Brontosaurus Books

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Brontosaurus Books

One author school teacher + one illustrator school teacher = Brontosaurus Books! Imaginative, fun, adventurous picture books for kids, parents and teachers.

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Ben and Megan Kitchin

13/04/2026

For picture books, we believe Pamela Allen is the absolute GOAT. Her stories are often imaginative but they’re always grounded in a reality kids UNDERSTAND and are deeply interested in. Her illustrations are also beautiful and super endearing.

Pamela’s books are guaranteed winners with kids and if you’re a parent, grandparent, teacher, librarian or booknut, you should have many or all of them in your collection.

The pictures for this post are from an exhibition called The Curious World of Pamela Allen. The exhibition is running at the State Library of NSW for a few years so yep… people don’t get exhibitions like this about their work very often… Pamela Allen is CLEARLY the PICTURE BOOK GOAT.

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with an entertaining picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

07/04/2026

At Brontosaurus Books we’d like to see way more PICTURE BOOKS aimed at ENTERTAINING kids (rather than proselytising a position on a social issue or giving behaviour regulation tips).

Last Week When Pterodactyls Came to School is another story we’ve created with KIDS’ ENTERTAINMENT front of mind. Having recently finished the text, storyboarding LWWPCTS will be a fun past time over the next few weeks for me and maybe one day Megan will make the deluxe version.

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with an entertaining picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

31/03/2026

Watershed week at Brontosaurus Books. We are now giving away free Brontosaurus Books stickers with orders! Colourful stickers are obviously right up there in terms of humanity’s-all-time-greatest-achievements so yep… we’re very happy about it. A huge thanks to and for their cricut wizardry. 🧙😄🦕

If you already have a Brontosaurus Books book and would like a sticker to pop on your car, skateboard, front door or forehead, just yell out.

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a fun picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

26/03/2026

Brontosaurus Books Diary Entry Number ?

It’s been a different few weeks at BB. Lately we have been an email-only marketing enterprise and so far it’s been pretty good (selling maybe 5 books a week on average). With different time zones preventing the calling of the remaining public libraries in Vic, Tas and NSW, we’ve pivoted to emailing school librarians instead. We’ve had to tweak a few things so that we can get through more often and we’ll perhaps have to tweak things further. It’s a lot easier than being on the phone though and the list of librarian contacts grows each week so perhaps getting return customers down the track will be easier.

Generally the last few weeks has been a step in the direction we want to take; Brontosaurus Books selling books without Megan or I having to do any kind of song or dance. Without us being visible at all really. With no more school, library, kindy or OSHC visits planned and now not even being on the phone much, things are moving towards the space we were always hoping for marketing-wise. Maybe we’re shy. Maybe we should go even more incognito and start wearing helmets like Daft Punk or wigs like Sia… certainly an option…

In other news we recently partnered up with another library supplier, Sound Text Media. STM have purchased 20 books already so that’s a great start!

Some more news has also been the creation of social media QR follow slips which we’ll be popping in with our book orders for a while.

That’s it for now!

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with an engaging, fun picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

19/03/2026

Another classic-but-potentially-at-risk-of-being-forgotten picture book here. Imaginative, silly and very relatable, I Wish That I Had Duck Feet gets kids seeing and imagining all sorts of entertaining possibilities.

Perhaps a cool art activity after a reading IWTIHDF would be getting the kids to draw themselves with whatever animal augmentations they thought most advantageous? Still widely available so go and grab a brand new copy quick smart if you haven’t already got your own!

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with another imaginative picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

12/03/2026

Picture books don’t get any better than A Fish Out of Water.

As time slowly buries and hides all things, so it seems time is burying this great book. I haven’t recorded the exact statistics but I’m sure that as the years pass, more and more students in my classes flag their unfamiliarity with A Fish Out of Water.

A simple story about a pet fish growing stupendously large after being “fed too much”, I’ve never seen a kid be anything other than riveted by it. At Brontosaurus Books, we believe it’s books like A Fish Out of Water that get kids right into reading and we can’t think of a better outcome than that!

Despite the passing of years, A Fish Out of Water is still widely available and we super highly recommend people get their own copy if they don’t already have one.

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with another cheerful picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

05/03/2026

When I was about 10 years old and living in Wilmington, there was a bushfire on Mount Remarkable. I remember many kids in the town had to stay at the school whilst many parents fought the fire in the CFS. Audrey is a retelling of that true story with a 60 foot tall kangaroo popped in. 🦘🔥🙂

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with an adventurous picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

25/02/2026

Brontosaurus Books is One Year Old!

Things we’ve learned for BB in the first year:

- selling books at markets is awful

- selling books directly to libraries is great

- scheduling emails is smart

- we love working with library suppliers like ALS, Peter Pal, James Bennett and Westbooks

- sales via book stores has been a little up and down but generally it has been slow… it’s really nice meeting store managers though and feeling a little a part of a team

- posting on some big social media accounts has done absolutely zero for sales etc (as has paying for local FB post boosts)

- posting BB content on socials once a week is manageable and kind of fun (rather than being painful and annoying perhaps for all involved) and we have 888 combined followers

- the second we start taking BB too seriously, it becomes stressful and not enjoyable

- library, kindy and school visits are fun but we won’t be pursuing them very actively anymore

- holiday OSHC and CC centre visits are better for managing our day jobs and we will low key pursue more of these opportunities (emphasis on low key)

- being shortlisted by Speech Pathology Australia for the Book of the Year was a HUGE validator for us; we feel like we can almost hear a sigh of relief from librarians once this info has been shared in a cold call

- it seems we can keep making books and at least recover our costs doing what we’re doing - this is great as both of us just want to create and sell good books that get kids excited about reading without making a lot of fuss

- at this point neither of us look likely to ever change our teaching fraction of time to work on BB - financially it doesn’t look like it’d work and it’d perhaps make it less fun

- perhaps most importantly, our customers have really liked our product

- being an indie publisher and doing our own thing is enormously freeing, fun and interesting

- printing in Australia is a great, viable option

19/02/2026

I tried to share the full length version of this timelapse but my phone said it’s too long. I think that’s testament to how much work goes into illustrating most pages of a picture book and I very much take my hat off to illustrators! 🧢

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with an adventurous picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

12/02/2026

Brontosaurus Books Diary Entry

It’s been a rough fortnight following holidays for BB. With time differences making contacting eastern libraries almost impossible, I’ve been trying to email school librarians in SA. After sending 170 emails this week and last, I only managed to sell 3 books! That’s a 1.76% strike rate! 😆

So yep, I’m thinking I need to change my email message a bit. Maybe it’s the payment method that is causing issues? Something else? I’m no stranger to sending emails again so I’ll tweak my pitch and see if I can’t improve my woeful percentage. Failing getting school emails to work, BB might be in some trouble as store and website sales are slow to non-existent. Could this be the beginning of the end? Or the end of the beginning? 🙂📚🦕

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a great picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

06/02/2026

After another fun picture book kids love?

At school, The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman is an unfailing favourite. Quirky, unpredictable, accessible, exciting, entertaining. If you’re a parent, teacher, librarian or book nut looking for a book that makes kids excited about reading, we recommend you include The Pencil in your collection.

Obligatory BB ad:

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a fun picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

31/01/2026

Brontosaurus Books Diary Entry

Resumed calling Victorian libraries this week from Chilwell and only made it to Cranbourne West. The SA/Vic timezone difference makes things hard so I perhaps spent more time calling libraries from WA and Queensland that didn’t pick up the first time I called.

Working on storyboarding George. George’s blurb:

George is a tyre eating dragon who, falling foul of the law, endeavours to mend his anti-social ways.

Megan is working on page 13 of Audrey (She completed 7 pages in the holidays!). I feel like she’d be way more productive if she didn’t put so much time into mastering fighting as Blanka in Street Fighter II.

Know a 3-8 year old who could do with a good picture book? Grab them a copy of The Very Steep Hill at Dymocks in Glenelg, Dillons in Norwood, Mostly Books in Mitcham, Dymocks in Adelaide, Over the Edge in Melrose or www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au.

Printed in Adelaide by Finsbury Green. 100% Australian Made.

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Adelaide, SA

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http://www.brontosaurusbooks.com.au/

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