picture books for grownups
Food waste is becoming a global concern. Economists, environmentalists and human rights advocates are all on the same page: we have to stop wasting, start sharing, and get fresh food to people who need it. They’re the sort of goals everyone can get behind.
Ages 3 - Grown Ups
That’s a major gap in a child’s life and one we tried to fill with elderly friends from church and other grandparents and great-grandparents of friends.
I think that one of the reasons we realised this was so important was that we had both read Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge dozens and dozens of times.
ages 2 to 12 years
A perfect Australian Christmas picture book, it’s the story of Kathleen – a little girl who lives along Australia’s Nullarbor Plain – and of the Tea and Sugar Train which used to travel across the Plain each week. A charming balance to the OTT commercialism that sometimes surrounds Christmas.
ages 3 to grownup
I’ve been a John Williamson fan since childhood and a few months ago we were lucky enough to go to one of his concerts as a family. Amazing. There's really nothing quite like a live performance.
During intermission, I came across Christmas in Australia. I had no idea John Williamson had written a children’s book and just had to buy it—my only regret was that the kids were so exhausted by the end of the show we couldn't wait in the line to get it
a lovely book for all ages
'Opposites' books are pretty great—and not uncommon. They're wonderful for building kids' vocabularies and usually simple enough to keep even the little ones interested. Elephant Elements is a book of opposites, but it's not the common variety—more like one-of-a-kind.
ages 2 years to adult
In The Power and The Glory, Graham Greene wrote: “Hate is a lack of imagination.” Perhaps it follows that love is an abundance of imagination. There’s plenty of both to go around in the world just now, so I suppose the thing to do is notice imagination, encourage it, and let it build.
Sometimes we think of imagination as the stuff of fantasy worlds—The Lord of The Rings scaled down to everyday life, if you like. And that’s a wonderful way to imagine. But John Lennon’s Imagine reminds us that there’s more to imagination.
ages 4 to adult
Having an enemy doesn’t always require a war, but always (always!) requires separate camps! Those camps could be foxholes, but they could also be duct tape lines across a shared bedroom floor, places to sit during lunch at school, or even a divided family.
In this book, 'There’s a war on.', and two soldiers are facing each other from holes in the ground. Just one soldier speaks to us, but we see both
ages 4 to infinity
Everything leading up to our moving was, as it always is, hectic and messy. We didn’t get to do everything we'd have liked before we left, but we did get to visit GOMA’s 10 year anniversary exhibit.
GOMA is one of Ivy’s and my favourite places, we miss it. On our last (final) visit, we bought this fantastic book, 10 Ways to Make Art, from the shop:
ages 6 years to grownup
Everyone knows what it is to feel different or misunderstood. It's part of modern life—we meet many people in many circumstances and we don’t always ‘click’. And that’s fine, mostly we just do what needs to be done and move on until we come to a place we really do fit. But, for some people, being different or misunderstood is a constant. Ivan is such a child and he tells us that he is, in fact, a crocodile:
“I look like a boy but, inside, I am a crocodile. It’s not something you can see, of course, because it’s inside.
How many Dr Seuss books can (or could) you recite by heart? There was a time when I could rattle off the whole of Green Eggs and Ham while driving—Thomas would sit in his car seat behind me, flipping the pages at the appropriate moment while his two younger siblings looked on. I could give Fox in Socks a good crack too, though I did sometimes have to agree with Mr Knox:
“I hate this game, Sir. This game makes my tongue quite lame, Sir.”
All the Dr Seuss rhymes are brilliant for little kids who are learning to read, as that great-fun video points out.
ages 6 to grownup
It seems almost dystopian that there was a time when Aboriginal people were not counted in the population statistics. And when the laws and powers that were held by each State government resulted in segregation and broad discrimination...
One of our favourite family pastimes is planning trips. (We plan many more trips than we actually take!) Ivy gets into it too, she has plans to see sharks in the Great Australian Bite, visit the Eiffel Tower and go to Japan—no prizes for guessing where we’ve been talking about going lately.JAs well as trip planning, books with maps are great for learning about borders and sovereignty. Those are tricky concepts, but
the mind-blowing books in this post are great for ages 6 years and all the way up!
All the girls in the family are currently ‘toting’ these totes—the slogan spoke to us so we ordered four at once to save on postage. (We have to co-ordinate when we go out or risk looking like a gang.) Our group-buy was completely about the slogan; we didn't even look at size or shape....
The movie Hidden Figures is just wonderful—funny, frustrating, uplifting, beautiful—the full cinematic experience! But the book covers so much more (naturally). Here’s a clip of author Margot Lee Shetterly talking to one of Dorothy Vaughn’s* grandchildren. She talks about the movie and the other parts of the book.Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition is wonderful too—
ages 6 years to adult
Is there a more universal and constant battle for western parents than the fight to limit technology? We so want all the benefits of technological immersion but also feel instinctively that lives need a bit of analogue in them too. Labyrinth is like a book bridge—it crosses the chasm between story and interactive play...
ages 6 years to adult
Because grief, when it visits, consumes us and seems to blanket all the world in sadness, our inclination is to shield children from its depths, or to show them how to escape as quickly as possible. It’s a strange, if quintessentially human, response. Our great love for the children we care about motivates us but
ages 5 years and up (if you're willing to read out subtitles)
Here’s a wonderful movie that you might like to try for a family movie night. Children of Heaven is an Iranian film about a boy who loses his sister’s only pair of shoes. Their family is poor and their mother is ill so the children conspire to share the boy’s shoes. It’s sad, funny, charming and troubling all at once.
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
ages newborn to adult
A board-book all time favourite that invites complex, moral, metaphorical reasoning—and makes you laugh! About a unique relationship between a boy and a duck—is it exploitative or is it synergistic?
A story about letting go of fear to find freedom. It's a nice reminder of the courage of refugees and asylum seekers and an. enticing story to capture the attention of early teens—great for helping them to recognise the good things in life (like freedom and family).
Writers are still imprisoned for the very act of telling stories; sometimes factual stories, sometimes fiction. This is the telling of their collective story – and of the people they write for. Beautiful, thought provoking and inspiring.
ages 6 years to adult
Do you do Valentine’s Day? It’s not huge in Australia relative to say, America, but it's getting bigger every year. We’re pretty hit-and-miss at our house, but one year I nailed it: I left a copy of I Love Kissing You on Roger’s pillow.
This is a sweet and simple book about enduring, grown-up love.
A beautiful look at some fascinating animals. Full of detail and fascinating facts, this is a book to mesmerise young animal lovers. Gorgeous & interesting enough for the coffee table too.
ages 2 years to grownup
A Treasury for every home—absorbing art coupled with significant prose woven around funny, engaging, shocking and/or inspiring stories. Beautifully produced, it's a work of art that's great fun to read aloud.
ages 2 years to adult
ages 2 years to adult (a beautiful gift or coffee table book)
What does your home have lots of? Cars, cheese, Atlantic puffins? Lots beautifully illustrates cities and regions around the world, showing what they have lots of.
Michael Morpurgo's latest Christmas offering Coming Home is about a delightful robin whose fortitude and determination carry him home to his love - it's a charming reminder of the universal pull of home, whether metaphorical or physical.
Set in Australia, Amazing Animals is great non-fiction with cross generational appeal. There are lots of quick facts to grab, plus longer passages of information, both chock full of interesting information. It's permanently on our side table.
ages 2 years to adult
A poignant look at living with the demons of anxiety and profound unhappiness. Small things lead to the demons that beset a young man, and small things lead to overcoming them. A lovely meditation on the impact small things can have.
ages 10 years to adult
Also — looking for a special book for a special occasion? Just send us an email, we'll get right onto it for you!
Ages 4 - Adult
I'm so grateful when stories like this are shared. It's inspiring, yes, but more than that it's a thing of beauty. Here, Uri Shulevitz tells a story of his own childhood; the story of his life as a refugee and the impact of a brave decision that his father made.