The Echidna Near My Place

A delightful addition to the Nature Storybooks series, The Echidna Near My Place tells the story of a child and their nana, and the echidna they love to follow around

Nana and I walk through the paddock most days. And you know what? An echidna lives here. We don’t always see it. But I’m always looking for it.

As a young child and their nana go for walks together, they follow a short-beaked echidna keenly observing and discussing what its life might be life. Learn with them about what echidnas eat, where they live, and how they protect themselves.

A wonderful addition to the acclaimed and award-winning Nature Storybook series, which provides memorable reading experiences, combining narrative and factual forms.

“This is the latest addition to the Nature Storybooks series, one of my favourites for young readers as it combines a narrative story with a factual account so they learn so much more about the fascinating creatures that inhabit their world, particularly Australia.”

The Bottom Shelf
If you’re looking for a book that will teach you lots about echidnas and has fun illustrations as well as quirky story, then this might just be it. Oz Book Snail
Sue Whiting introduces us to the world of the 'spiny anteater' in a heart-warming story between a child and her grandmother. CBCA Reading Time
A familiar native animal to Australia and parts of New Guinea is the sole focus in The Echidna Near My Place (Walker) by Sue Whiting, illustrated by Cate James. It’s teeming with interesting facts (the snout is usually seven to eight centimetres long, they eat about 40,000 ants a day) about a solitary animal often only glimpsed through a car window. By book’s end, young readers will have a renewed respect for this tenacious, toothless, and shy animal. Sydney Morning Herald

Sue Whiting is a children’s and young adult author and editor who lives and works in a small coastal village south of Sydney. She has written numerous books in a variety of genres: fiction and nonfiction, picture books through to YA, including the best-selling Missing, and the CBCA 2019 Notable Book, Beware the Deep Dark Forest. Sue is passionate about storytelling and the power of story to transform lives, and has been fascinated with picture books since her early years as a primary school teacher.


Cate James moved to Australia in 2015 from Scotland where she studied Printmaking and Illustration at Edinburgh College of Art. She is now living in the Northern Beaches of Sydney with her husband and her sausage dog Sebastian. Cate is a full-time illustrator, and when she’s not drawing for children's books, she likes to find different ways to be an artist. She volunteers with ArtEx at the Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick where she also exhibits her work, and teaches art to primary-aged children and printmaking to adults in various locations around Sydney. Cate is also a printmaking technician at UNSW.

She has illustrated over 25 books for publishers in the UK, US and Australia and was awarded the Penguin Random House Illustrators’ Showcase Award in 2019.

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