ONE SMALL ISLAND - stunning new picture book about Macquarie Island

One Small Island

Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch

Penguin Books - Hardback - $37

A beautifully designed and illustrated non-fiction picture book about the life and times of Macquarie Island - a sub-Antarctic Island and World Heritage Site - from the bestselling and award-winning picture book creator, Alison Lester, and Coral Tulloch

Macquarie Island lies in the Southern Ocean, between Antarctica and New Zealand. A speck of green in the vast, windswept sea, it is a haven for many creatures that live above and below the waves.In One Small Island, Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch bring us the story of this remote and precious World Heritage Site. Together they explore the island's unique geological beginnings, discovery and degradation at the hands of humans, and the battle to restore it today.This beautifully presented book leaves us with an important question: can Macquarie Island and places like it be saved?

About the authors

Alison Lester is one of the most popular and best-selling writers and illustrators of children's books in Australia, and has won many awards, including the Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book Award for Thing by Robin Klein (OUP), and Honour Book for The Journey Home (OUP). Her career now spans more than twenty-one years, and in that time she has produced such classics as the Clive Eats Alligators series, Magic Beach, Imagine and Our Farm. In recent years she has also started writing novels, including The Quicksand Pony and The Snow Pony, and the Bonnie and Sam series with Roland Harvey. Her picture book, Are We There Yet?, won the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award in 2005, and her most recent picture book Running with the Horses was an Honour Book in the 2010 CBCA Book of the Year Awards and 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.

Coral Tulloch has illustrated more than 50 books for children in both fiction and non-fiction, including Antarctica: The Heart Of The World, which won the Environment Award for Children's Literature in 2004. As well as having a passion for environmental education, Coral loves Antarctica, which she visits when she can as artist-in-residence on tourist voyages; but recently drawings of penguins have given way to tortoise shells. Coral lives in Hobart, Tasmania, with her husband, Peter and daughter, Tully.

Both Alison and Coral have travelled to Macquarie Island and Antarctica as Antarctic Arts Fellows. More information about their Arts Fellowships can be found at the links below:

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/antarctic-arts-fellowship/previous-participants/1990-1999/coral-tulloch

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/antarctic-arts-fellowship/previous-participants/2000-2009/alison-lester-04-05

 This is a very special book indeed which has greatly impressed me. The above illustration shows the back endpapers, typical of the enormous care the authors and publishers have taken to produce an exceptional book. Do be sure to have a look at this one, it is extraordinary.