ANZAC Biscuits (Special Edition) by Phil Cummings, illustrated by Owen Swan

Title: ANZAC Biscuits (Special Edition)

Author: Phil Cummings, illustrated by Owen Swan

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Scholastic Australia

Published: 1^st March 2026

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 32

Price: $26.99

Synopsis: Rachel’s in the kitchen, warm and safe. Her father’s in the trenches, cold and afraid … When Rachel makes biscuits for her father, she adds the love, warmth and hope that he needs. This is a touching story of a family torn apart by war but brought together through the powerful simplicity of Anzac Biscuits.

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For over 100 years, Anzac Biscuits have been a core part of Australian culture. They’re an Anzac Day tradition, said to have been invented during World War I, and sent by families on the homefront in Australia and New Zealand to soldiers on the front line. There are many stories that pay homage to the Anzacs in so many different ways.

Yet it is the simple stories like this picture book that I think can have the biggest impact. Rachel and her mother are at home in their kitchen, busy making Anzac biscuits. They are warm and safe, far from the war in Europe. The trenches are a very long way away from Australia. And Rachel’s father is in the cold, muddy trenches. And he is afraid. The biscuits are for him, to send him warmth, love and hope in a time of war. A war that tore families apart, killed millions and changed the world forever. It was meant to be the war to end all wars. Except it didn’t.

Rachel wants to send the warmth, love and safety to her father in the dark, cold trenches, to help him get through the war. The story is told in both perspectives, with darker tones and shades in Owen Wilson’s illustrations for the soldier’s perspective, and lighter tones and shades for Rachel and her mother. This direct contrast highlights the different experiences of war that many families would have experienced. The women and children at home, doing what they could to help and get through. And the men fighting in the trenches in Europe.

This is a simple, yet emotionally charged book that captures how war affected people at home and om the front in the early twentieth century. What it meant when the little things counted and gave hope in a time when there wasn’t much going around, and when so many families would lose someone they loved. Lives would be altered forever in so many ways. Just as they are now, so this is a book that is both timeless and significant, and a good way to teach people about Anzac Day, and introduce it to them.

A great book to commemorate and acknowledge Anzac Day.