Booklists

I'm filling our Anzac billy. It's full of Dad's favourite things. A billy cannot be posted, delivered on a bike or sent in a car, truck or train. It has to be loaded on a ship with all those Anzac billies for all the soldiers.

A young father is away at war, his wife and daughter waiting at home, sometimes making Anzac biscuits. Life at war is grey and cold, but opening the tin of biscuits from home brings comfort.

Arthur and his friends are on a class visit to the local museum. While his friends dash about, Arthur takes time to inspect all the interesting things around him. One of those interesting things is a glass case housing a strange looking creature known as The Curiosity. As Arthur walks around the Museum, he is being followed.

Walking along the beach, Ruby finds a strange creature on the shore. She takes it home, feeds it and makes a bed of straw for it in her cubby - but a cubby is no place for a creature from the sea. Ruby must draw on all her resources to help the creature find their way home - and perhaps, along the way, she might just find an unexpected friendship.

A little girl sits on her balcony, in a modern apartment block by the sea, dreaming of all the things she could do if she had a dinosaur.

Over mountain and valley and stream he must go, across perilous sea, to a place where they know of a kindly old uncle who might lend some aid. The council agreed that a plan must be made. This most dangerous duty was all up to him, to provide precious food for his withering kin.

Jorn has an amazing imagination. He builds things with his orange peels from breakfast, with cardboard boxes and sheets and blankets. He used his ideas to create amazing things. Then one day he would use his ideas and imagination to design something truly magnificent.

Alec Campbell was the last living Anzac. He enlisted at the age of sixteen and ended up in Gallipoli. Before Alec died in 2002, young James was lucky enough to meet him.

The darkness and howling of the wind as a storm develops, the lighthouse and the cottage warm and safe, lighting up the darkness. Then a knock at the cottage door.

In a time before Australia existed, a little dinosaur with big eyes roamed the Antarctic forests, nibbling on cycads and ginkgoes. One day the little dinosaur fell and hurt her leg. She struggled to keep up with her herd. Time passed and the world changed, but the discovery of the little dinosaur's leg bone millions of years later, meant that she would not be forgotten.

In the Dreamtime, there were no animals, birds, trees, hills or mountains. When the great Rainbow Serpent stirred and set off to look for his tribe, he changed the shape of the country and the lives of the people.

Inspired by an extraordinary true story, Where the Heart Is explores the friendship between Dindim the Magellanic penguin and his rescuer, Joao. We get to see Dindim's 8000-mile journey to his Patagonian home, and his longing to return. Young readers will delight in travelling across the ocean with Dindim, meeting whales and albatross! This is a celebration of the power of friendship and the beauty of the natural world.

A father answers his little daughter's curious questions about all the different people she sees passing by in an ANZAC Day march. Simple, clear explanations of the concept of honouring those who fought presented in a way that may inspire discussion amongst those who share this book.