wonderful, accessible history about one of Australia's great pride and joys

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wonderful, accessible history about one of Australia's great pride and joys

ages 2 to 8 years
One of my uncles was a pilot for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) a few years ago—it was a terribly romantic profession. The goodness and ingenuity of the RFDS is widely agreed upon all around Australia. But, as Australia continues to be quickly urbanised, fewer of us have personal connections and stories about the Flying Doctors and the pilots and the nurses. That’s where Meet the Flying Doctors comes in

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embracing rough play

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embracing rough play

Sam's little boy Angus is crawling now and his first order of business every day is to crawl on over and wrestle Ivy! Kid wrestling can get a bit wild to nervous adult eyes and the temptation is to call a halt to the whole of it. But there’s a growing consensus that wrestling or roughhousing is not just good for kid’s overall physical and mental health—it’s vital.

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a tender but unflinching story of Australia's Stolen Generation

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a tender but unflinching story of Australia's Stolen Generation

ages 6 years to adult
Have you seen this website? It’s a collection of personal testimonies from people of the Stolen Generation. They're so very personal and real that I feel like a welcome, if naïve, guest. Each testimony includes a short personal statement

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when you were born . . . our hearts sang, our spirits soared . . .

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when you were born . . . our hearts sang, our spirits soared . . .

ages newborn to 5 years
I came across this really sweet book at the library. It's a lovely collection of different animal and human parents telling their young ones what it felt like when they were born. For the bear family it was: When you were born the snow melted, the birds sang, the flowers grew. For the owls

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famous people reading: Stephen King

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famous people reading: Stephen King

Do you do this too? Snatch out a moment anywhere you can to keep up with a great action book? That's Stephen King reading Lee Child's Tripwire between innings at the baseball—looks like he’s deep into one of Jack Reacher’s exploits. (Apparently King’s a big Boston Red Sox fan, so it’s not like he’s wishing he was somewhere else.)

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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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