Koala Calamity

Koala Calamity is the fifth instalment in Harper Collins’ popular Awesome Animals series, each written by a different author. In this book, Jonathan Meres, best known for The World of Norm, takes on the crazy, lazy koala.

You might think that koalas are boring, just because all they do is eat eucalyptus leaves and sleep for 19 hours a day. But you’d be wrong – they’re not boring, just lazy. Meet Dude and Bro, the most chilled-out of wild animals, whose idea of exercise is stretching for another eucy branch. Kicking back in the treetops and catching some rays is their idea of a good time, but when they wake up to find they have missed their transfer to the big city zoo, the brothers must rally themselves to action. In fact, it is little brother Squirt that saves the day. He lacks the laziness of his elder brothers and is desperate to show them he isn’t just a baby brother.

This comic book offers some moments of great humour, as well as giving read-aloud parents the opportunity to try out their best Aussie accents. There is – perhaps inevitably for characters who nod off mid-sentence – plenty of repetition in the dialogue, which makes the book accessible to less-able readers. One thing is for sure, you will never look at a koala the same way again.