With so many great kids’ and young adult titles out there, it helps to have a recommendation from the experts. Here are this month’s top picks from Telling Tales: Scorpio Children’s Books.

Pokko and the Drum

Matthew Forsythe

Simon & Schuster

Ages 0–6

Pokko is a frog, living with her quiet parents in a quiet mushroom in a quiet forest. But everything changes when she gets a drum. Pokko plays her drum in the forest and soon a crowd of animals is following her! Will she hear her father calling her home? A story about music and persistence, with gorgeous illustrations to delight both children and adults.

Evie and Rhino

Neridah McMullin, Illustrated by Astred Hicks

Walker Books

Ages 7–12

Imagine finding a rhinoceros asleep on the shore of your favourite beach! When Rhino survives a shipwreck, Evie befriends him, takes him home and cares for him. The Zoo wants to take him into captivity, but Evie enlists the help of a donkey, a cow, a cook and some escaped monkeys to keep him safe and hidden. Based on a real rhino shipwrecked on a Melbourne beach in 1891.

Twelfth

Janet Key

Little, Brown and Company

Ages 13+

Maren is at Theatre Camp where she doesn’t fit in. When a prank goes wrong, she and her non-binary friend Theo are drawn into the hunt for a missing ring. Connecting clues is a race against time and interfering camp counsellors. A heart-warming debut about finding your people and accepting others for who they are. Based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

For more great reads, visit www.scorpiobooks.co.nz/tellingtales