Puffin Little Historian: The Anzacs

Penguin Random House Australia, 2020. ISBN: 9781760897024.
Recommended. The ANZACs is one of 6 in the new series, Puffin Little, celebrating 80 years of Puffin. These books return to the publisher's roots of non-fiction books educating children about world events. Each book is essentially narrated by Little Puffin (the cute penguin from the logo) and follows an easy to read format that will enable younger readers to engage and learn through the text and illustrations.
This particular title is for 'Little Historians' (others include Little Cook, Little Environmentalist and Little Scientist) and is an excellent way for children to learn about the War and the ANZACs' contribution. The non-fiction text is set up with an introduction, 6 chapters, a glossary, fast facts section and a quiz to finish off. Each section is visually pleasing, with the black text well-spaced and always on a white background. Important words are highlighted in purple (The feature colour of this title, each in the series has its own predominant colour) and can be find in the glossary.
I think the writers of this title have been considerate in their approach and have explained details of what occurred during this time thoughtfully and age appropriately. I gave this book to my 10 year old son, who was able to easily read it, but more importantly he said that it was very interesting and explained the information to him in a way that was easy to understand. He liked the two-colour nature of it, and thought that the illustrations were nice, but there could have been more.
Although aimed at the younger readers, I learnt a few things myself and appreciated that the text was not filled with a strenuous amount of detail. This book would be great for a project and also as a potential starting point for older students who may be doing a project about the ANZACs.
This title, and the others in this series would be all of great benefit to any home or school library.
Lauren Fountain