Secondhand Picture Book Bargain Book Box SP4110

Secondhand Picture Book Bargain Book Box SP4110

Twelve Australian picture books, most hardback: Possum Magic, Edward the Emu, Banjo Paterson’s Man from Snowy River with Freya Blackwood’s paintings, Oliver Jeffers’ The Heart and the Bottle, Guess How Much I Love You, Alison Lester’s Very Noisy Baby, The Second Sky and The Kangaroo of Humpty Doo. The Australian read-aloud shelf.

1. A First Time for Everything — Tiffiny Hall & Ed Kavalee — A toddler’s first steps, first tantrum, first everything, from the TV couple who became parents. Anil Tortop’s pictures are the point.
2. The Kangaroo of Humpty Doo — Marcia Vaughan Crews & Louis Shea — A big blue kangaroo and the outback town he comes from, in rhyme from the Wombat Stew author.
3. Blossom Possum: The Sky Is Falling Down-Under — Gina Newton & Kilmeny Niland — Chicken Licken retold with a possum, a bandicoot and a dingo, and a kookaburra who’s the fox. Clever, and the possum photo cover sells it.
4. Possum Magic — Mem Fox & Julie Vivas — Grandma Poss makes Hush invisible and then forgets how to undo it, so they eat their way round Australia looking for the right food. The best-selling Australian picture book ever, and still the first one most kids are given.
5. What Will Baby Do? — Mike Dumbleton & Craig Smith — Baby in a high chair, food everywhere, and a cat who knows what’s coming. Smith’s pictures of the mess are the joke.
6. Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes — illustrated by Matt Shanks — The action song with a koala, a kangaroo and a cassette player. Shanks is the Tree in Me illustrator, and it shows.
7. The Heart and the Bottle — Oliver Jeffers — A girl loses someone, puts her heart in a bottle to keep it safe, and grows up with it round her neck. Jeffers’ book about grief, and the one that undoes adults.
8. The Man from Snowy River — A.B. “Banjo” Paterson, illustrated by Freya Blackwood — The poem, complete, with Blackwood’s watercolours of the ride down the mountainside. The edition to own.
9. Guess How Much I Love You — Sam McBratney & Anita Jeram — Little Nutbrown Hare loves Big Nutbrown Hare to the moon, and back. The bedtime book, in the standard paperback.
10. The Very Noisy Baby — Alison Lester — A baby who roars like a lion, moos like a cow and barks like a dog, and the animals who come to find out why. Lester at her warmest. CBCA Honour Book.
11. Edward the Emu — Sheena Knowles & Rod Clement — Edward is bored of being an emu, so he tries being a seal, a lion and a snake. Rod Clement’s emu face is one of the great Australian picture-book images. Australian Children’s Classics edition.
12. The Second Sky — Patrick Guest & Jonathan Bentley — Gilbert is a penguin who wants to fly, and the other penguins tell him penguins don’t. The sea turns out to be the second sky. CBCA shortlist, and a good cry.