Gentle but despondent, the creature who narrates this lovely picture-book examination of grief from Australia goes in search of the brother he has lost. He searches high and low, looking in all of the places the brother once visited, but finds him nowhere. Eventually falling asleep, the creature meets his brother in a light-bathed place of safety and joy, awakening with the conviction that his beloved sibling will always be with him...

Shortlisted for The Children's Book Council of Australia's Children's Book of the Year Awards, My Brother was clearly a labor of love for author and illustrator Dee Huxley, character inventor Oliver Huxley, and typographer and designer Tiffany Huxley. Dedicated to Morgan - Dee's son, and Oliver and Tiffany's brother - who was murdered in 2013, it is clearly a deeply felt, personal response by a family of artists to an unimaginable loss. That back story is nowhere to be found in this book (I had to do a little internet research about the Huxleys to discover it), but it certainly explains the sense of genuine pathos in this simple but beautiful tale. The text here is brief but powerful, and is paired with lovely illustrations done in graphite and watercolor. I appreciated the fact that the ending can be read in so many different ways - is the beautiful land Heaven? is it the creature's memory? - as this will allow readers to interpret it in the way most meaningful to them and their beliefs. Recommended to anyone looking for children's books about grief, loss and healing. ( )

A CBCA shortlisted picture book for 2017. The tears were just waiting to fall as I read this story! "A gentle, sad creature has lost his brother and as he searches in places that bring to mind an Escher painting, his eventual outlook about his loss changes from despair to an understanding of what his brother and he shared. This is an elegy to a lost sibling and as an adult your belief is that he’s died but children will take their own meaning from it."
It ends on a poignant and positive note - our memories of the good times will always ensure that the one we lost will be with us no matter what.