The Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards

Our congratulations to all the winners and recipients of honour book awards for the CBCA awards last week. We were so pleased that two of our very favourites were winners.

You can read our posts about Collecting Colour here (including an interview with author and illustrator Kylie Dunstan) and about How to Heal a Broken Wing here.

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When We Were Little Sunday

A guest post by Sue, Mum to Katie, and Nanou to Rowan.

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Some of the books I particularly remember from my childhood were the special ones that my paternal grandmother, known affectionately as Marty, kept in a wardrobe for visiting grandchildren. I visited quite frequently, often staying during school holidays and I have vivid memories of these times and being snugly curled up in a very comfortable bed with a selection of books for reading ‘in the morning’ before Marty got up. Books were important to her and an obvious presence in her home. She valued them greatly and indulged in purchasing them from the Folio Society, a luxury she couldn’t really afford. Although we didn’t get many presents from her, when we did they were often books.

All the children’s books in Marty’s wardrobe were produced in the late 1940s or early 1950s and so all now suffer from yellowed paper which is quite embrittled; most have been read so many times that they have been mended in the past with Sellotape, and so are quite stained along the spine edges.

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My favourites were the titles from Peg Matby’s Ben and Bella series and Marty had a number of them. However, there were also four books which now are of interest looking back as an adult and with my ‘social historian’s hat’ on. They are the Adventure series produced by Barker & Company and printed in Australia “by the New ‘FANTASCOPIC’ Method.” (I haven’t been able to find out exactly what this method was, but it supposedly produced more realistic colour.) Two of the four titles have been passed down to me: The Zoo Garden Mystery by John Tombs and Excitement on Elf Island by Elsie Sheppard; both are held in the National Library of Australia and listed as printed in 1948. Other titles are The Story of Thought Castle and Fairy Grandmother’s Story. There is no mention of illustrators and as the style differs, I imagine that Tombs and Sheppard were both author and illustrator. A number of internet sites list the titles as rare and have them for sale, for widely varying prices, but most do not seem to have stood the test of time any better than mine.

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A re-reading of the stories is somewhat disappointing. I did like these books as a child, although now I cannot imagine why! Both have the text pre-eminent in a central box on each page with illustrations awkwardly placed surrounding them. Both are text heavy and John Tombs particularly tends to over-write. The language is very dated and at times overly moralistic, but what does interest me now is seeing the resurgence of an Australian orientation, post-World War 2. This is obvious in the case of the The Zoo Garden Mystery. My copy has koalas in a gum tree on the cover and indigenous fauna mixed with exotic zoo creatures central to the story. This focus is less obvious in Excitement on Elf Island, but the gum trees are there and are something that the publisher feels the need to explain.

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Time and perspective change. The importance of these books was not intrinsic. What was important was the love of books that they helped develop.

Imagine

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We took a lovely trip to the beach this weekend and enjoyed the sunshine while it lasted, walking along the pier, spotting whales, running in the park and buying too many gorgeous things at Lorne Beach Books!

Ned really enjoyed having the three of us sitting in the sun on Saturday afternoon and reading one of his favorites Imagine by Alison Lester.

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Alison Lester

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I this print by my favorite Australian author/illustrator Alison Lester from her book Purrr. You can order this print and those of other wonderful illustrators on the Books Illustrated website.

Alison has an amazing new book, called Running With the Horses, due for release in November this year.

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This book promises to be spectacular and I will review it very soon.

||Our good friend Sarah writes about her favorite author/illustrator Alison Lester here|| 

When We Were Little…

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Robin Klein is indelibly linked with my memories of primary school years. The school ballot for Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Awards, waiting lists for books at our library, and swapping favourite books with my friends – all these aspects of my late primary school years feature Robin Klein’s books. 

Klein’s series of Penny Pollard books stand out as being some of my favourite books of primary school, starting with Penny Pollard’s Diary. It’s written in the irresistable style of a diary by 10-year-old Penny, who hates pink, loves horses and is definitely not the teacher’s pet. Penny meets the equally idiosyncratic Mrs Edith Bettany (‘Mrs B’) on a school excursion to an old people’s home, and this first book follows the development of their friendship. There are some fabulously funny passages as the two swap stories.

Mrs B told me she used to have a carpet snake for a pet when she was my age and lived in the bush. Wow! Next to a horse, a snake would be the best pet ever! Told Mrs Bettany about when I was in kindergarten and I wanted a pet snake and mum kept saying Santa might bring one. And that Christmas I found a stupid big patchwork stuffed snake under Christmas tree. Mrs Bettany agreed it must have been a terrible disappointment. I told her about trying to flush patchwork snake down loo only it wouldn’t fit. She said when she lived in the bush they kept a stick to kill real snakes with next to their loo because it was miles down backyard. Told her there weren’t miles any more, only kilometres.

Mrs B appreciates Penny’s taste for double-headed lime Interplanteary Missiles from the milkbar and in turn Penny learns about how different – and how similar – life was growing up in the 1920s. And unexpectedly, both gain much from their unusual friendship. The feelings of not always living up to expectations and of being a bit different to everyone else are concepts that most primary school kids can relate to, and I think it is this aspect that my friends and I all loved so much in Robin Klein’s writing.

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The diary is made to look ‘real’ with sketch drawings, photos and hand-drawn maps – all annotated by Penny. The illustrations are actually by Ann James, who does an amazingly convincing job. The original design is an exercise book-sized production, and the cover design graffiti no doubt inspired my own secret diary cover which I started in Grade 5 (and which I surprisingly managed to find this evening… The big question is: where is the key?!).

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For some reason, the Penny Pollard books went out of print for many years, and I remember when working in bookshops being asked for them many, many times. They were thankfully re-issued by Hachette Australia in 2004 – but unfortunately (in my opinion) the format was not retained and they are now regular sized mass market paperbacks. As I had only borrowed copies when I first read them, I felt very lucky when I found the first two books from the series at the Lake Daylesford Book Barn a few years ago. Just a couple more books that I will treasure…

Grug In The City

I wonder who had the job of being inside Grug?

Grug is back!

We first posted about Grug on we books in a When We Were Little post, and our site has since been inundated by searches for this unassuming little Australian creature.

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Sadly Grug was out-of-print for many years – but not forgotten! Lou announced here in March that Grug was returning – in time for his 30th birthday…

The first collection of titles are out this month – with more to come next month. The new productions are faithful to the old ones – Simon & Schuster have done a great job and haven’t changed the format significantly. I won’t be worried about supplementing our collection of my old copies with the ones we are missing from this new release. 

For Sydney readers, there is a Grug Flashmob occurring at Hyde Park fountain TODAY 5 June at 12pm. Wish I could be there, and can’t wait to see photos!!