This is a reissue of the 2007 edition of the book.
Our Tasmanian devil lives on the island of Tasmania. We meet Purinina as she born, just the size of a grain of rice, and climbs through the ‘dark forest of fur’ to her mother’s pouch to suckle on her teat.
As she grows, her little pink body begins to grow black and white fur, until one day, she pops out of the pouch to land on the ground with a bump. As she climbs in and out of the pouch she begins to learn to growl. ‘A devil of a noise!’ She and her brothers move closer to the mouth of the cave that is their home as their mother finds them food to eat. They snort and scream, yelp and play. The joeys love to sleep in the sun.
One night their mother doesn’t come home from hunting until morning, where she lies down. She will not move again. The joeys must fend for themselves.
The wheel turns and Purinina learns, with her brothers, to hunt food.
One day ‘a new devil joins her in the valley’. They play and wrestle and mate. A baby devil climbing through Purinina’s dark thick fur to find the sweetness of her milk.
The striking illustrations in this book vary from the dark colours of the cave to the light and bright green of the valley. In the back of the book are ‘Devilish Details’ which help us learn more about this marsupials. The tale is the story of life for these ferocious sounding animals, how they live, and reiterates the importance of helping them retain their habitat.
Another terrific book from CSIRO Publishing to encourage us to learn about Australia’s unique and fascinating animals.
Reviewed by Emily Ross
Download Teachers’ Resource for Purinina by Christa Booth
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christina is the award-winning author of eight, and illustrator of over 20 books for children. She loves that she gets to tell stories and colour in as a job and is passionate about helping others to find the story-teller inside them.
Awarded a CBCA Honour Book Award for her picture book Kip, Christina has won numerous Notable Book Awards, and The Environment Award for Children’s Literature for her story, Welcome Home.
Trained as a teacher and artist, Christina has always loved books, art and reading. Her earliest memories include going to the library in her pyjamas, and cuddling books in bed instead of a teddy bear.
She grew up in the bush with wombats, quolls, wallabies, possums and, of course, purinina.
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