In Spiky Echidna, a baby echidna gets a piece of wire caught in between his spines. It takes a friendly possum to pull it out for him.
The short-beaked echidna is a mammal called a monotreme (meaning "one hole" — it has one vent through which everything, including eggs and waste matter, passes). Its young hatches from a leathery-shelled egg then stays in the small, backward-facing pouch until its spines develop. If it is threatened, an echidna will roll up into a spiky ball on hard ground or dig quickly into soft ground.
Rebecca Johnson is an Australian author, part-time science teacher and mother of two.
Published by Penguin, her latest series, Juliet - Nearly a Vet has received a large number of excellent reviews (see reviews) as well as individual books in the series being twice nominated for the CBCA younger readers section, winner of the Wilderness Society Environment Award for Children's Literature and nominated for the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature. This series will soon be published in Norwegian, Czech, Slovak and Portuguese.
Her best selling Steve Parish Story Book series of page-turning adventures, featuring Australian wildlife, has sold more than 3 million copies. Each book is also beautifully accompanied by full-colour photographs by award-winning photographer Steve Parish.
Rebecca also has an Insect Series published by Pascal Press with strong links to the Australian Curriculum, presenting facts and scientific knowledge in a fiction format with stunning photographs. This series won the 2014 Whitley Award for Best Educational Series.
Rebecca received the 2010 Peter Doherty Award for Excellence in Science Teaching.
Today I was wandering around an op shop (second-hand shop) when I saw a pile of these books about Australian animals by Rebecca Johnson and Steve Parish. I remember reading these to my toddle nephew 20 years ago. So, in the store, I read them all again 😊