Showing titles in Geography & Cultures

Come along on an exciting expedition with the world-renowned scientist and explorer Tim Flannery and his daughter Emma, as they spotlight some of the world's weirdest and most compelling creatures. The earth is home to over one billion sharks across 500 different species, and there's so much to learn about these ancient rulers of the ocean!

The Princess in Black: Princess Magnolia is having hot chocolate and scones with Duchess Wigtower when...Brring! Brring! The monster alarm! Stopping monsters is no job for prim and perfect Princess Magnolia. But luckily Princess Magnolia has a secret: She’s also the Princess in Black! Can Princess Magnolia sneak away, transform into her alter ego, and defeat the monster before the nosy duchess discovers her secret?

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ fantasy-action-adventure, Raya and the Last Dragon, introduces Raya, a lone warrior from the fantasy kingdom of Kumandra who teams up with a crew of misfits in her quest to find the last dragon and bring light and unity back to their world.

The students at the School for Good and Evil thought they had found their final Ever After when they vanquished the malevolent School Master, but with every end comes a new beginning.... Now, on their required fourth-year quests, where Evers and Nevers alike must move beyond the bounds of school and into the biggest, boldest adventures of their lives.

Nettie Sweeney has a dad, three big sisters, a farm full of cows and a cat called Mittens. But it's not enough. She longs for a mother. One with a gentle touch and sparkles in her eyes. Instead, she has Aunt Edith with slappy hands, a sharp tongue and the disturbing belief that peas are proper food. When Dad marries Alice, all Nettie's dreams come true. The Sweeney home overflows with laughter, love and, in time, a baby brother. Billy. The light of Nettie's life. Then tragedy strikes. The Sweeney family crumbles. Nettie tries to make things right, but has she made everything so much worse?

Mim Cohen roams the world in a travelling bookshop, with her dad and brother and a horse called Flossy. Flossy leads them where she will, to the place where they're needed most...the place where the perfect book will find its way home. Now Mim has arrived in Puddling Muddlebury in the Cotswolds, England, just in time for the annual dog show. The judge, Lord Melville-Timms, is in a pickle. He has judged cakes and flowers and vegetables, but never a dog show. Furthermore, his beloved bulldog, Bubbles, is the most disobedient dog in the county.

Coke and Pepsi McDonald never asked to be geniuses. They never asked to get lowered into a basket of boiling french fries, either. And they certainly never asked to be frozen in soft-serve ice cream, stampeded in a wild stadium riot, or kidnapped on a high-speed roller coaster. But that's what happens when a red-haired villain named Archie Clone is chasing you across America. This just might be the most dangerous road trip in history - and the most awesome!

A hilarious tween adventure set in a dazzling fantasy world with two extraordinary heroines - a modern-day fairy tale with bite. Once best friends, Agatha and Sophie were pulled apart like strangers, each in the arms of a boy, Good with Good, Evil with Evil.... Is their friendship lost forever after? But as they settle into their new lives, their story begs to be rewritten, and this time theirs isn't the only one.

After saving themselves and their fellow students from a life pitched against one another, Sophie and Agatha are back home again, living happily ever after. But life isn't exactly a fairy tale.… When Agatha secretly wishes she'd chosen a different happy ending with Prince Tedros, the gates to the School for Good and Evil open once again. But everything has changed and a happy ending seems further away than ever.…

It's April 1940 and German troops are pouring onto the streets of Denmark. 12-year-old Bamse is ordered by his father to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. But Bamse and his daring friend Anton can't resist playing the occasional practical joke on the invading soldiers. When it becomes clear that the trouble isn't just going to pass them by, the people of Denmark decide to take action and Bamse and his eccentric family are about to take part in one of history's most dramatic rescues - smuggling Denmark's Jewish population, across the water to Sweden and safety.

Bruce Pascoe has collected a swathe of literary awards for Dark Emu, and now he has brought together the research and compelling first-person accounts in a book for younger listeners. Using the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers, Bruce Pascoe compellingly argues for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. He allows the listeners to see Australia as it was before Europeans arrived.

Orphaned twelve-year-old Tigg is the Bandicoot Bushranger, the youngest bushranger on the Ballarat goldfields in 1859. When a robbery goes wrong, Tigg must flee in disguise as one of the tens of thousands of Chinese men and boys braving heat, thirst, starvation and murderous attacks on the long road from Robe in South Australia to the goldfields in Victoria.

Good Night Stories For Rebel Girls 2 is the sequel to the sensational New York Times best seller and the most crowdfunded book of all time. The authors, Francesca Cavallo and Elena Favilli, will take you and your kids on an empowering journey through 100 new bedtime stories, featuring the adventures of extraordinary women from Nefertiti to Beyoncé. The unique narrative style of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls transforms each biography into a fairy tale, filling listeners with wonder and with a burning curiosity to know more about each hero.

Subhi's imagination is as big as the ocean and wide as the sky, but his world is much smaller: he's spent his whole life in an immigration detention centre. The Bone Sparrow is a powerful, heartbreaking, sometimes funny and ultimately uplifting hymn to freedom and love. Sometimes, at night, the dirt outside turns into a beautiful ocean. As red as the sun and as deep as the sky. I lie in my bed, Queeny's feet pushing up against my cheek, and listen to the waves lapping at the tent.

Mim Cohen roams the world in a travelling bookshop, with her dad and brother and a horse called Flossy. Flossy leads them where she will, to the place where they're needed most...the place where the perfect book will find its way home. Now Mim has arrived in elegant Paris where she meets Pierre, a talented but anxious artist who cannot bear to give up his paintings, even to sell them. He's miserable and poor. His customers are cross. Mim knows they're here to help Pierre. To calm him down. To turn him into a successful artist. To make him truly happy.

This semi-autobiographical classic, written by Judith Kerr, tells the story of a Jewish family escaping Germany in the days before the Second World War. Tacy Kneale, Judith’s daughter, reads this extraordinary audio edition of the unforgettable adventure Michael Morpurgo called 'The most life-enhancing book you could ever wish to read'. Suppose your country began to change. Suppose that without your noticing, it became dangerous for some people to live in it any longer and you found, to your surprise, that your own father was one of those people.

When Silas Heap unseals a forgotten room in the palace, he releases the ghost of a queen who lived 500 years earlier. Queen Etheldredda is as awful in death as she was in life, and she's still up to no good. Her diabolical plan to give herself everlasting life requires Jenna's compliance, Septimus' disappearance, and the talents of her son, Marcellus Pye, a famous alchemist and physician.

The world of the Australian Aborigines is so full of extraordinary force and beauty that the idea of natural miracles, or what we might call magic, can seem quite normal. So natural magic figures very strongly in their stories, and in their lives. However as people are part of nature too, selfishness, greed, jealousy; also love, courage and a sense of humour are readily described in nature just as in men and women.

Saroo Brierley became lost on a train in India at the age of five. Not knowing the name of his family or where he was from, he survived for weeks on the streets of Kolkata, before being taken into an orphanage and adopted by a family in Australia. Despite being happy in his new home, Saroo always wondered about his origins. He spent hours staring at the map of India on his bedroom wall. He pored over satellite images on Google Earth, seeking out landmarks he recognised. And one day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for.

Sadie is upset when her mum uproots them from the city to move to the remote small town of Boort. But before long, she has discovered a powerful place and crows that speak to her, and she is drawn to two boys, Lachie and Walter. Then Sadie is thrown back in time to witness a dreadful crime in which her family is involved. Sadie, Walter, and Lachie must find a way to atone for past wrongs, or be doomed to repeat them.