Bindi wildlife adventures by Chris Kunz and Jess Black

Monkey Mayhem ISBN 978 1 86471855 3), Lost (ISBN 978 1864718546), Mission: Climate change (ISBN 9781 864718577), A giant rescue (ISBN 978 864718560), Random House, 2011.
The first 8 books of the series: Bindi, Wildlife adventures were published in 2010, and now four more have followed. Each book is a short story complete in itself, with Bindi as a wild life conservation sleuth, protecting animals that are in some danger. These four latest stories (each a refreshingly modest $9.95) take us to Kakadu where she rescues a lost tourist, Madagascar where she helps run an ecolodge, then off to Cambodia to work with a conservation group helping save the elephants and finally to Finland where she works with several people including a climate change expert, a professor, who disappears.
Each of the stories is presented in large print with repetitive illustrations denoting a chapter change, and is introduced with a letter from environmentally aware Bindi, closing off each book with 4 pages of information and activities. As a group of books to have in the library or classroom, they promote environmental awareness and conservation; give information about endangered animals and what people are doing about them, as well as providing activities with which to follow up each story. At times didactic, they are not overpoweringly so and neither do they hit the reader over the head with a viewpoint and information, but lead the reader through a story which has an environmental consciousness.
Fran Knight