Age Good Food Guide 2011

The new Age Good Food Guide for 2011 has just arrived.  It has a great new look and is $29.95

The big award winners at the function to launch the book last night were, Ben Shewry from Attica who won Chef of the Year, and the Royal Mail in Dunkeld won Restaurant of the Year.

Tickled Onions by Morris Gleitzman via Get Reading

This year the Get Reading campaign has a choice of two books for you to choose from when you have bought one of the books listed in the Get Reading booklet.  One is for children and the other is a selection of stories by Australian authors.  Tickled Onions by Morris Gleitzman is the book for children and it is also a selection of stories.  It is a hoot.  The first story features a five year old vampire hunter who confuses his hunting equipment stake for a steak.  They are all a lot of fun, and a great reason to participate in Get Reading this year.

Trash

Trash is an adventure like no other. Raphael, Gardo and Jun-Jun (aka Rat) are children of Behala. Behala is full of rubbish, literally. It is the place all the rubbish from their entire city ends up. The boys spend their days wading and sorting through trash so they can sell it on and make just enough to get by. Mostly they find exactly what you would expect – trash. But sometimes, they strike lucky. And Raphael just struck about as lucky as you can get. But his find isn’t as simple as he would like. The mysterious wallet leads him and his friends all over the city, to a prison and through a cemetery. But the boys know they have to keep going if they are to win the ultimate prize.

This is a moving story about lives so different from our own it’s startling. Well written and with beautifully believable characters, Andy Mulligan’sTrash will truly make you think.

Recommended for kids 13+. PB $24.95

Mirror

Bringing us beloved stories such as Window, Belonging and Where the Forrest Meets the Sea, it has been too long between books from Jeannie Baker. But with her trademark beautiful collage illustrations, her latest offering, Mirror, is well worth the wait.

Centring around the novel idea of telling two mirrored stories at once, this title is the separate stories of two families, half a world apart. With the very different stories of an Australian family on the left and a Moroccan family on the right, Baker’s illustrations show us that a picture really can say a thousand words. As well as allowing your imagination to run wild, this almost wordless book is a clever way of saying that not matter how different we appear on the outside, there is something the same in all of us.

Recommended for kids 4+. HB $39.95

Fairfieldbooks Blog, Twitter & Facebook

Fairfieldbooks  Blog is nearly 1 year old and we have been busy posting reviews and news about books.  We have also been Tweeting since June, and we now have a Facebook page as well.

We have 3 email newsletters, one for books for adults, one for books for children, and our first crime quarterly will be sent out in September.  If you would like to receive any of the email newsletters, let us know at books@fairfieldbooks.biz and we can add you to the lists.

We hope that these newsletters and social media posts help you to keep in touch with us at Fairfieldbooks.  We enjoy comments and replies that you send to us, so please keep it up.

Five Parts Dead by Tim Pegler

Five parts dead starts with Dan recovering from a road crash in which three of his best mates were killed.  A too common situation of youth, drink and recklessness.  Dan is wracked with guilt over the incident, even though he wasn’t driving, and hadn’t even wanted to be in the car at all.  His family, including his twin sister Mel and her best friend Pip go on a holiday to a remote island, and there Dan starts dreaming about another tragedy that had occurred on the island over 150 years before.  At the same time, Dan is suddenly noticing Pip in a different way, no longer just as his sister’s friend.  Out of all this confusion, Dan confronts some of his own feelings about the accident and his part in it, and the unexpected role Pip now has in his life.  The adults in the story are peripheral, providing love, reassurance and transport without taking much part in any of the action.  This is a good book to recommend to teen boys and girls 14 up. $19.95

Get Reading

Get Reading starts today, and continues through September.   Come and pick up your Get Reading guide, buy  one of the books listed in the guide, and receive a free book.  You have a choice of either 10 short stories you must read which includes new stories by Australian authors such as Craig Silvey, Maggie Alderson, Nick Earls and 7 more, or a book for children written by Aussie favourite, Morris Gleitzman, called Tickled Onions.  So….

The Tail of the Whale

Ellie Patterson’s The Tail of the Whale is a sweet story about using your imagination to escape the gloom and grey of winter. Written in soothing rhyming verse, the story takes us to a fantastical multi-coloured land. Deep beneath the sea, the imaginary world is a place where fishes dance and shimmer in a kaleidoscope of colours. And when the show is over and, on the tail of a whale, you ride back to the top, the grey and gloom might just have disappeared under a blanket of sparkling, white snow.

Christine Pym’s illustrations couldn’t be cuter and bring the words to life beautifully.

Recommended for 3-7 yr olds. PB $14.95

Same great writing, all new mythology!!!

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (PB $19.95)

Rick Riordan is back with whole new stories to tell; The Kane Chronicles! After bringing us the sensational Percy Jackson series that revolved around Greek mythology, his new book centres around Egypt.

Told from the perspectives of brother and sister team Carter and Sadie Kane, The Red Pyramid is action packed with mystery, mythology and monsters! Riordan has clearly done his research and the ancient relics and gods are fascinating! The characters are as always diverse and interesting and even though this is only book 1, you will become attached to them very quickly.

Riordan sends us from England to Cairo to Paris to America on a quest that can be dramatic and funny and heartwarming. Fans of Percy Jackson will love this new series and be hanging out for book 2 as soon as they put it down!!!

Also by Rick Riordan:

Percy Jackson & The Lightening Thief

Percy Jackson & The Sea of Monsters

Percy Jackson & The Titan’s Curse

Percy Jackson & The Battle of The Labyrinth

Percy Jackson & The Last Olympian

CBC Winners 2010 Announced

The Children’s Book Council of Australia have announced the winners of their 2010 award for books published in 2009.

Books of the Year:

Young Adult - Jarvis 24 by David Metzenthen.

Younger Readers – Darius Bell and the Glitter Pool by Odo Hirsch

Early Childhood – Bear & Chook by the Sea by Lisa Shanahan, illustrated by Emma Quay

Picture Book – The Hero of Little Street by Gregory Rogers

Information Book – Australian Backyard Explorer by Peter Macinnis

All winners and honourees can be found here.