How Ya Going, Australia?

Kid’s Books
Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

My First American Coloring Book: Everyday Life in the U.S. for Little Hands has just made it to Fishpond. The crayons have landed.

Okay. This one is not just a retailer announcement. This one is personal.

I lived in Brisbane for almost ten years. I went to Griffith University there. I built a life there. Some of my closest friends in the world are still there — the kind of friends where the time zone difference is the only thing standing between us and a very long phone call at an unreasonable hour.

So when My First American Coloring Book: Everyday Life in the U.S. for Little Hands landed on Fishpond — Australia's biggest online store — it was not just another country on the list. It was the book arriving somewhere that shaped me. Somewhere I still think of as a second home. Somewhere my people are.

Hi Brisbane. I miss you. Also, buy the book.

Jessica Gabrielzyk author at her Griffith University graduation

Me and my friend Sophia at our graduation in Brisbane. 💕

📚 THE STORE

Fishpond

Australia's biggest online store · Over 25 million products · Free shipping Australia wide

Fishpond is Australia's largest online retailer — millions of products, free delivery across the country, and now, one very specific coloring book for toddlers about apple pie, school buses, and Halloween. Listed. Available. Ready to ship to your door while you put the kettle on.

Not dinosaurs. Not princesses. 101 illustrations of real American daily life for little hands that are ready to color something that actually means something.

👶 WHO THIS IS FOR — AUSTRALIAN EDITION

📚 Homeschooling families - Looking for curriculum resources that go beyond the standard? 101 bold, simple illustrations covering American food, celebrations, school life, and community — designed for ages two and up, no lesson plan required. Just open it and start talking.

📵 Screen-free parents - A real activity. On paper. With crayons. That builds vocabulary, fine motor skills, and cultural awareness while your toddler thinks they are just having a good time. Which they are. That is the whole point.

✈️ Australian families moving to the US - Your toddler is about to encounter school buses, Thanksgiving, trick-or-treating, and mac and cheese as a staple food. Better they meet it on a coloring page first than stare at it completely baffled on day one. Give them the head start.

🌏 Expat families and global nomads - Raising a child between cultures somewhere in the world — or raising an Australian child who is about to become part American by circumstance — this book was made for exactly that kind of family. Cultural literacy, one page at a time.

The book was created for toddlers from age two. Bold illustrations, wide pages for little hands, no busy backgrounds, no overwhelm. Just space to point, name, color, and have a conversation you did not plan to have but will absolutely not regret.

It is screen-free. It is educational without feeling educational. And it is now available in Australia, which frankly continues to amaze me every time I type it.

To every Australian parent, homeschooler, expat, and family with a toddler and a box of crayons: this one's for you, mate.

And to my Brisbane people — you know who you are — this is my way of showing up in your country when I cannot show up in person. Miss you. Find it on Fishpond. Free shipping. No dramas.

Cheers from Switzerland,

Jessica Gabrielzyk

✦ MY FIRST AMERICAN COLORING BOOK · NOW ON FISHPOND AUSTRALIA · AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE ✦

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Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk is a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland. She moved there with her husband and daughter, who was three months old at the time and had strong opinions about the whole thing even then.

She writes about change.

The visible kind and the kind that happens inside a person, while everything on the outside looks fine.

Her first book, Maternity Abroad, explored what it means to become a mother far from the system you trusted. It has reached readers in more than fifteen countries across five continents. Parenting Unpacked, her second book, follows the experience of parenting through major life disruption, whether that's an international move, a career loss, a new baby, or a life that simply stops responding the way it used to. My First American Coloring Book was created to help toddlers engage with daily life in the United States through play and familiar imagery.

She is a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, and the International Academy of Brazilian Literature.

She writes for the parent who is still inside it, getting through the day, and wondering somewhere underneath all of it who they are becoming.

When she is not writing, she is walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling herself the exercise is the point.

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Why Did a Brazilian Author Living in Switzerland Write a Book About American Culture?