By Maureen Tai, 16 December 2018
“Home is a house in the country.”
The word “home” means the same thing for everyone – a place where one lives, more or less permanently – but how it looks is different for different people. Through her detailed, imaginative and beautiful watercolour pictures, Carson Ellis offers a visual exploration of the myriad homes that exist in the world (and beyond) whilst playfully inviting the reader to think about the inhabitants, who they are and how they might live. Continue reading
It’s about a worm called Marcus who meets a bird called Laurence, and Laurence wants to go to Kenya because he thinks he is a flamingo. Laurence doesn’t know how to read a map but because Marcus wants to avoid getting eaten by Laurence, he lies and says he can read maps. If the worm didn’t say that, Laurence would think he was useless and might eat Marcus. 
With just 18 words and a restrained colour palette of burnt ochre, green and brown, this realistically illustrated picture book about an American solder’s homecoming packs a hefty emotional punch. 
Ali is an eleven year old half-Kurdish middle grader who lives with his family in Basra, near the Iraq-Kuwait border. It is January 1991. A US-led United Nations coalition of 35 countries is about to launch an attack against Iraq for its invasion and annexation of neighbouring Kuwait. Saddam Hussein is Iraq’s dictatorial president, a brutal, power-hungry tyrant in both the eyes of Ali’s family, and the world. Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein is the story of Ali’s survival over the ensuing 43 days of Operation Desert Storm. 
Stories That Stay With Us 