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Five terrific graphic novels for teens
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! Ballister Blackheart is a Super Villain and Nimona is a shapeshifter who’s determined to be his Evil Sidekick. Opposing them is Ballister’s arch-nemeisis and also, former BFF Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, a Hero who works for the Institution of Law Enforcement and the shadowy (is she evil?) Director.
Nimona is a smartly funny and subversive fantasy epic from Noelle Stevenson (also known as Gingerhaze!). It’s full of diverse, complicated characters with lots…
Interviews with our Readings Children's Book Prize Shortlist 2015
We interviewed all six of the six shortlisted authors for this year’s Readings Children’s Book Prize.
The winner of the Readings Children’s Book Prize will be announced at midday on Tuesday 16 June!
Meet A.L. Tait, author of The Mapmaker Chronicles: Race to the End of the World
What were you like as a kid?
“I think the best word to use would be ‘self-contained’. I was a skinny, freckled, ballet-dancing redhead who loved reading and topped the spelling tests…
The story behind my book
by Klaus NeumannI became first interested in the history of Australia’s response to refugees and asylum seekers fourteen years ago. What interested me at the time was that a small group of immigrants who had arrived in Australia in the second half of the 1930s were declared ‘enemy aliens’ during the Second World War on account of their nationality, and were then interned. They had come to Australia in search of protection, and were locked up during the war because they could…
Our top ten bestsellers of the week
The Mindfulness Colouring Book: Anti-Stress Art Therapy for Busy People by Emma Farrarons
Gut: the Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-Rated Organ by Giulia Enders
Guarding Eden by Deborah Hart
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Forever Young by Steven Carroll
The Lost Swimmer by Ann Turner
Shining: The Story of a Lucky Man by Abdi Aden and Robert Hillman
The Strays by Emily Bitto
Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s by Stuart Macintyre
…
How to volunteer at CAN Community Support's Homework Club
In 2015, The Readings Foundation is sponsoring Church of All Nations (CAN) Community Support. Here, Family Learning Programme Coordinator Connie Barone shares some information about how you can volunteer at Homework Club.
(CAN) Community Support runs Homework Club to assist young people from secondary and primary schools who live on the local Carlton Housing Estates. It currently operates three nights a week (Mondays to Wednesdays) from 4pm to 6pm during school terms.
There is an ongoing need to provide…
A visit to the CAN Community Support's Homework Club
by Bronte CoatesIn 2015, The Readings Foundation is sponsoring Church of All Nations (CAN) Community Support. Readings staff members Bronte Coates and Mark Rubbo recently visited the organisation’s Homework Club. Bronte reports back.
CAN Community Support’s Homework Club provide homework, tutoring and literacy support to the many families and students from the local Carlton Housing Estates who attend CAN Community Support’s Family Learning Program. The majority of families and students involved come from the Horn of Africa and have limited access…
What we're reading: Stephanie Bishop, Agatha Christie and Elizabeth Gilbert
Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.
Alan Vaarwerk is reading Couch Tag by Jesse Reklaw
I’m trying to read more graphic novels at the moment, and I’m currently in the middle of Jesse Reklaw’s Couch Tag, a collection of memoir pieces about growing up in California in the 1980s. The first few pieces are told through motifs such…
Recommendations and favourite quotes from Reading Matters 2015
Last week I had my first real experience of Reading Matters, the Melbourne YA conference organised by the Centre for Youth Literature. (Previously, I had been the bookseller at the conference where the appetite for books is so high that I didn’t have time to see the panels.) Reading Matters provides high-school students, YA-lit professionals and the public with the opportunity to meet some of the most brilliant local and international stars of YA literature.
The conference was superb…
Best new crime in June
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH:
Before it Breaks by Dave Warner
DI Daniel Clement lives in a patchy so-called apartment on top of a supply store by the wharf, trying to piece his life back together after abandoning his excellent career in crime-prone Perth to become a DI on Western Australia’s far-northern coastline. Forsaking that life to follow his estranged wife and young daughter back to his hometown seems like the right thing to do, but Clement feels ostracised from…
Ali Smith wins the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
Ali Smith has been named this year’s winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, for her sixth novel How To Be Both.
Chair of Judges Shami Chakrabarti said: ‘Ancient and modern meet and speak to each other in this tender, brilliant and witty novel of grief, love, sexuality and shape-shifting identity.’
Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an literary double-take, How To Be Both is a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. Two tales…
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