The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) was established in Sydney in 1945. The Second World War had two effects on children’s books in Australia: imports were restricted and a paper shortage curtailed local production, resulting in a groundswell among Australian educators to provide more and better locally produced books and to foster the growth of libraries for children and therefore improve literacy levels. During that time Mary Townes Nyland worked at the USA Information Library in Sydney. So when the US Children’s Book Council conceived the idea of sponsoring an international Children’s Book Week, she was the catalyst…
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Sofie Laguna was announced as the winner of the 2015 Miles Franklin Award, worth $60 000, with her novel for adults The Eye of the Sheep (Allen & Unwin). The Sydney Morning Herald, in reporting this win stated that winning literary prizes makes a difference to an author’s ‘purse and profile’. However, this article did not mention the CBCA Book of the Year Awards. They may not be the richest awards in Australia but they have had a profound influence on the careers of countless authors, including Sofie Laguna. Sonya Hartnett was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin and won the…
Corina Martin (text) Fern Martins (illus.) The Toast Tree, Magabala Books, April 2015, 32pp, $17.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781922142689 The Toast Tree is set in a ‘small dusty pearling town surrounded by sea.’ Every afternoon two young girls, Ella and Mia wait excitedly for their grandfather to come home with a very special treat – delicious squares of toast smothered in honey. Their Grandfather tells them the toast comes from a magic tree that grows in the sand dunes. He tells then the tree has ‘bright green leaves and pieces of golden-brown toast hang from every branch.’ Ella and Mia are…
Alice Rex (text) Amanda Francey (illus.), Onesie Mumsie!, New Frontier, 1 April 2015, 32pp., $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781925059243 Onesie Mumsie is a delightful bedtime story that little kids will love as a weekend or holiday treat. I feel that this sequence as a regular routine would wear thin for busy parents. Ha! A little girl can’t go to sleep until she’s tried on all of her five animal suits. Mum playfully joins in the fun as they move from a rabbit to a crocodile, a tiger, a penguin and lastly a bear and a lovely surprise twist at the end.…
Rebecca Young (text). Matt Ottley (illus.), Teacup, Scholastic, 1 May 2015, 32pp., $24.99 (hbk) ISBN 9781743623848 ‘Once there was a boy who had to leave home… and find another.’ Teacup is a gently crafted story about a young boy set adrift to find a new home. He leaves, alone in a small row boat with a book, a bottle, a blanket and a teacup full of dirt from where he used to live. Some days the sea is calm, gently lapping against his hull. Other days the sea is rough and he is tossed about on the wild waves. All…
Nadia Wheatley tells Reading Time how she came up with the idea for the Flight, her exciting new picture book, illustrated by Armin Greder. As I write this, I am in Germany, where I have been attending the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. My connection with Belsen is through my father, a British doctor, who while working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association (UNRRA) in the immediate post-war period became Medical Superintendent of the hospital at the Belsen Displaced Persons camp (to which the Belsen concentration camp survivors were taken after the liberation). At that same…
Armin Greder tells Reading Time about his work on Flight, the journey he and author Nadia Wheatley took in creating this exciting new picture book, and his fascination with deserts. Helen Chamberlin (Windy Hollow Books) sent me Nadia’s text not long after a book of mine on a similar subject – the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government – had been published in Italy. Consequently Nadia’s theme appealed to me. However, I felt that the text was overly descriptive, leaving little room for my images. So I declined. I explained this to Helen, who passed…
Nadia Wheatley (text), Armin Greder (illus.), Flight, Windy Hollow Books, 1 June 2015, 32pp., $25.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781922081484 Flight is a sophisticated picture book telling the story of a Middle Eastern man, woman and baby fleeing an unspecified country because ‘authorities are after their blood’. Escaping into the desert with only a donkey, the man says they will follow a star: but far from following the Bethlehem story, this is set in modern times and the light they follow in the distance is the glow of fire and smoke from a city under siege. They lose their donkey when…
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope, Orion/Hachette, 14 April 2015, 200pp., $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781444011159 This British novel is written from dual perspective: we begin with Meg describing her best friend Oscar’s funeral, and then we move to Oscar’s point of view later as we learn fairly early in the novel that he is in fact missing, presumed dead. Meg and Oscar had been neighbours and best of friends, but after Meg moves temporarily to New Zealand due to her father’s secondment, a misunderstanding leaves Meg and Oscar at odds and no longer emailing. In that time,…
John Larkin, The Pause, Random House, 1 April 2015, 329 pp., $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780857981707 The title of this novel refers to the pause in time before seventeen year old Declan O’Malley decides to jump in front of an oncoming train. In flashbacks, we learn that Declan has been separated from his first girlfriend Lisa, after her strict Chinese mother has sent her to live in Hong Kong in a bid to remove her from the temptations of a typical Australian adolescence. Declan is devastated, and after days of ideating about suicide, he breaks down at his local train station…