Peculiar Parents by Stephanie Owen Reeder and Ingrid Bartkowiak
(NLA Publishing)
Peculiar Parents is a shortlisted in the Eve Pownall non-fiction category of the 2026 CBCA awards.
Author Dr Stephanie Owen Reeder writes about her well-named and impeccably researched and compiled book, Peculiar Parents, for Paperbark Words blog:
Stephanie Owen Reeder on Peculiar Parents
Peculiar Parents explores the mating, home-making, breeding, feeding and child-rearing behaviours of over 60 native Australian animals. This includes well-known creatures such as koalas, wombats, emus, echidnas and platypuses, along with some lesser known ones such as rakali, jacana, wolf spiders and mighty-mouth fish.
My interest in Australian native animals began as a child growing up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s, exploring the bush, nature reserves, rockpools and sand-dunes. Not surprisingly, my favourite double-page spread from my book Australia’s Wild Weird Wonderful Weather, illustrated by Tania McCartney, was headed ‘Animal Antics’. This led me to create Sensational Australian Animals, illustrated by Cher Hart.
While researching this book on how Australian native animals use the five senses, I kept finding fascinating information about their mating habits and how they raise their young. I put the information away in a folder, as I was sure that one day it would make a great book!
Once I’d finished Sensational Australian Animals, I put together a proposal for a picture book called ‘Peculiar Parenting’. After rejections from three publishers, the wonderful folk at NLA Publishing liked my idea! My senses book included 145 animals, so the next step was bringing the number of animals down to just 60 for this book. We didn’t want to overwhelm another illustrator!
When I’m doing my research, one of the ways I decide what to include is when I go: ‘Do they really do that?’ or ‘Yuck, that is so gross!’ or ‘Wow, that is amazing!’ or ‘I didn’t know that!’ I figure if I find it peculiar, amazing, disgusting or weird, then my readers will feel the same way!
I then did deep research on the selected animals, including reading scientific papers that sometimes made my head hurt and doublechecking everything I found. It’s important to get the facts right in a nonfiction book like this. After the manuscript had been edited, it was sent off to watercolour nature artist Ingrid Bartkowiak, along with the reference images for each animal that I had sourced while doing my research. Ingrid also did research of her own to create not only 60 watercolour family portraits of the animals but also 60 sketches of flora and fauna.
Some of my favourite images from the book include: the fluffy quokkas with their cute little faces; the soft, tactile fur of the platypus; the faces of the fry peeking out of the mouth of the daddy mouth-almighty fish; and the beautiful blues in the image of the satin bowerbirds.
Once Ingrid had completed this mammoth task, the book went off to the book designer, Hannah Janzen. I had indicated to my publisher, Lauren Smith, that I wanted the book to have a family-portrait-wall or family-album vibe, and that is just what Hannah created. She did an amazing job of bringing together the text, the ghosted background images, the ‘How Peculiar’ breakout boxes, the framed animal portraits, Ingrid’s sketches, and the images of animals from the National Library’s collections.
Fittingly, the designer used a colour palette based on Australian landscapes, including eucalyptus greens and desert ochres. And she also found a way to make the many reference elements in the book shine, including the contents page, the glossary, the list of animal names, the booklist, the image credits and the two indexes.
But, of course, the real stars of Peculiar Parents are the animals themselves. While researching this book, I was struck by how affectionate animals can be, with many birds in particular mating for life––although, like humans, they also apparently have affairs, get divorced and re-partner after the death of a loved one. While some animal mating behaviours can be confronting––the male bellowing and female screaming of koalas, for example––I was surprised by the number of mating rituals where consent from the female was part of the process. Mind you, there were also cases––especially amongst spiders––where, if the female wasn’t impressed with the male’s attempts to woo her, she would simply eat him. It’s a tough world out there!
With child-rearing, the thing that struck me was the number of devoted animal parents who did everything possible to ensure that their offspring had the best chance of surviving, so they could produce children of their own and ensure the survival of the species.
In a book aimed at a primary-school audience, I couldn’t include some of the more bizarre and unsettling facts my research uncovered, but there is still more than enough material in this book to entertain, inform and amaze young readers.
Some of my favourite creatures include: giant cuttlefish, which change colour to attract a mate and have blue blood, three hearts and a big brain; native frogs that make lots of weird sounds when mating, including plonking like a banjo, brrrmmming like a motorbike, screaming, cackling and quacking; and mother humpback whales, which produce milk that is the consistency of toothpaste, so it doesn’t float away in the water while their calves are feeding!
The offspring of these animal parents pop out of eggs or snuggle up in their parents comfy brooding pouches. And their mums and dads feed them everything from nutritious mother’s milk, nourishing nectar and tasty bugs, to vomit, fungi and poo! And when it comes to childminding, some send their kids off to creches, or leave them with babysitters such as termites or ants! Some produce their babies and then immediately abandon them, while others devotedly care for them until they are big enough to make their own way in the world. Welcome to the charmingly funny, wonderfully weird and perfectly peculiar world of Aussie animal mums and dads and their awesome offspring!
Stephanie Owen Reeder’s website
paperbarkwords.blog 
One thought on “Peculiar Parents by Stephanie Owen Reeder and Ingrid Bartkowiak”