S2E2 Little Library: Castle Crashing

In this episode of Learn Play Thrive’s Little Library, we head to the seaside to explore the 2026 CBCA Notable picture book, Castle Crashing. Join host Linda Harrison and award-winning author Andrea Rowe as they dive into the relatable world of Bonnie, a young girl whose beach day takes a turn when her friends’ creative visions collide with her own. 

Beneath the beautiful, salt-sprayed illustrations by Hannah Sommerville lies an exploration of early childhood milestones, from the tricky negotiation of sharing and turn-taking to the "boiling over" of big emotions. Andrea shares how the natural environment acts as a 'third teacher', offering children the sensory space they need to breathe and reset.

This episode is packed with practical, nature-based play ideas designed for early childhood educators and parents. We discuss how to use bird’s-eye and worm’s-eye perspectives in the sandpit to build spatial reasoning, and how small-world play can help children physically re-map the story's narrative sequence. Whether you are looking for tips on conducting interactive read-alouds or want to learn ways to develop a young child's visual literacy skills, this conversation offers a wealth of insights.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Learn Play Thrive the podcast, the ultimate early learning podcast for educators and leaders in the sector. Let's learn, play, and thrive together.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

The Learn Play Thrive podcast was recorded on the land with the Dark and Jong people. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians, past, present, and emerging. Hands up, hands down, clear on dark and young land.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

A warm welcome to today's episode of Learn Play Thrive's Little Library. I'm Linda Harrison, early education content producer at Learn Play Thrive, where we're passionate about the power of picture books to ignite young imaginations and foster a lifelong love of literacy and learning in the early years. Today we're heading to the seaside to explore a beautifully relatable 2026 CBCA notable book in the early childhood category. It's called Castle Crashing. On the surface, it's a celebration of beach play and the creativity of Sandcastle Building. Beneath that are thoughtful themes of friendship, negotiation, and managing overwhelming emotions. It's authored by the wonderfully talented Andrea Rowe, illustrated by Hannah Somerville, and published by Little Hare, Hardy Grant Children's Publishing. Andrea, it is such an honor to have you here in the studio. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Fantastic to be here, Linda. I'm really looking forward to our chat.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Well, let's share a bit about Andrea. So Andrea is a best-selling award-winning picture book author, and she loves to write stories where characters explore the great outdoors, ponder big questions, and move through tricky feelings, which inspire conversations amongst children, families, and educators. Her picture book, Jetty Jumping, was awarded the 2022 CBCA Picture Book of the Year in the early childhood category and the 2023 Australian Speech Pathology Picture Book of the Year. It has also recently reached contemporary classic picture book status in the top 20 Guardian Australia Best Picture Book poll. Andrea's other picture books in The Rock Pool and Amid the Sand Dunes were both awarded the 2024 and 2025 CBCA Notables. Her latest book, Castle Crashing, as I mentioned before, is a CBCA 2026 notable. And her first non-fiction picture book, Dogs with Jobs, is being translated into Hungarian and Danish. Andrea is also the 2025-2026 inaugural public libraries ambassador for Victoria and is the May Gibbs Children's Literature Trust Fellow. That is such an extensive bio, Andrea. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

We need to work on shortening it.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

So Andrea, your picture book Castle Crashing, follows a young girl named Bonnie who thinks that she knows how to build sandcastles best. But her friends insist on building their own sandcastles in their own way and not Bonnie's way. So for our listeners, some of your story reads, her friends are sharing ideas, swapping tools, taking turns. They're building separate castles, neighbouring sand forts on the shore. But Bonnie wants a grand sandcastle for all. So no one listens to Bonnie and soon her anger boils over. And she actually snaps her spade and stomps on her sandcastle and she marches off. So Andrea, what was the spark that led to this story that's full of feelings?

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Oh darling Bonnie, you just want to take care of her and help her find her way through it. Look, there's a few sparks for me, and probably Bonnie is one of the closest characters to my own childhood that I've written. She feels very much like me and how I battled with some of my emotions. But also the story itself is inspired by I've grown up on the coast, I've raised my children on the coast, and I live on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, where we build sandcastles all the time, and of course, all those ideas collide and all of that collaboration can kind of be, you know, have all its highs and lows, and those big feelings start to bubble up. So for me, it was quite a logical thing thinking about the industry around sandcastle making, but also the personalities that build side by side. And how I really, I guess, wanted to explore that narrative of what happens when things don't go to plan. How do we actually find our way through that? What happens when we're feeling frustrated, when we need to step back? How do we tell when we need to step back? And how do we come back to something when we feel like things have exploded and we need to start again with friends, which is such a common thing for children to experience in so many at so many ages and for owner uh for grown-ups too. So I wanted the story really to be not just a homage to something that's a part of so many of our lives, that sort of beach moment of building sandcastles, because it's so accessible, but also a reminder that when we're making things side by side and collaborating, it takes a lot of patience and kindness and compromise, and that can be really tricky as well. So I really wanted to sort of, I guess, get into my elbows with this story about mess-ups and how we come back from the mess ups too.

SPEAKER_03 5:10

Oh, such important themes, which is why it's a wonderful picture book to share with young children. And I think those frustrations with young children that they experience, you know, quite often, educators do see that in their work every day with young children, and they're supporting them to navigate those emotions and the friendships and helping them through learning to cooperate with other children through play. So I think in your story, when Bonnie struggles, when her friends don't follow her ideas of building the sandcastle, your prose, you know, your style is so rich with that sensory imagery and the active verbs, and it really does bring that story in that beach setting to life that you spoke about. You know, you write about the characters trailing towels and beach combed treasures, but we know if you just like you've just mentioned that beneath that the there is a real struggle for that main character, Bonnie. So, how does the story navigate that tricky negotiation of turn taking and sharing, which is a developmental milestone in the early years?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, look, I think for me too, I see a story as this sort of arc that we have to go through. And also, having been a parent, I see every day as a story with my children with okay, what do we need to move through to get to the other side today? So sharing and turn-taking was such a big component of me trying to think about these little vignettes of moments on the beach, what children aren't actually getting up to, and where they are stepping back and stepping forward as well. Of course, this is a picture book, and a picture book can't be anything without an illustrator. They are one half of, you know, we are a storytelling team here, and Hannah Somerville, who I adore working with, I can't get enough of Hannah's illustrations, she portrays so much energy and emotion alongside what I write. So Hannah's visual literacy is all sort of about different perspectives and also pages filled with quite lively movements from the kids. For me, I'm sort of trying to sort of softly suggest some of the details of their sandcastles, and then Hannah, of course, is building it next to me as well. So I think for us, we know that we've got this idyllic beach setting that we want to create a story at, and in partnership, I'm trying to sort of write a pace and a movement as kids are naturally adding to the landscape of building a sandcastle. And then Hannah's coming in with these wonderful, it's kind of like peek-aboo moments for me. It's like, oh, look at that detail she's found. And the beautiful thing about writing a picture book is sometimes I need to hold back and not write that to let Hannah bring that to the page as well. And that sort of makes that sort of element, I guess, even more the rich, richer for a parent or an educator when they're reading the story as well. And I think for me, too, that whole sort of sensory element of a beach and of the sand castle creating setting, I can sort of drip feed little lyrical suggestions, and then it's, you know, Hannah brings something in too, but the rest is up to the reader to kind of start relating to and bringing their perspectives and experience in as well, too, as they're kind of seeing those cues.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

I'm sure it would inspire children to talk about their own experiences at the beach, and yeah, educators can use that as a springboard for engaging in conversation about that. But I did notice too, of course, the illustrations are wonderful and there's so much detail to chat about. But with the text as well, I noticed that some of the descriptive words were in a bit of a larger font compared to the rest of the text. So, was there a reason why you emphasise those words more visually?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Oh gosh, I love this part of picture books when you first start seeing the design. Uh, and because I will say that there's a third party, of course, here in making picture books, and that's our publishing team, and that's the design team who can sort of really think about how to sort of place have that movement in text as well. And they're really essential to that vision. So for me, there's wonderful theatre in seeing that sort of enhancement of certain words. It's helping carry that emotional weight as someone's reading a picture book. You know, if a word is sort of larger or has had a more significant emphasis, it helps an educator or a parent know how to sort of let their voice rise or to how give that, or to give that word space, or to give it a little bit of volume as well. And I think for children, I mean, I I love that whole element. I love that whole element of letter and word identification and helping a young person start to sort of recognize, oh, the parents saying this, or the grown-up saying this when busy shouts is kind of enhanced or flustered or fussy. And I love the idea that this is helpful through the design of a picture book to help a child start to identify and recognize those letters and sound them out when they're coming back. I mean, this is giving them uh so much skill in growing their vocabulary and literacy skills as well. I think too, there's such a lot of joy in knowing that children are going to recognize not just the print connection with the visual size of words, but also the emotional weight of that word as well. What flustered might mean or what fussy might mean, or even the word I'm sorry, which in the picture book towards the end is enhanced as well. It's you know, there's a lot of emotional weight to that, that you know, to that phrase. And I love that kind of whole package of how picture books can be presented and be helpful too.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Me too. And I think all of that new vocabulary that the children are going to hear as they're reading your story are so important as they're kind of navigating different feelings. So I think let's move on to the next theme that we're going to chat about today of your picture book, which is around the nature theme, which links to your story setting of the beach. So with Hannah's illustrations, you know, there's lots of beautiful soft tones, and there's the sparkly ocean blues and then the sweeping sand dunes, and they do all work together, as you've just explained, to evoke that enjoyment of an outing at the beach. So, how does the beach itself within that natural environment act as a catalyst for the story's resolution?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Oh goodness, I feel like the beach is a catalyst for so many of my stories. I'm kind of well known for that now, but also I feel like it's a catalyst for a lot of emotions that we feel too. And we know that nature is a powerful, is a definitely powerful sense sensory regulator, and research has shown us this as well. And I know that even with a lot of early educators, we're often stepping out into bush or beach settings to help children kind of process some things as well. So I really wanted this setting of the beach to feel alive and visceral and from that whole element of from sticky sunscreen smeared, you know, yes, we can feel that on our bodies, to digging a hole so deep and wide and cool. I really wanted a young children to sort of feel like they were stepping onto the sand and stepping into this environment and also to remind grown-ups reading that book, too, that this is what it feels like. And I think for me, that natural element really provides both a literal and emotional space for a child to experience a whole gamut of emotions, but also to process how I might feel at the start of the day when we're digging holes or we're collecting coral and bottletops to how it might feel when I storm off through the dunes alone. So I feel like that kind of presence of nature, presence of the beach is really another unspoken character in this story. It's helping a child without saying this is a place where you can play and you can blow up, but it's also a place where you can reset and calm and reconsider. And, you know, there's a lot of rhythm in the ocean. You've got the squawking seagulls with all of that energy, you've got crashing waves, but then you've got that back and forward of waves as well, and then the tweet of birds in the bush. And I feel like so much is kind of this wonderful backdrop of a rhythm for our emotions as well. And we know, well, if you when you read the book and you know that Bonnie has her a big emotional crash, that she eventually sort of finds this rhythm with breathing and resetting, and it helps her moderate her feelings and find her way back to our friends. And again, that's like a wave, it comes and goes as well. And I really hope that educators can feel that when they're sharing that with our young readers.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

Absolutely. And I think for educators, Nature Play is something that a lot of children's services implement within their settings, whether they do Bush Kindy or Beach Kindy, yeah, it can really act as a powerful co-regulator for young children. And it can really, yeah, I guess help to reset their nervous system. But I think building on those story themes of managing overwhelming emotions, that crashing moment that you were just talking about, that you know, that the main character Bonnie has, it can be a really relevant feeling for toddlers and preschoolers when they do have those big feelings of overwhelm. And as you said, she Bonnie shows that path towards self-regulation through the breathing. So could you talk a bit more about that, Andrea?

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Well, I love sort of knowing that this book is helping kind of address some of those discussions and that intensity that some kids feel as well. And I know for all of us we have our ups and downs. And I felt for this book, I really wanted to have a place around Bonnie where she could sort of have that self-realisation about her emotional truth of childhood, even though she wouldn't be sort of sitting there saying, you know, self-analysing. But it's just that sort of soft recognition that we often expect kids to be on and be social and connected. And that's hard for us to do as grown-ups as well, in quite a stimulating world. I mean, there's so much that comes with being on. And the truth is that navigating friendships in those early years is really tricky. You know, a child comes from a very nurtured, you're the center of our world environment in the home to now we're putting you out there and figure it out. And yes, it takes a little while to figure things out. And I think too that I mean, I know as a parent with my own children, I watch them learn from playing side by side with their peers or all this parallel element. And we know more and more through early education that parallel play is such a significant way for child children to pick up all of those cues, but also try things on for size because we've all got different personalities as well. And I think there's that kind of element, particularly like I love writing for the three to six year olds, and particularly for that four to six-year-old market, we've got a lot of development, big development happening here. So I really kind of wanted to address the fact that we don't always have to be on, and when that button is kind of malfunctioning a little bit, what do we need to do to reset? And for Bonnie, of course, she storms off, but she retreats as well to the dunes. And I think retreating is a really good message to talk about that sometimes if we feel like it's too much, stepping away is a reset too. And I really wanted to validate that for Bonnie, and I can see that happening with a lot of grown-ups too. I think as well, there's this third teacher in nature that we've spoken about, and it's so vital. And I know we've spent a lot of time in recent years having this narrative when we're talking about anxiety and stress and deep emotions to sort of step outside, take a deep breath, get some fresh air. And I really like writing with consideration that nature and the outdoors can give us stability in our feelings and also in our connections as well. So I'm hoping that's come through in the book. But I've also really enjoyed pondering it as someone who's raised kids and been around lots of kids too, with how can I make this book useful and how can I also address this on and off element of childhood and recognize that this is a part of development and learning and self-management as well.

SPEAKER_03 19:11

There's so much depth to the story, and I think you know, you've shared it so well in terms of those simple mindfulness and breathing techniques that children could actually try while they're reading the story. So for our listeners today, there's I'll read some of the story that says Bonnie breathes in deep again and counts to 10. This time it works. So those simple breathing techniques, we can actually use those with the young children within our classrooms. And by how Andrea has narrated that process through the story, it's showing young children that they can have a bit of a remote control for their own nervous system. So it's not about just stopping the anger from happening, it's about what Bonnie does to find her way back to calm.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yeah, definitely. And I think for me, like I wanted Castle Crashing not to be a didactic teachery book. I just wanted it to acknowledge that these feelings exist. This is real childhood and real development. And we and when we're growing, we do have feelings of frustration and exclusion. And this is a part of the process. And I'm really fascinated. I'm very fascinated with three to six year olds. They're like my people that I'm always looking at. And I'm very, I'm very mindful that this is the space where they're growing so significantly, and you know, this level of tolerance and compromise and self-representation is quite, it's sort of almost coloured in with in extremity. So I'm really interested in sort of, I guess, walking through those emotions, but also representing self-kindness as well, and that kind of giving ourselves permission to walk away and to find a quiet space. Breathing techniques, I know, are such a big thing in early education and throughout primary school years as well. We're spending a lot of time talking about it and also helping a child find a new pathway to self-regulation. So I really wanted to represent that in the book. And it's really interesting. I read this book now a lot. I read all my books a lot when I tour. And when I read that section where I sort of take, you know, I take a moment to say she breathes in deep and counts to 10. I literally paste that book with a little bit of a kind of a quick 10 count, and I watch the kids watch me and my shoulders sort of sink down, and I say, This time it works. And I always think, I hope this is something that they can take away as well. So I didn't take part of that.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Let's now move on to how we can use those stories themes in our nature-based play within our early learning settings. So after you've read Castle Crashing with young children, you could build on the incredible visual depth of those illustrations. So in the picture book, there is a bit of a shift between bird's eye views, so looking down from above, and then the worm's eye views, looking up from the sand. And these different visual perspectives can help the young reader understand the scale of Bonnie's frustration against the vastness of the beach. So if we're wanting to recreate this story through play, we could set up some different viewing stations around the sandpit. So you might have the camera on a long selfie stick so that can show the seagull's perspective, and then another, you might have some small mirrors placed flat on the ground so children can see the world from, say, a crab's point of view. So as children are exploring, we can invite them to retell Bonnie's story and ask them, for example, if you were a bird flying over the beach, how small would Bonnie's sand castle look? Or if you were burrowing in the sand, how big would Bonnie's feet look as she storms off? So this, of course, links to the early years learning framework as children use inquiry and investigation to develop that visual literacy.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

This is what I love about early educators. You expand this concept. And it's also a fantastic way for children to lean into early numeracy skills. As well. So when we ask a child to look from a bird's eye point of view, they've been introduced to foundational concepts of you know mapping and spatial reasoning and things like that. I love how this can enhance their knowledge and skills as well.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

And for our second story-inspired idea today, we can dive into multimodal play. So we could create a castle crushing small world, and you could use a hex tray or a large sensory tub. And this is a great way for children to physically remap the story sequence, and they can also extend their understanding of beach environments. So I think to set the scene, you could fill a tray with some sand, you could use blue shredded paper or fabric to represent the ocean, and then you can provide a collection of character figures so that they could represent Bonnie and her friends in the story, and then add in the beach comb treasures, so things like shells and sticks and stones, feathers for the castle flags, and of course the miniature spades and buckets and rakes. So as children are moving the figures through the sand and engaging in that narrative play, they're communicating for a range of purposes. And you might watch children, you know, moving Bonnie away from the group into a corner of the sand dunes. She has her quiet moment and engages in that mindfulness. Hex trays rock.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

I sometimes think I'd like a hex tray in the corner of my office so that when I'm feeling like I've got a little bit of a brain kind of stop with writing a story, I can play it out and see how it works. But I also look, I love the hex trays and I love seeing how kids interpret or add to a story as well. But it's also ideal for environment, sorry, educators as well to weave in some of that environmental science. And I've gone to a lot of early education centres and beginning of primary schools where I've seen the trays and some of that play-based representation. I've seen kids sifting and burrowing, and they've talked about how dunes are formed, and you know, you can add all this other element of shells being in the sand and who lives in these shells, and what habitat is this? How does the tide change the sand or the sand dunes? There's so much that you can do with all that extra coastal discussion and habitat as well, and just to help the kids build their knowledge there too. Even things like, you know, how we move through the dunes, you know, do we walk on a trail or walk off a trail, those sorts of things. So I love how this can really enhance a child's experience before perhaps they've even been to the beach and built that knowledge themselves.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

Fantastic. And for our last play-based idea today, we're going to be sharing an interactive read-aloud learning experience that educators could implement with either an individual child or a small group of children. So after reading Castle Crashing a few times with preschoolers, we can then wander aloud together through some open-ended comments and questions that will invite a range of different answers and invite children to engage in deeper discovery about the story. So we can encourage children to deconstruct the story and explore some literary concepts and mood and emotions. And some of the questions that we could try are things like, how did this part of the story make you feel? Or what kinds of feelings do you think the characters are having right now? Another question is if the story had a colour during this part, what colour would it be and why? And also, did any part of the story make you feel happy, sad, excited, or worried? And can you tell me about it? So these are just some guiding questions that you could use in your conversations with preschoolers. But to finish off our little library for today, Castle Crashing is a beautiful and relatable picture book that acknowledges feelings of frustration and exclusion while celebrating the joy of building in the sand with friends. And it's a great choice to support conversations about cooperation and managing difficult emotions. Andrea, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Thank you so much, Linda. It's been a great conversation, and I really hope that people enjoy Castle Crushing and bringing it into their experiences with their children as well.

SPEAKER_03 27:35

And we'd love to see your Castle Crushing story-inspired play. So please share your photos with us using hashtag LPT Little Library. Until next time, keep reading, playing, and thriving.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Thank you for joining us on this episode of LearnPlaythrive the podcast. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to fuel your journey in early childhood education. Remember the key to fostering learning, promoting play, and empowering young minds lies with your dedication and creativity. Stay connected between episodes by following us on Instagram at LearnPlaythrive underscore and join the conversation on Facebook at LearnPlaythrive Australia. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please like, subscribe, rate, or review our podcast on your favourite platform. Your feedback helps us to continue to deliver content that resonates with you. And don't forget to visit us at our website at learnplaythrive.com.au for additional resources, blog posts, and professional development opportunities. Until next time, keep learning, keep playing, and keep thriving. We'll see you in the next episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast.