Ella and the Ocean by Lian Tanner & Jonathon Bentley

Description

This Tasmanian Literary Award-winning book is a very Australian story of drought and renewal, of family, of imagination and of the power of hope.

WINNER: 2022 Tasmanian Literary Awards, Prize for Young Readers and Children

Ella lived in the red-dirt country
where the earth was as dry as old bones
and it hadn’t rained
for years
and years
and years.

One night, Ella dreamt of the ocean…

A captivating picture book from the award-winning author of The Keepers and the CBCA Notable illustrator of Where is Bear?

I reviewed this gorgeous book here in a YouTube clip.

Lian Tanner has been dynamited while scuba diving and arrested while busking. She once spent a week in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, hunting for a Japanese soldier left over from the Second World War. She likes secrets, old bones, and animals that are not what they seem. Nowadays she lives by the beach in southern Tasmania with a large fluffy tomcat called Harry-le-beau. She is the author of the internationally bestselling The Keepers series, The Rogues and The Hidden. This was her first picture book.

Jonathan Bentley is the illustrator of many wonderful picturebooks, including The Second Sky by Patrick Guest (CBCA Shortlist 2018), Tales from a Tall Forest by Shaun Micallef, First Day by Andrew Daddo, Blue Sky Yellow Kite by Janet A Holmes, and Where is Bear?