Poetry Box review: The Complete Cleo Stories by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood

The Complete Cleo Stories, Libby Gleeson illustrated by Freya Blackwood
Allen & Unwin, 2023

Sometimes you choose a book to read and sweet miracle it is the perfect choice. The Complete Cleo Stories by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood is such an example. The book deservedly won the Australian Book Council’s Children of the Year Awards. Ah, I can’t believe I have never read this author before. An award winning and acclaimed author, Libby has published over 40 books for children and teenagers.

Reading the Cleo stories from cover to cover and I feel like I have had the best walk along the beach, the most uplifting yoga session, eaten the tastiest meal, had a sublime conversation with a friend. It is the kind of book that makes you laugh out loud, feel the tears prickle, your skin tingle with word delight, through the power of narrative and the warmth of illustration.

Four Cleo stories are brought together from the award-winning team. Cleo, short for Cleopatra Miranda McCann, is a terrific protagonist. She is caring, creative, curious. She is moody, awkward, resourceful. She is the bees knees and the coolest kid I have hung out with in a book for ages.

In each story, Cleo yearns for something: a necklace, a birthday present for her mum, a friend, a pet. Each story hits the pathos button as Cleo faces a challenge, gets glum or tetchy, and then draws upon her inner creativity and comes up with an ingenious solution. It feels like her parents, who are also creative, caring and resourceful, have planted a vital framework for childhood growth.

In the heat of yearning, Cleo will come up with a dramatic overstatement: “Everyone has a necklace except me.” Ah, I am reminded of how the word “everyone” is still in circulation, even in adult talk: everyone eats this or does this or says this or likes this! Who is this everyone? Or the dramatic effect of grand statements such as: “I’ll be sad all my life!” The parents help Chloe reconsider “everyone” and over-reaching claims – but Chloe does most of the heavy lifting. And, with some gentle guidance from family, the key is: IMAGINATION!

Each story follows a pattern of challenge, minor catastrophe, laugh-out-loud moment, brilliant solution, and an extra cool ending. Imagination is the fuel that keeps the narrative moving.

I also love the mise en scene – to borrow a bit of film jargon. How satisfying to see rooms that are lived in, books on bedside tables and spilling from shelves, Chloe’s art on the walls, the coolest tree hut. To see Mum, Dad and Uncle Tom eating cooking weeding reading talking making pruning watering listening.

Freya’s illustrations beam and brim with human presence – each character feels real – alive with mood and complexity. I get warm tingles looking at them.

The Complete Cleo Stories is special. Maybe it will get us all imagining how we can invent creative solutions to impossible problems. We need a lot of that at the moment! Beautifully written, beautifully illustrated, beautifully presented, this is a book for sharing and caring.

Libby Gleeson AM has published over 40 popular, highly acclaimed books for children and teenagers, been shortlisted for 15 CBCA Awards, and won five. She is also the winner of the Lady Cutler Award for her services to children’s literature. Libby has been a teacher and lecturer and contributes regularly to national conferences. She was a member of the Public Lending Rights committee from 1988-1995, chaired the Australian Society of Authors from 1999-2001, was awarded membership to the Order of Australia in 2007, was the ASA Dicrector CAL from 2008-2014, and has been chairing WestWords since 2015. She won the 2011 Dromkeen Medal, awarded for her contributions to children’s literature.

Based in Orange, NSW, Freya Blackwood is an illustrator of children’s picture books. The books she has illustrated have been written by some of Australia’s best known authors including Libby Gleeson, Margaret Wild, Jan Ormerod, Mem Fox, Nick Bland and Danny Parker. Known for her emotive drawings of children and animals, she typically works with pencil and watercolour. Her inspiration comes from her daughter and the everyday life of being a human and a parent.

Allen & Unwin page

Poetry Box Library Listening Corner: Blockhouse Bay Intermediate School librarian and students read poems by Jo van Dam and Paula Green

Poetry Box loves celebrating school libraries and librarians, and children’s books. What better way to do it than to invite you into the listening corner to hear some cool readings from Donna (the librarian) and Josh, Natalya and Siulai (the students) from Blockhouse Bay Intermediate School. They are reading from Jo van Dam’s playful Dog Ditties from A to Z (Scholastic, 2014), my book The Letterbox Cat and other poems (Scholastic, 2014) and the anthology I edited, Roar Squeak Purr: A New Zealand Treasury of Animal Poems (Penguin, 2022). Thank you for your terrific mahi.

The librarian and the students

Donna Le Marquand has been the Librarian at Blockhouse Bay Intermediate School since 2014 and feels very privileged to work in a beautiful library space with the lovely staff and students from her school.

Donna loves books as much as she loves dogs, so her favourite work days are when Barry the schnauzer/foxy cross comes to school in his official role as “Barry the Book Buddy”.  Here he is being read to from his favourite book Doggy Ditties from A to Z by Jo van Dam.

Natalya

Hi, my name is Natalya and I am currently a Year Seven student studying at Blockhouse Bay Intermediate School. I am deeply passionate about reading as it allows me to explore different worlds, encounter new ideas and broaden my knowledge of daily life. Thanks to my love for reading and reciting, I was able to inspire my school and perform exceptionally well in the oral language competition this year.

Joshua

Hello, My name is Joshua and I love to read and write stories. I especially enjoy reading other people’s stories. One of my favourite things to read is poetry. I also like Harry Potter, Rangers Apprentice, and Percy Jackson.

Siulai

My name is Siulai and I am one of many awesome Year 7 students who were chosen to read aloud these fantastic poems. My favourite subject is, and will always be Writing (because it helps me write out what I’m feeling). And lastly, I’m a big food-lover, I love eating and cooking food (it’s very delicious). Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my little passage, but most of all I really hope you enjoy the poem that I read aloud.

The readings

Donna reads ‘F’ by Jo van Dam from Doggie Ditties from A to Z

Josh reads ‘J’ from by Jo van Dam from Doggie Ditties from A to Z

Josh reads ‘T’ from by Jo van Dam from Doggie Ditties from A to Z

Josh reads ‘Lick Lick Lick’ by Paula Green from Roar Squeak Purr: A New Zealand Treasury of Animal Poems

Natalya reads ‘L’ by Jo van Dam from Doggie Ditties from A to Z

Natalya reads ‘Stars’ by Paula Green from The Letterbox Cat and Other Poems

Siulai reads ‘S’ by Jo van Dam from Doggie Ditties from A to Z

Siulai reads ‘The Gargle Bird’ by Paula Green from The Letterbox Cat and Other Poems

Poetry Box review: Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth by Steve Mushin

Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth, Steve Mushin
Allen & Unwin, 2023

“If at first an idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” Albert Einstein

Steve Mushin is an industrial designer, artist and inventor who has produced the most astonishing children’s book I have read in ages. I am astonished by the wildness of ideas, the creative energy, the exuberant movement of thought, the feet in science and the eYES in imagining. Steve says: “Just like you, I’ve had outlandish ideas for as long as I can remember.” Ha! We are implicated, we the readers with our madcap crazy-as-sunflower-custard ideas.

Enter Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth and you enter pages of intricate, witty, crammed-to-the-margins, daring design where ideas are cartwheeling with glee and verve and possibilities. It is like climbing on a rollercoaster of thinking that will make you giddy and delighted and screaming YES! to the neighbourhood.

Often we live on auto pilot and can become immune to the world about us, blind to the beauty, numb to the state of the planet. But enter the wilds of Ultra Wild and you will see the world afresh because this book is a clear response to climate change, the loss of habitats, outdated power sources, a need to care for forest ecosystems, over-roading, resource depleting. It is like imagination gets political and the political gets imaginative.

Here is a taste of some of Steve’s ideas: make every lamp post into a luxury hotel for native animals / re-engineer pylons into fake tree habitats / use 3D printers to create habitats / convert underground sewers into rivers you can ride in submarines / transform cities into jungles.

This super cool book will get you thinking questioning imagining mental-rollercoasting creating making choosing. Here are some of the outrageously wonderful chapter titles: ‘Ludicrous ideas are bootcamps for brains / ‘is rewilding for real?’ / ‘the flying bike project’ / ‘all or nothing’ / who’s to say what is and is not possible’ / ‘is rewilding for real?’

Steve wisely suggests we follow ‘the indigenous Māori ecological concept of guardianship known as kaitiakitanga’. Yes! He reminds us we are an important and connecting part of the natural world and we are responsible for everything living – from mountains to trees to animals to water to ourselves.

I feel so inspired by this book I need to lie down and process it! Have an imagination reboot. Let outrageous ideas drop into my drifting mind. Take a moment to savour awe and wonder and outrageous delight. We need this book. We need this book in every school library. I would like to gift a copy to a child who is feeling off key, who loves to dream and imagine outlandish things, and would like an uplift boost. Message me paulajoygreen@gmail.com and I will get one of my favourite bookshops to send a copy to one child.

Happy dazzling arrival in the world, Ultrawild.

Steve Mushin is an industrial designer, artist and inventor who collaborates with scientists and engineers to solve perplexing problems that no one else seems to know what to do about – like what can be done with explosive cow gas or how to make bikes fly or cities transform into jungles as fast as possible. Steve has exhibited large-scale design drawings and models around Australia and in Japan. He works between Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and in 2015 received an Australian Design Honours award for his work in sustainable futures thinking. Ultrawild is Steve’s first book.

Allen & Unwin page

Poetry Box review: Rustle! Donovan Bixley’s Native Plants of Aotearoa

Rustle! Donovan Bixley’s Native Plants of Aotearoa, Donovan Bixley
Hachette, 2023

Looking out our windows and walking though the bush we can see kauri, rimu, pōhutukawa, tī kōuka, ponga, mānuka, nīkau. We see kererū, tūī, pīwakawaka soar and glide down to the perfect branch for bird song. It is beauty and it is comfort and it is guardianship. Living on the bush-clad land is as nourishing as a bowl of soup.

I love Donovan Bixley’s new book so much: Rustle! Donovan Bixley’s Native Plants of Aotearoa. Like so many children’s authors in New Zealand, he produces books out of, and with, aroha: a love of knowledge, a love of the subjects he chooses, a love of creating with words and paint (think mixed media). It shows and it is contagious.

Donovan’s native plant handbook is informative, easy to read, visually inspired, with great a internal layout and choice of fonts. It covers life spans of trees, their locations, their uses, facts, and includes especially curious facts. I didn’t know, for example, because many tī kōura cabbage trees have hollow trunks, settlers used them as chimneys on their huts. Donovan also drops in cool similes: “Some pōhutukawa have ‘aerial roots’, that hang from branches like a long beard”. He writes and illustrates with his characteristic wit.

At the end of the book, Donovan asks what our favourite native plant is. Great question! An impossible question! I love them all but I guess living where I live, even with such a richness of plant life, I love the feathery mānuka that is both soft and dark against the sky, and that fills with heavenly bird song every day.

This is a book to share, and most definitely a book to celebrate. I think I will celebrate by getting a kōwhai to plant, and sending a copy of the book to someone I know who will love it!

Donovan Bixley ONZM has sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books in 31 countries and 18 languages, including te reo Māori. He has won awards for both his illustrating and writing and won the Children’s Choice award in 2013. In 2021 he became an Officer of the Order of New Zealand. With over 100 books published, his unique style of illustration brings delight and joy to readers both young and old. He lives on the crater’s edge of the greatest volcanic eruption in human history (also known as Lake Taupō, in New Zealand). Music fills his spare time alongside his wife and three daughters. Website

Hachette page

Poetry Box Tuesday Poem: Desna Wallace

Write a poem

Write a poem –
make it whistle,
make it whisper,
make it whirl.

Write a poem –
make it happy,
make it hiss,
make it howl.

Write a poem –
make it spooky,
make it squirm,
make it squawl.

Write a poem –
make it yodel,
make it yelp,
make it yours!

Desna Wallace

Desna Wallace is a writer, poet, librarian, and tutor, who loves playing with words.
She recently won the 2023 Winter Writing Award from Flash Frontier, for her flash and micro fiction. She says: ‘Having word limits is tricky, but it’s a challenge I enjoy.’ Desna has a poem in the book Pav Deconstructed, which is an anthology of adult poetry, stories and artwork to be launched in December. It is a beautiful collection from Pavlova Press full of work from many well-known and new kiwi writers and artists.

Poetry Box review: At the Bach by Joy Cowley and Hilary Jean Tapper

At the Bach, Joy Cowley with illustrations by Hilary Jean Tapper,
Gecko Press, 2023

Ah summer is on the horizon, beach days beckon, and childhood memories flood back of elongated time, sandy sandwiches, head-in-a-book under a shady tree, more sandy sandwiches, homemade lemonade, diving in the waves, starfish floating.

To pick up a new children’s book by Joy Cowley is such a treat because she writes with musical ink, heart currents and builds stories that dance on the page as you read. I am such a fan. Joy’s latest book, At the Bach, fills you with a warm summer glow. It is a book to read over and over.

Hilary Jean Tapper’s illustrations catch the summery mood of Joy’s story, with a soft summer-haze colour palette. She uses what seems to be a mix of watercolour and ink. Each page is character rich as children and parents relish the joy of beach and bach time. Ah picture book bliss.

Joy’s summery story is a celebration of family time, of a slow-down to an amble and smell-the-salty-air time. The marriage of story and artwork is a sensory spark for eye ear nose heart. And it has a very good ending! Picture book bliss indeed.

Joy Cowley is one of New Zealand’s best-loved writers. Her awards include the Margaret Mahy Medal; the NZ Post Children’s Book Award 2006; the Roberta Long Medal, Alabama, USA; and the AW Reed Award for Contribution to New Zealand Literature. She is a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Hilary Jean Tapper is an illustrator and creative arts therapist. Her picture books include What To Say When You Don’t Know What to Say (by Davina Bell), ABIA Children’s Picture Book of the Year, 2023.

Gecko Press page

Poetry Box review: The Observologist by Giselle Clarkson

November Poetry Box poem challenge: Earth Poems

The Observologist, A handbook for mounting very small scientific expeditions
Giselle Clarkson, Gecko Press, 2023

I hope it will encourage children to see that a fascinating, lively, natural world is more than just big animals in faraway places – it’s all around us. I think being a conservationist starts when you feel a personal connection to a plant or an animal or a place, and observing the quiet magnificence of a spider, a moth or a dragonfly is a wonderful way to begin building that relationship with nature. Giselle Clarkson

I love the idea of being an observologist – a person who makes tiny scientific expeditions every day. It taps into notions of looking, of slowing down to observe, wonder, take note of. To see and discover the world up close with fresh and fascinated eyes. To be a conservationist. One part of me thinks a poet is an observologist because every day when I write a tiny poem it is like a tiny expedition and as I look and listen I discover surprising things.

I love Giselle Clarkson’s magnificent new nonfiction book for children, The Observologist, so much I want to hug it. In a sense, too, the book is a way of taking tiny scientific expeditions along the pages as we read and wonder and observe.

The illustrations are trademark Giselle: tiny visual fascinations on each page (check out the tiny red spiders, there is even one on the cover). They sing and shine with such life and zest and detail, reading the book is most definitely a sweet expedition of looking.

The book is even structured like an expedition: to begin, what to pack mentally and what to pack physically (magnifying glass, torch, drawing material). The expedition moves through four distinct places: damp corners, footpaths, weedy patches, and inside our homes.

Some important tips I have packed in the room in my head for important tips:
💚 ordinary places are full of tiny fascinations
💚 if you are trapped in a bored zone … it might be time for a spot of observology
💚 pay close attention to something you hardly ever pay close attention to: that damp corner, or nook in your house, or the ground you walk on
💚Leave living things as you find them (unless they need rescuing)

Some cool bonuses:
🧡 how to get a fly outside at night
🧡what to collect
🧡how to help an exhausted bumble bee
🧡some good words to know
🧡 not all buzzes sound the same
🧡how to move a spider

The Observologist is a book of love and mahi: informative, illuminative, inspirational. I want to keep this book on the kitchen table so every morning I can take a little expedition in it. I hope I have celebrated this book to such a degree you know you MUST SIMPLY get a copy of it. Transcendental! 🧡💚

Giselle Clarkson is an illustrator from Wellington, New Zealand. She once drew a picture of some biscuits that was shared online so many times that they put her on TV. As well as illustrating children’s books, Giselle is a regular contributor to the NZ School Journal. She writes a comic about children’s books for The Sapling, and makes educational comics about important and exciting environmental topics. She loves to have adventures at sea and on remote islands best of all. Giselle has a degree in photography from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.

Gecko Press page

Poetry Box review: Sun Shower by Melinda Szymanik and Isobel Joy Te Aho-White

Sun Shower, Melinda Szymanik, illustrated by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White
Scholastic, 2023

Children’s picture books are one of my favourite book genres because they have the ability to delight and dazzle and get us dream-drifting. I have just finished reading Sun Shower by Melinda Szymanik with illustrations by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White and yes! I am delighted and dazzled and dream-drifting. Most importantly I have been musing on what makes a story achieve this sweet alchemy. I am probably breaking all the picture book rules here, but this is why Sun Shower works so beautifully for me, and what draws me to the genre every day.

🌞🌧 A picture book needs a good starting point. I can’t tell you what the starting point for Melinda as writer was – but for me as reader it was the idea of an unlikely friendship.

🌞🌧 A good story has rhythm. Melinda’s writing flows like honey so I don’t stumble and stutter as I read.

🌧🌞 A good story develops voices that lead you into character. I love the voice of the clouds in Sun Shower.

🌧🌞 A good story has pitch perfect vocabulary. I love how Melinda can place words that shine on the line (‘her nimbus friends’ and ‘the Clouds grew fat with moisture’.)

🌞🌧 A good story book has illustrations that are best friends with the words. Isobel is a whizz at mood catching, using a heavenly colour palette, showing exquisite details that are both visual fascinations and springboards to life-rich miniature stories (the windswept child by the lighthouse or the hiker with binoculars trained on something or the fisherperson with tent and billy)

🌞🌧 Sometimes my favourite children’s picture books hide little wisdom pockets. I loved musing on how important it is to see the good in people AND how sometimes we need the difference in people/things to make the world work. The clouds in the story are very good with wisdom pockets.

🌞🌧🌞 A good story will spark things inside you as you read. It might challenge or enhance or refresh how you see or feel or think the world. Sun Shower does exactly that!

🌧🌞 A good picture book might surprise you – Sun Shower has a feast of little surprises. Especially the ending!

🌞🌧 A good picture book has an especially good aftertaste. When I finished Sun Shower I had a perfect warm glow feeling and it got me musing and wondering, wandering and mulling on what makes a good picture book good!

Melinda and Isobel – another picture book dream team – have produced a sweet gem, picture book gold, an antidote for a world awry. Be prepared to be dazzled, delighted and to dream drift.

Melinda Syzmanik writes picture books, short stories and novels for children and young adults. She has won a number of awards for her work – her picture book, The Were-Nana, won the New Zealand Post Children’s Choice Award in 2009, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Sakura Medal. Her novel, A Winter’s Day in 1939, won Librarian’s Choice at the 2014 LIANZA Awards and her picture book Fuzzy Doodle, was a 2017 White Raven Selection. In 2023, she was awarded the Michael King Writers Centre Shanghai Residency. Melinda lives in Auckland with her family. She strongly believes that you can never have too many books, and you can never be too kind.

Isobel Joy Te Aho-White is a freelance graphic artist and illustrator of Māori (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungungu ke te Wairoa), British and Danish ancestry. She specialises in symbolism and metaphor, and her work is influenced by mythology and folk tales, botanical illustrations and life experience. She has also illustrated BatKiwi stories and Matariki Around the World for Scholastic. More recently, she illustrated Stranded with Linda Jane Keegan.

Poetry Box review: A Friend for Ruby by Sofie Laguna and Marc McBride

A Friend for Ruby, Sofie Laguna, illustrated by Marc McBride
Allen & Unwin, 2023

Ruby finds an extra surprising new friend on the shoreline and it is perfect timing. Ruby is bullied at school: an apple stolen from her lunch box, mean-as-mustard name calling, never getting picked for things. And here she is on the sand, arms outstretched with wonder and joy, as she gazes at the strangest most surprising creature she has ever seen (check out the book cover above!).

A Friend for Ruby is a cool story where you are wondering what happens next and it is an important story because it is a friendship story. It shows how important it is to have a friend, to connect with someone who cares, whether a grandmother, a marvelous sea creature or a school mate. Kindness and connection are key themes.

Sofie Laguna tells her story with such sweet simplicity it is music in the ear while Marc McBride’s illustrations are a dazzling display of rich detail and luminous colour. It is like you are looking through a kaleidoscope or a prism as the ocean splinters and shines in extraordinary ways. I love finding the illustrations techniques: digital painting plus oil and acrylic paint, airbrushing, 2B pencil in Photoshop. A dream team of writer and illustrator.

A Friend for Ruby has an extra delightful ending – this super original, heart-hugging picture book is the perfect book to read at bedtime when your beloved child wants to snuggle into comfort dreams and happy stories.

SOFIE LAGUNA’s many books for young people have been published in the US, the UK and in translation throughout Europe and Asia. She has been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Awards, and twice been awarded Honour Book by the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA). She is also a highly acclaimed author for adults. Sofie lives in Melbourne with her husband, Marc McBride, and their two young sons.

MARC McBRIDE is the illustrator of Emily Rodda’s New York Times best-selling series Deltora Quest, which has sold over 18 million copies worldwide and has become an anime TV show. He has illustrated more than 200 book covers, 10 picture books and countless magazines, and has had work exhibited with the New York Society of Illustrators International Show. He has won Aurealis Awards for the Deltora Quest series, as well as World of Monsters, which he wrote and illustrated. His book The Glimme was Honour Book in the 2020 CBCA awards. His recent books are The Song of Lewis Carmichael,The House on Pleasant Street and The Glow, all written by Sofie Laguna.

Allen & Unwin page

Poetry Box Tuesday Poems: ‘Snail weather’ by Philippa Werry

November Poetry Box poem challenge: Earth Poems

Snail weather

Snails creep
and snails crawl
on fences, leaves
and garden walls.

Snails slowly
slither, slide.
They’re half-outside
and half-inside.

Snails prefer it
wet to fine.
Snail trails
gleam and shine.

Snails don’t care
about the rain.
They’re busy
moving house again.

Philippa Werry

Philippa Werry is a Wellington writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays. Her books include award finalists Anzac Day, The Telegram and This Is Where I Stand.

Philippa Werry website

The Cuba Press page

The Uppish Hen and Other Poems page