Booklists

Australian poets have a wonderful way with words and their poems bring to life the iconic Aussie characters and unforgettable landscapes that are part of our Australian heritage. This is a collection of ballads and poems by some familiar, and not so familiar, poets, accompanied by attractive pen and ink sketches. Includes an index of poets and first lines, as well as interesting notes about the writers.

An anthology covering a wide range of human experiences.

A colourful, engaging picture book containing a collection of poems about living in an Aboriginal community.

With a third of Australians born and around half with one parent born overseas, migration stories are a crucial part of our national experience. In her verse novel, Ask No Questions, Eva Collins writes spare affecting lines about her own experience as a teenager when her parents decided to emigrate from Poland to Australia. She captures the loss and gain, grief and celebration with great poignancy. Simply written but deeply moving, Ask No Questions is accessible poetry that is particularly suited for young adult readers.

Short, succinct prose writing by 16 to 20 year olds that are culturally rich, authentic anthems of youth searching their lives through people, places and events around them, conversations clicking between the now and then of lives and the world they know.

Inspiration for poets of all ages lies within these pages.

An anthology for reciters of poetry.

Two young children from different racial and cultural backgrounds are asked to collaborate on a set of poems. They write about lots of different subjects showing their very different perspectives on issues such as religion, identity and friendship, finally coming to some kind of understanding of each other and the world they live in.

This collection of trash-inspired poems will have you thinking about what you use, what you re-use, what you throw out and how your choices about refuse impact you and the world around you. Lost buttons. Buried treasure. Wanton filth. Are we taking enough responsibility for our choices?

A week of high school gossip, dread, embarrassment, loneliness, connections and even love are all collected in this book of short narrative poems. Confessions and conversations cover a large range of events and feelings found in any high school, but the common ground is that everyone is feeling the same things all at once. Unfortunately, no one seems to know it.

An anthology of poems that creates the story of a farm boy and the journey he experiences leading up to the selling of the farm.

1969. While astronauts are navigating to the moon, Sharnie is navigating her way through her first year in high school (just). She wonders if the world will change when man walks on the moon. However much Sharnie wishes things would stay the same, change is coming. She feels less included in the life of her older sister, Cas, who is growing up and growing away from her. Family life gets rocky as her patriotic dad discovers Cas has met a returned soldier and is intent on making a stand about conscription and Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war. At school, Sharnie's only friend Mia is also drifting away from her towards her nemesis, Ellie. She usually finds comfort at her grandma's but Grandma is becoming forgetful lately and Sharnie is worried. Although it is hard, will Sharnie be courageous enough to moonwalk, to find her own way?

A debut YA verse novel about what happens when the paths of a young busking violinist and an aspiring street artist collide during a pandemic. Set in one of the most locked-down cities in the world - Melbourne, 2020.

Henry Lawson, one of Australia's most famous writers, was known as the 'Poet of the People', Lawson's writing captures life in the Australian bush and the hardships and everyday lives of ordinary Australians in the 1800s. Lawson's stories and poems are full of the drama and often absurd humour that characterised life in the Australian outback in the early years of our nation.

A classic adventure and tragic love story told in verse, about the betrayal of heroic Bess and her dashing highwayman.

A beautiful adaptation of Elizabeth Acevedo's famous spoken-word poem with captivating illustrations.

This poem inspired many great writers and artists.

1945, Hiroshima: Ichiro is a teenage boy relaxing at home with his friend Hiro. Moments later they witness the blinding flash as the first nuclear bomb of WWII is dropped. Despite their wounds, the two boys set out to find Hiro's five-year-old sister Keiko in the devastated and blasted landscape. When Hiro is no longer able to continue, Ichiro promises Hiro he will take care of Keiko and get her to safety. But in the chaos, Ichiro loses her after setting off to find help. Seventy years later, this broken promise to his dying friend haunts the old man's fading years. Mizuki, his granddaughter, is determined to help him. As the Japanese legend goes, if you have the patience to fold 1,000 paper cranes, you will find your heart's desire; and it turns out her grandfather has only one more origami crane to fold...

We are facing a global emergency. Temperatures are rising. Mass species extinction has begun. The time for denial is over. It is time to act. This book contains letters from all of us: parents and children; politicians and poets; actors and activists; songwriters and scientists. They are letters of love, loss, hope and action to a planet in crisis. They are the beginning of a new story. They are an invitation to act.

Maya Angelou's brave, defiant poem celebrates the courage within each of us, young and old. From the scary thought of panthers in the park to the unsettling scene of a new classroom, fearsome images are summoned and dispelled by the power of faith in ourselves. Angelou's strong words are matched by the daring vision of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose childlike style reveals the powerful emotions and fanciful imaginings of childhood. Together, Angelou's words and Basquiat's paintings create a place where everyone may experience their own fearlessness.

Age is no barrier to creating poetry that inspires social change and positive action. Thirteen-year-old award-winning slam poet Solli Raphael is taking on the world - one word at a time. The future needs you and me to create equality across all levels of humanity - Solli.

Based on the lives of soldiers at Pearl Harbor and civilians in Hiroshima, this verse novel contemplates humanity and war. Lois Lowry draws from her own memories as a child in Hawaii and Japan to look back at history through a personal lens. It contains poems about individual sailors who lost their lives on the USS Arizona and about the citizens of Hiroshima who experienced unfathomable horror.

Alice has always been devoted to the natural world. But one day she inadvertently betrays what matters most to her and so she leaves her island home, planning to begin again, to be the person she thinks she should be. Clinging to a mysterious wooden box, Alice begins a new life in Melbourne where she meets Esmerelda. As their friendship deepens, Alice is forced to choose between living a comforting lie or accepting a more difficult truth.

With the common theme of narrative verse, this collection of poems contains humorous and serious verse for children and adults.

An anthology for middle years' students for all times.

There is a place inside of me a space deep down inside of me where all my feelings hide. In this powerful, affirming poem by award-winning author Zetta Elliott, a Black child explores his shifting emotions throughout the year. Summertime is filled with joy-skateboarding and playing basketball-until his community is deeply wounded by a police shooting. As fall turns to winter and then spring, fear grows into anger, then pride and peace.

Seven of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous and best love stories and poems are collected here in one handsomely illustrated graphic novel for young readers. Poe's classic works have been skilfully adapted to the graphic format in a way that will entrance and terrify a young generation of horror fans without losing their original atmosphere and thought provoking depth. Poems including The Raven are presented in their entirety.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers - especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school';s slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her Mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

Raps and chants that are written by Indigenous Australians and use Aboriginal English will appeal to Aboriginal children.

On a moonlit beach a father cradles his sleeping son as they wait for dawn to break and a boat to arrive. He speaks to his boy of the long summer of his childhood, recalling his grandfather's house in Syria, the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, the bleating of his grandmother's goat, the clanking of the cooking pots. When the sun rises they and those around them will gather their possessions and embark on a perilous sea journey in search of a new home.

A collection of short stories and poems in which to dip in and out. Some of Australia and New Zealand's best known writers and illustrators for children are featured as well as contributions from young people.

One hundred years ago, the world celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, connecting the world's two largest oceans. Creating a path of water where a mountain had stood is one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken. But, thousands lost their lives, and those who survived worked under the harshest conditions for only a few silver coins a day.

Annie, young Aboriginal girl, is taken from her family in the north of Australia and sent to an institution in the distant south. Away from everything she knows and everyone she loves, Annie must make a new life in a strange world. A sister-friend brings fresh hope.

Eleven year old Sam Slater is orphaned and lives in a small house with Ronaldo, the soccer dog, Parrot, the parrot and eccentric Aunt Ashmara. He is soccer mad and a poet.

The noise throws us from our beds. It's too huge to be heard; it bombards us. It's the sound of the end of the world. Leira is about to start her initiation as a priestess when her world is turned upside down. A violent earthquake leaves her home - and her family - in pieces. And the goddess hasn't finished with the island yet. With her family, Leira flees across the sea to Crete, expecting sanctuary. But a volcanic eruption throws the entire world into darkness. After the resulting tsunami, society descends into chaos; the status and privilege of being noble-born reduced to nothing. With her injured mother and elderly nurse, Leira has only the strength and resourcefulness within herself to find safety.

A compilation of the two authors' favourite poems are illustrated in this Australian poetry book.

Dumb things become important when you're old, that's what Tom reckons. While living in a guarded, gated community, he meets Cleo, the snake charmer. They break out together to discover things such as a bull that hasn't yet become a hamburger.

An assortment of short stories and poems from 50 Australian authors, poets and illustrators. The contents are sorted by genre so, as the mood takes you, dip into adventure, horror, romance, crime, thriller, fantasy, science fiction, humour, historical or poetry. Try something new and discover an author, poet or writing style that you may not have considered before.

This verse novel tells the beautiful and tragic story of the lives of Japanese settlers in Manchuria during World War II through the eyes of twelve-year-old Natsu. After her father is conscripted into the Japanese army, Natsu and her little sister, Asa, are left orphaned and destitute, and her whole village is forced to flee the Soviet Army. Living in a constant state of fear and hunger, Natsu and Asa are left adrift in a hostile and unforgiving world, with nothing but their tenacious will to survive.

When Kasienka starts her new school in her new country, she is lonely and unhappy; everything is strange and her halting English sets her apart from the other students. Her mother is obsessed with finding Kasienka's father who has deserted them. Eventually, Kasienka discovers something that she excels at and the good life begins again.

It's been two years since Ha and her family arrived in Alabama as refugees from the Viet Nam War. They have worked hard to make a life for themselves in America, but it hasn't come easy. Ha has only just begun to feel settled when Mother decides that the family will move to Texas for a new job. Ha knows how hard starting over is and does not want to do it again. But sometimes even an unwanted change can bring opportunity, new friends and a place to call home.