New Read about Australia series

2025 Nov 26

Posted by Clare Harris / ESL literacy, ESL resources, ESL Books / Comments Off

I’ve always loved classes where you cut up a map of the Australian states and territories, and learners have to reassemble it, adding the capital cities…and of course talking about what goes where. There is just so much of Australia to learn about, and so many unexpected aspects… swimming dangers that aren’t just sharks, birds called a ‘bin chicken’, a country with a Red Centre – but why is it red? Even if you teach Citizenship, these things pop up in class, but there’s no time to cover them all.

So when librarians asked me for some easy-read non-fiction, I immediately thought I could write some ‘fun fact’ books about Australia, in colour, with an adult/young adult focus, for libraries and reading groups.

My goal with the reading books

I couldn’t make the books ‘beginner’, but I tried for an easy-read look, with a large literacy font and very spacious layout. The text uses a lot of simple/compound sentence structure, plus there’s ‘listen and read along’ audio, so that learners can borrow the book from a library and manage it themselves. Unexpected vocabulary is in bold for a quick check in their dictionary app.

Here are the covers of the first four: if you’d like to see inside, you can go to the Read about Australia page, or take a look at the books on Amazon, where there are more ‘look inside’ features (don’t worry – the books will be available from your friendly language bookstore or library supplier!)

On the right of the picture you can see samples of the downloadable worksheets – a chance for learners to note and practise new vocab (and there’s plenty!), talk about the topics, and test their knowledge in a quiz. The worksheets are fun but not too challenging, with answers at the back. Learners find these through a link in the back of the book, where they can also get access to the audio on YouTube: thebooknextdoor.com/australia/

Specifications

The books are full colour paperback, 40pp, 6 x 9 inches, RRP $22, with the audio and photocopiable worksheets available, plus teachers/group leaders can also download pre-reading discussion slides from my Payhip site. (The books themselves aren’t photocopiable.)