The Tartan Kangaroo by Tom Lewis and Tony Oliver

Australia meets Scotland, this book is basically an illustrated poem, written in ballad form. Mind you, the illustrations by Tony Oliver, are absolutely amazing, especially the massive tartan, bagpipe-playing kangaroo. This kangaroo is an environmental disaster of earthquake proportions who rips up gum trees and flings them around awakening the townsfolk in the middle of the night with his merry bagpipe tunes. Well, the time happens when there's bound to be a few complaints. Then, there's the bright idea of using the eccentric roo to attract tourists. What happens in the end is not what you might expect!

Animal Stand by Alan W. Vickers

This is a first edition (1991) hardback collectable. In fact it's quite a rare title. It is an Australian bushland adventure with an environmental message. It also has a cleverly coded message for the reader to solve. What is Bossly's message? The animals include is Pira the platypus, Bossly the wombat, Karl the kingfishers and Scaly the frillneck lizard. The animals are battling a developer who wants to destroy their habitat. The full page illustrations are colourful and detailed, it is one of the most stunning Australian picture I have ever seen.

Possum Magic by Mem Fox

This book was one of my daughter's favourite books when she was a little girl. It's about as Australian as you can get with Grandma Poss visiting all of Australia's states. It's all about Grandma Poss who dabbles in bush magic and one day she makes baby Hush invisible.Hush just loves this and gets up to a lot of mischief, however, eventually she tires of the novelty and wants to be visible again. But the problem is that Grandma Poss can't remember the necessary magic and so the quest begins...

The water colour illustrations by Julie Vivas are simply stunning and will have young children pouring over them time and time again. This is a lovely book for book buddy session and for older children looking to explore the different states of Australia
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Check out this YouTube presentation of the book, it's worth a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BboBeS-vhjg