For me, it was a case of love at first sight, the first time I came across Bronwyn Bancroft‘s artwork. So in this Books at Bedtime post I’m going to highlight three titles all by different authors but illustrated by Bronwyn. The first two fit neatly into our current Water in Multicultural Children’s Books theme; and the third provides an accent to it with its Alice Springs desert setting – no, not a lot of water there…

First up is Big Rain Coming, written by Katrina Germein (Clarion Books, 1999). The text is snappy and there’s plenty of expansive detail in the illustrations to pore over with a child. Everyone, but everyone is waiting for the rain to come, from Old Stephen, to the kids; from the dogs to the frogs. The clouds gather, and still they wait, right through each day of the week, until finally, on Saturday, it rains. It won’t be long till the child you share this book with knows the words by heart and is jubilantly shouting out the last couple of pages before you get a look in! My favorite illustration: the children swimming in the blue/green billabong, surrounded by tall pink flowers – gorgeous!

Next is Malu Kangaroo: How the First Children Learnt to Surf written by Judith Morecroft (Little Hare, 2007), which again is a finely tuned synthesis of word and image. Malu the Kangaroo boldly tells the people, “I will show you how to play with the ocean.” And then he shapes and polishes a piece of wood into a surf-board. As he tells them how it will feel to surf, Bronwyn’s illustrations underscore the joyous lyricism of Malu Kangaroo’s words, with birds soaring and dipping into the surf, fish flying, and dolphins leaping. The patterns and swirls that have their roots in aboriginal art, coupled with Bronwyn’s characteristic bright pallette are simply (yes I am going to use that words agian!) gorgeous. My favorite illustration: the birds that ‘sweep and fly’, breaking up the horizontal bands of sand, surf and sky.

And lastly, Ready to Dream written by Donna Jo Napoli and Elena Furrow (Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2009). Young artist Ally’s Mamma is taking her to Australia for the first time. At Alice Springs, Ally meets Pauline, an artist who, with just a few gentle words each time, teaches Ally to get closer in her art to the animals and nature she sees and experiences on her excursions. In their last meeting they draw together in the sandy earth, and Ally’s reaction shows that, in Pauline’s culminating words, she is “ready to dream”. There is much for young people to ponder in this gentle story that will appeal especially to budding artists – and there’s no doubt that they could be trying their hand at something in Bronwyn’s style as a result. My favourite illustration: Ally throwing high the stone on which she has painted a kangaroo, so that it can hop free.

Sally Morgan, illustrated by Bronwyn Bancroft,
Dan’s Grandpa
Freemantle Arts Centre Press, 2007; originally printed 1996.

Ages 5-10

Right at the opening of this moving, sensitive story of a boy’s love for his grandfather, we learn that Dan’s Grandpa died six months earlier and Dan misses him terribly. The narrative looks back over the past before overtaking its starting point, and by the end of the book, Dan is finally able to emerge from the rawness of recent bereavement towards the comfort of knowing that, as his Grandpa persistently told him, “Don’t worry, Dan, don’t worry” – he would always be there to look after his grandson. The catalyst for this shift in his grief comes from a no-longer-hoped-for quarter, which adds to the story’s poignancy.

Readers follow Dan as he remembers all the special things he and his Grandpa did together, like fishing and dancing, and how Grandpa passed on his heritage to his beloved grandson: such as love and respect for the nature around them, and traditional stories and songs in their native Naml language. Bronwyn Bancroft’s bold illustrations come into their own here, evoking Dan’s aboriginal roots and his spiritual connection with his landscape. While they appear to be expansive in their scope, the illustrations also pinpoint details in the story, like the “lollies” Grandpa keeps hidden under his pillow at the hospital, to give to Dan when he visits. And young readers will make friends with Grandpa’s dog and cockatoo long before they make an appearance in the written narrative. Bancroft uses traditional aboriginal art to create a flow of energy that pulsates through the story and adds an emotional charge to Sally Morgan’s simple, dignified prose: whether it’s Grandpa telling stories about the stars, or Dan at school, in his mind already at the end of the day, running to the hospital to visit his sick grandfather.

Dan’s Grandpa is a beautiful, simple story which will resonate especially with young children who have lost a grandparent, or indeed any dear loved one. First published fifteen years ago, it is as fresh as ever today and looks set to become a timeless classic that will communicate on a contemporary level with its readers both now and in the future.

Marjorie Coughlan
May 2011

It’s Australia Day in, well, Australia today and Slightly Addicted to Fiction has highlighted what sounds like a particularly stunning book by one of my favorite Australian illustrators, Bronwyn Bancroft – Why I Love Australia.

Meanwhile Book Chook features a paper boomerang ativity… And while you’ve got the paper and scissors out, how about making a PaperTigers Paper Tiger while you’re at it?

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!

Children’s stories told and/or illustrated by Aboriginal people have been receiving serious attention for several decades now. It’s a different world from that of early pioneers like Australian Dick Roughsey, of Mornington Island in Queensland. I’ve posted previously about illustrator Bronwyn Bancroft and Magabala Books in western Australia. To delve deeper, this article about the history of aboriginal children’s literature illustrators features work by another early favorite, Pat Torres.

Magabala publishes a list of Australian and New Zealand children’s books by and about Aboriginals. AustralEd also has a list of books about Australian indigenous peoples, many by Aboriginal writers. Indij Readers publishes school reading materials by Aboriginal people that provide “diversity of Aboriginal identity, voice, and representation.” Here’s an introduction to their work.

In Canada, Pemmican publishes children’s books by and about the Metis aboriginal people. The Penumbra Press, a small fine-art and literary publishing house, offers many books for children based on Northern and Native literatures. And the Our Story website publishes stories by young winners of the Canadian Aboriginal Writing Challenge.

Unsympathetic governments worldwide, east and west, make it difficult for the stories and traditions of native peoples to be passed on to subsequent generations. It is gratifying to salute the great work of organizations, writers and illustrators who bring these treasures to all of us.

Another supplement to our January-February update on illustrators…

Whenever I browsed children’s books in Australia (I was there September-December, 2007), I was drawn to the vivid illustrations of award-winning Aboriginal artist and designer Bronwyn Bancroft, whose most recent books, published by Little Hare, are An Australian ABC of Animals (2005), Patterns of Australia (2006), and An Australian 123 of Animals (2007). Throughout Bronwyn’s multi-faceted career she has been raising consciousness about Aboriginal culture. Early on, she developed a line of textiles based on Aboriginal patterns that’s now in a museum collection (search here). She’s also an internationally recognized painter with work in many museum collections. Her painting, “You don’t even look Aboriginal,” inspired a widely-used classroom teaching unit in Australian schools.

Bronwyn’s children’s book illustrations were award-winners from the get-go. The Fat and Juicy Place, written by Dianna Kidd, won the Australian Multicultural Children’s book award in 1993. Her illustrations of Stradbroke Dreamtime were the Australian candidate for the Ezra Jack Keats international award for excellence in children’s book illustrations. (These prestigious awards have since been discontinued.)

In this transcript of an inspiring 2004 Australian national television (ABC) profile, Bronwyn talks about her early life and the development of her work, career, and mission.

Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday – and in her post she suggests putting poems out into the “face-to-face world” as well as through blogging… hmm, now there’s an idea…

Nights are drawing in here in the UK, as we move towards wintertime but in the southern hemisphere, the world is heading into summer: so here are two beautiful picture-books which each contain a poem – one for winter and one for summer. One thing is certain: reading time will feel warm, whichever one you read; and they are such a visual treat too, that really they have to be a face-to face encounter.

The first is Jorge Luján’s poem Tarde de Invierno, translated into English as Winter Afternoon by Elisa Amado and empathetically illustrated by Mandana Sadat. It’s a short poem about a child looking out into the winter’s evening, waiting for her mother to come home: and when she does, the hug fits perfectly into the “vidrio del portarretrato”/ “the frosty frame” – so that the focus suddenly swings round and the little girl, the observer, is now the observed. And what a beautiful picture it is too. My children like this poem because it’s full of love. I like it , yes, for that reason too: but also because it helps to assuage some of the inevitable guilt of being a working mother…

The other poem transports us to the heat of the Australian Outback. Annaliese Porter was only eight years old when she wrote the poem – so this would also be a great classroom resource for raising aspiration. Here’s a small taste:

On Uluru there are many shades
on the rocky eye –
browns and reds mingling
into a rich earthy dye.

Uluru is immediately recognisable in Bronwyn Bancroft‘s glorious depiction – and indeed her illustrations sizzle all the way through the book.