gentle creatures carry children to sweet slumber and peaceful dreams

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gentle creatures carry children to sweet slumber and peaceful dreams

ages newborn to 8 years
It’s nice, especially on cool, dark nights, to think about how wonderful it is to dream. To dream about our friends and fun, or dream about places we have never been, or about our hopes and dreams. Dreams that beckon and entice us to a deep and peaceful sleep.

Dream Animals: A Bedtime Journey is just the book for that kind of night.  Arrays of ‘animals from long ago’ come to help children on the way to their dreams.

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a stereotype-smashing story + Ivy & Angus in their Book Week costumes

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a stereotype-smashing story + Ivy & Angus in their Book Week costumes

ages 2 to 7 years
We recently went through all our books trying to find the perfect costume for our playgroup's Book Week parade. There were many contenders, but in the end Ivy chose A Proper Little Lady.

She saw it and proclaimed "This will be the perfect book, I’m so excited!". I was pretty excited too and not just because it was a costume that required no sewing! This was one of my favourite books when I was Ivy's age and I feel a special kind of closeness in sharing and enjoying 

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a funny, creative take on REALLY BIG adventures—they're not always what they seem!

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a funny, creative take on REALLY BIG adventures—they're not always what they seem!

ages 4 to 10 years
Sometimes we just need an adventure, where we get to try new things, see new places, learn, grow and test our limits. Mostly our adventures are quite small and close to home, but sometimes they're really BIG, taking us to far-off places and distant lands.

Sir Charlie Stinky Socks is a bold brave Knight and one day he decides that it’s time for a really BIG adventure. So

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a lovely book for kids going through 'hard to find friends' times

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a lovely book for kids going through 'hard to find friends' times

ages 2 to 8 years
Do your little ones have imaginary friends? Some of mine did. It was cute to hear them chatting away to someone invisible—less cute when I once had to wait in the rain because an imaginary friend called Minga had to get in the car first and then took her own sweet time about buckling up her seatbelt! There are lots of good reasons to enjoy the imaginary friend stage, one being...

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a poetic reminder to make time for fun!

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a poetic reminder to make time for fun!

ages 0 to 7 years
I love it when Ivy says something like ‘remember when we went to that park, that was so cool!’ I love it because we're usually just driving away from the park at the time! She re-tells all the wonderful things that happened, even though I was there the whole time and it was only 20 minutes ago. The talking is lovely and draws us closer together...

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encouragement to imagine and rethink our own purpose and place in life

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encouragement to imagine and rethink our own purpose and place in life

ages 4 years to grownup
There’s an architect’s sensibility running through this book—probably because both author and illustrator trained as architects. It has a feel for space and design that's modern yet classic, a bit like an excursion to a modern art gallery. Simple shapes become

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a wonderfully concise look at younger sibling-hood

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a wonderfully concise look at younger sibling-hood

ages newborn to 8 years
That's William at playgroup, all dressed up as a pirate and asking: “Who will be my crew?” And, when William's dad was five or six-years-old, he used to leap on to the lounge chair asking exactly the same question: 

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