100 books like The Mammals of Australia

This genre-busting debut novel by Tasmanian writer Robbie Arnott defies all attempts to describe or classify it. The writing is vibrant and beautiful. It’s a book that fills your lungs with a blast of fresh air, the scents of the cool southern rainforests and dazzles you with clouds and sun and rain and fire. It seamlessly blends realism with a spirit world, binding the human to the animal in an evocatively magical and disturbing story that brings Australian nature and animals into focus in an entirely new literary landscape. I defy anyone to read this book and not fall in love with the Rakali and weep a little the next time it rains. Quite the most remarkable book I’ve read.

A kid’s novel about wild horses (known as brumbies in Australia) might seem a strange choice for recommendations about Australian animals, but Elyne Mitchell’s The Silver Brumby was the first book I read that really captured the Australian landscape and its plants and animals. It was also one of the few books that told a story from the perspective of a wild animal without anthropomorphizing.

It’s a wonderfully evocative homage to the Australian alps and the creatures that live there and it reflects a lot of the dilemmas facing Australian conservation today. Wild horses, or brumbies, do a huge amount of environmental damage in Australia and yet a lot of people love them. In some ways, this book is symbolic of the difficult decisions we have to make to rectify some of the damage we have done, and continue to do, to our wildlife.

Koalas are one of Australia’s most loved and most well-recognized animals, and yet it’s surprising how little is known about them.  They feature prominently in Australian Indigenous stories, and yet were rarely used for clothing or artwork. When Europeans first arrived, it took them over 10 years before they even noticed these strange animals living in the trees above them and they have continued to bemuse scientists ever since. Ann Moyal, one of Australia’s most eminent historians of science, tackles the story of how we know what we do about koalas in an intriguing story about our patchy history with the koala, from neglect and exploitation and near extinction, to protection and international fame as the poster-child for Australian conservation.

There are loads of great picture books that feature Australian animals but one of my favorites is Diary of a Wombat. It’s a very simple story told from the perspective of a wombat and it highlights their adorable, but also irascible and fairly destructive personalities. It’s incredibly difficult to pull off an ‘animal voice’ without it sounding like a person or a bit patronising, but Jackie French really nails it in this book, probably because of her extensive experience with looking after wombats. And the illustrations by Bruce Whatley are full of fun and joy. It makes me laugh every time I read it.

If wombats read books, I think this is the one they would love best, and what book about animals needs a better endorsement than that? 

Margo Lanagan’s mini-collection Stray Bats is an exceptional showcase of refined writing—less is always more. Powerful bite-size vignettes in this dark illustrated miscellany of micro fiction and prose poetry encompass rhyme, beauty, and something most sinister. Offering up constellations, maidens in flight, familiars, hag hunters, vixen wives, and spirit girls, this kind of dark, fantastical writing and the ghosts of its graphics haunt you for a super long time…

The first time I set foot in Sydney, Australia (after a 19-hour flight from Los Angeles), I knew that I needed to learn as much about the history of that continent as possible.

In bars and cafes, I would listen to Australians speaking to each other, marveling at their accents. I wondered how a colony of convicts could thrive in a place completely different from their homes in England and Ireland. I wondered what they did to the Aboriginal people to claim as much land and wealth as they had.

This is why I was drawn to Christina Baker Kline’s book, which follows three young women in Australia, telling the story of its colonization in the 19th century from very different perspectives. Kline’s prose is effortless–descriptive without getting in its own way, but not simplistic. At some point, when I was reading this book cover to cover, I looked up… show more.

When Tegan dies, she wakes up a hundred years later, locked in a government facility with no idea what happened. As she tries to make sense of this future world, it starts to feel as if something is very wrong. Should she keep her head down and just live out her life, or should she fight to make the future better for all? An excellent story from a world-class writer. “Accessible, thoughtful and compelling — science fiction done right.” – Kirkus Reviews

Far from an ordinary guidebook, Loving Country, A Guide to Sacred Australia gets to the heart of this ancient continent through the eyes and stories of Australia’s First Nations people. Beautifully designed and illustrated with photographs, the book opens up an Australia that many visitors never – sadly – see. Exploring Australia’s Indigenous culture is one of the best ways to understand this country, and there are many ways of doing that, if you seek them out. After consultation with Indigenous communities and elders, the authors have chosen just 18 places to feature, telling the stories of the Dreaming, explaining traditional cultural practices, and outlining tours that will open a new world to those who care to dive deep into the culture.

 A controversial pick, but I believe this is the finest fictionalised version of Ned's life story written so far. Carey captures a very authentic sense of Ned’s voice and character by basing the book heavily on Ian Jones’ work and the Jerilderie Letter that Ned wrote with gang member Joe Byrne. It retains enough of the truth to craft a realistic world for his creations to exist in, and blends so well with his inventions, that someone unaware that the book is fiction will have a hard time working out some of the fact from the fiction. It is lyrical, powerful, and helped turbo-boost interest in the Kelly legend at a time when it had begun to taper off somewhat.

This is a heartwarming contemporary story about a gay Aboriginal teen exploring his sexuality and falling in love for the first time, set against the vivid backdrop of a fictional, rural Indigenous community. It’s evocative and heady and compelling. It’s one of those stories that makes you want to reach into the book and hug all the characters and tell them everything is going to be okay. Such an important story from a brilliant new voice in Australian YA.