreads badge
Publisher: Albert Whitman Company
Illustrator: Chris Case
Pages: 32
Format: Picture Book
★   ★   ★   ★  – 4 Stars

https://cdn.thestorygraph.com/7f41ycwrs5fd7xrj59lrh313tagoThis new book is a clever way to introduce young readers to non-binary and gender-fluid people. As Ms. Reeves’ class produces a play about a farm, the entire class comes to understand about being true to who you are, as classmate Ari expresses their identity as they, which prompts Jacob to look more deeply about what it means to be who he is, and how others identify. Explaining the use of pronouns of one’s own choosing to kids, while all along reinforcing that an individual is much more layered and unique then how others may see him, her or them, is a developmentally important milestone to help foster respect of one’s self and one’s peers.

I love the Jacob books and I am always keen to see what each one will deliver. With a class full of kids there are a lot of different stories to tell and whether it’s about an individual or a family dynamic the stories are always wonderfully done.

I liked the loose metaphor of the play and Ari’s role in it and how organically these conversations come up about pronouns. These are primary school kids so of course there can be real discussions and still be in a simple term they can understand. Ms Reeves is always a great teacher and helps her class understand one another better.

The explanations and exploration of different pronouns is woven through the prep of the play, the plot remaining largely on organising everything and everyone with Ari’s pronouns not being a major focus. This works well because it isn’t a big deal, and it normalises that these conversations might pop up, but while you may need to learn a few new things, there is still a play to prepare for.

Case’s illustrations are once again delightful. Seeing the kids in their costumes and classroom scenes brings their environment to life and it’s easy to see these conversations playing out in real life. There’s nothing comical or fanciful about it, the down to earth nature of it and the focus on the storytelling really comes through, even in the pictures.

The curiosity of the kids is handled tactfully, and even Jacob, who was the star of the first gender non-conforming book, has to learn about other identities. Technically most of the book is about the play, we even get to go through the life cycle of crops growing at the end and the roles everyone plays more than they discuss Ari and their pronouns. It takes the focus off this being only about Ari and it instead gives a fun story about costumes and storytelling while also having a simple lesson about who people are and how everyone is their own unique person.

You can purchase Jacob’s School Play via the following

Dymocks | Booktopia

Wordery |  Blackwell’s | Angus & Robertson

Fishpond | Amazon | Amazon Aust

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