Nigel Pearn

The best? In my kindergarten class, what one child likes the other eighteen don’t. Here are three top books that offer a variety of reading experiences. Shhh! Little Mouse (Viking) showcases Pamela Allen’s extraordinary ability to transform a storyboard into a book. It is a set piece that compresses all the ecstasy and the terror of being a rodent. While Allen keeps the pages turning, Mem Fox and Vladimir Radunsky demand stasis and scrutiny. Where the Giant Sleeps (Viking) maps our fairytale subconscious. The gentle, sonorous, bedtime quality to Fox’s words play against the beguiling expansive Radunsky canvases. A magical, delightful dreamscape. It is not high art in quite the same way, but no one captures the rhythms of ordinary family life quite as well as Bob Graham. In The Trouble with Dogs! (Walker Books), tail-wagging exuberance takes precedence over rule-keeping. Just like classrooms … sometimes.

Stephanie Owen Reeder

Australian picture books continue to impress. It is hard to go past the perfection of Pamela Allen’s beautifully crafted Shhh! Little Mouse, a story about the heady combination of food and danger. With its lyrical text and luscious illustrations, this book is a special treat. Also for pre-schoolers is Susan Hall’s informative and well-designed Guess Who?: A Lift-the-Flap Book about Australian Wildlife (National Library of Australia), which features John Gould’s exquisite paintings of birds and animals. Judy Horacek’s The Story of Growl (Penguin) combines striking illustrations, expressive characters and unrestrained noise-making in a tale about a little monster that represents the vulnerable animal in every child. And the vulnerability of the human condition is vividly explored in Armin Greder’s allegorical work The Island (Allen & Unwin). This masterful but chilling tale for our times, with its sombre theme, haunting illustrations and heartbreaking ending, makes compelling reading for teenagers and adults alike.

Anna Ryan-Punch

Jenny Downham’s Before I Die (David Fickling Books) is a heart-breaker of a novel. Before she dies, sixteen-yearold Tessa, who has terminal cancer, wants sex, drugs and fame. This startling book, gloriously free of sentimentality, is one of those rare novels that stays with the reader long after the last page is read. Bill Condon’s Daredevils also features a teenager with a terminal condition, but is really the story of his best mate’s introduction to the risks and joys of love and friendship. Boisterously funny and touching by turns, it is an irresistible read. My final favourite is David Metzenthen’s Black Water (Penguin), a World War II novel that focuses on the families back home. Metzenthen captures the small ways that humour, family and friends can help balance the horrors of death and war.

Mike Shuttleworth

John Nicholson’s Songlines and Stone Axes (Allen & Unwin), a history of Aboriginal trade and transport, sheds new light on Australia’s first people. Nicholson’s extensive research and nuanced illustration is refined by thoughtful, precise text. A revelation. Open any page of Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child to witness the vivid images she makes. Only Hartnett could harness the imagery and language of fable and myth and come up with this startling, original novel. Steven Herrick’s Cold Skin (Allen & Unwin), seething with repression, violence, love and loneliness, continues a run of dramatic verse novels, and is the best yet. Internationally, one to cry and one to laugh. Jenny Downham’s Before I Die, the tale of a sixteen-year-old girl dying from bone cancer, could have been a mawkish moan, but it is brilliant and strangely uplifitng. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Allen & Unwin), by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, takes place over one night in New York. A celebration of all that is great about youth, with the energy of a Ramones concert and the charm of Ella Fitzgerald.

Ruth Starke

In the audio book of Black Water (Louis Braille), words and voice are a seductive combination. David Metzenthen injects more humour than you’d think possible into a slow-paced story about two brothers’ recovery from trauma in a small Victorian fishing community during World War I. He’s a whiz at laconic dialogue and at expressing youthful exuberance, and David Tredinnick is just the reader to exploit every quirk of character and nuance of mood. Shaun Tan’s wonderful, multi-layered The Arrival (Lothian) should be on everyone’s list of best books. I also liked You and Me: Our Place (Working Title). Leonie Norrington’s simple text about the long grass Aboriginal people of northern Australia and the marine creatures that are their traditional food source is complemented by Dee Huxley’s powerful but muted pencil and pastel illustrations that whirl with life across the double-page spreads.