Australian Children’s Laureate Press release: Dec 6, 2012

Double the Stories, Double the Fun as Two Champions of Aussie Storytelling Announced as Inaugural Laureates

Much-loved children’s authors Alison Lester and Boori Monty Pryor are being announced today as the first Australian Children’s Laureates at the launch of the initiative in Adelaide.

Both are talented and award-winning storytellers who bring a wealth of experience and creativity to the role – Alison as a renowned author and illustrator, and Boori as a celebrated author, performer, dancer and poet.

This prestigious national honour, the first of its kind in this country, is to be awarded at the launch by the Hon. Grace Portolesi, SA Minister for Education and Child Development and iconic children’s presenter Noni Hazlehurst, and is the culmination of the work by the Australian Children’s Literature Alliance (ACLA) to promote the transformational power of reading, creativity and story in the lives of young Australians.

ACLA Chair Marj Osborne says, “We are delighted to announce Alison and Boori as our joint inaugural Australian Children’s Laureates for 2012 and 2013. In them we found not one but two incredible individuals with the creative and passionate spirit we were looking for, so we made the unusual but exciting decision to appoint both.”

During their appointment Alison and Boori will act as national and international ambassadors for Australian children’s literature and will separately visit every state and territory inspiring young people to tell their own stories.

Click here to read the entire release and click here to see the events planned for Australia’s National Year of Reading 2012.

The  Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards were established in 2008 to celebrate the contribution of Australian literature to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life. The awards, held annually, recognise literature’s importance to Australia’s national identity, community and economy. This year two new categories, with prize amounts of $100,000 each, have been added: Young Adult Fiction and Children’s Fiction.  The shortlists have just been announced and include nine children’s fiction and seven young adult fiction titles.

Until June 30th, the Monash University Library Rare Books Collection, located in Clayton, Australia,  is hosting  an  exhibition of children’s material from the extensive Lindsay Shaw Collection. Lindsay Shaw was the Secretary of the Monash Faculty of Education and a major collector of Australian children’s books  when he began donating books to the Library in 1979. He continues to donate books for the collection and the library supplements  his gifts by purchasing English, American and Australian children’s books . The Library’s collection now encompasses over 12,000 titles dating from as early as 1810.  A virtual exhibition is currently available online.   For further information including the exhibition catalogue, click here.

The image above is taken from the virtual exhibit and is the cover of  Australian legendary tales : folk-lore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the piccaninnies, collected by Mrs. K. Langloh Parker, with an introduction by Andrew Lang and illustrations by Aboriginal artist Tommy McRae (2nd ed. Melbourne: Melville, Mullen & Slade, 1897): “Mrs. Langloh Parker lived on a cattle station on the Queensland/South Australian border. She spoke the local Aboriginal language and was able to collect many of their Dreamtime legends.”

Over a year ago now, I blogged about the beautiful poem Outback written by the then eight-year-old Annaliese Porter and published by Magabala Books in Australia, in a stunning edition illustrated by renowned artist Bronwyn Bancroft. I recently lent our copy of Outback to a friend to use with her class of eight-year-olds here in the UK, when they were learning about aboriginal art, and it was an eye-opening experience for them to work with a book written by someone their own age.

Now Magabala have done it again – they recently published Joshua and the Two Crabs by Joshua Button, “a young man with a keen interest in the saltwater country he has grown up in”.

It’s a delightful story, told with humour, as Joshua chases the two crabs around the beach, telling them,

‘I can see you two!’
‘Well, we can see you too,’ said the crabs.

The three-fold repetition of this satisfying formula perhaps lulls young readers/ listeners into a false sense of this being a wholly imaginary, anthropomorphised tale – so it comes as a bit of a shock when Joshua catches them and then throws them onto the fire to cook for lunch! However, Joshua’s matter-of-fact tone is quite in keeping with the descriptive narrative… I would say the story is a perfect example of a child’s ability to weave fact and fiction together in one breath. We adults sometimes walk a tightrope here. How often have you found yourself in a no-win situation? Either you go along with the imaginings and are berated for saying something which is obviously not true, or you are likewise reproached for throwing in the cold water of fact! Well, Joshua Button seems to have got the blend just right, judging by Little Brother’s reaction.

He was chuckling for a long time that Joshua carried a bucket and spear at the beach – and he loved the pictures – he liked the textures and layering. They are indeed stunning – the colors bring the sea and the creek alive; the crabs are wonderful, as are the vignettes of the waders – and I especially loved Joshua peering down at the crabs in his very goggly goggles!

A while after reading it together, it became apparent that Little Brother had been mulling it over:

“Joshua Button does exist.”
“Yes, he does.”
“Do you think this is a true story?
“Yes, I do.”
“But the bit about talking crabs is fiction.”
“Probably.”
“Well, it could say that”
“But it’s a story – fundamentally it’s a story, isn’t it?”
“Well, it did happen. It’s a story about two crabs.”

…and he is now thinking about writing his own book. In my post yesterday, I quoted Jarrett Krosoczka and the effect on him of a comment from a visiting author to his school – how much more aspirational then to read a book in print that is written by someone your own age! Not only has Joshua Button given children all over the world the opportunity to find out about a fun family day out in his corner of Australia, he has opened them to the possibility that they could do it too. Thank you, Magabala Books!

I’ve just come back from one month in Brazil (where I was, unexpectedly, pretty much incommunicado) to find that I missed the Australian stop of the multi-blog event One Shot World Tour, organized by the same group that put together the Summer Blog Blast Tour and this week’s Recommendations from Under the Radar. Some of the dishes served up at the several-course (Vegemite and all) Australian meal were: interviews with Margo Lanagan and Queenie Chan at 7 Imp Things and the YA YA YAs, respectively, and an exploration of John Marsden’s Tomorrow Series at Jen Robinson’s Page (see full OSWT schedule here).

I’d like to add my contribution, late as it may be, by pointing folks to award-winning Australian writer Susanne Gervay’s latest ya book, That’s Why I Wrote This Song, a cutting edge story set against the rock music scene, about sixteen year old girls connected through music as they search for identity. In a recent article contributed to PaperTigers, Gervay tells us: “[The book] embraces other mediums and technologies, in a collaborative work with my songwriter and musician daughter, Tory, who wrote the lyrics and rock music that are integral to the story (…). The story also has the dimension of film, as a young producer translated Tory’s song ‘Psycho Dad’ into a film clip.” The song and the video are available for downloading from the author’s website.

For more Aussie kidlit talents, check out the following: interview with Hazel Edwards, ‘personal views’ article by Chris Cheng, and Caroline Magerl and Shaun Tan online galleries.