The Twelve Days of Christmas Island by Teresa Lagrange

I'm not always a fan of the Australianised Christmas carols.

The thought of rusty Holden utes, singlets & Santa wearing thongs usually make me cringe! The rhymes can also be clunky and, well, just too bloody Ocker for my taste!


But I've always loved Six White Boomers as sung by Rolf Harris (which might not be pc anymore) and Christmas in Australia by John Williamson.

You can click the play button (below) and listen to John Williamson sing Christmas in Australia as you read the rest of this post :-)


However, this year, I've found a new one that I do like - a lot.

The Twelve Days of Christmas Island is beautifully and artfully done. The rhyme & rhythm still works perfectly and the accompanying illustrations are lovely and very colourful.

To give you a taste, here is the second day of Christmas Island...

On the second day of Christmas, 

the Island gave to me, 

two goshawks

and an owl in a lilly pilly tree.

Christmas Island is home to hundreds of birds & native plants that are not found anywhere else in the world.

Lagrange has included birds like the Emerald Dove, Frigatebird, Booby, Christmas Island Thrush, Noddy, Glossy Swiftlet & Bowerbird.

At the end of the book is a double page spread of all the birds mentioned in the book with their full names & information about their habits.

Merry Christmas!

 

My Mother, My Father: On Losing A Parent edited by Susan Wyndham

Firstly, both my parents are still in the land of the living.

However this book has had an incredible pull on me this past month, until I could resist no longer & impulse bought it last week!

It's had quite a bit of radio & print time here in Australia which explains some of it.
Perhaps my uncle's death earlier in the month (and another uncle's sudden hospitalisation) has got me thinking about what's happening to the folks in my parents generation of the family tree.

Either way, I've certainly had the passing of time, ageing and illness on my mind lately.

Susan Wyndham's mother died two years ago. Two years in which Susan struggled with her grief and struggled to come to terms with her feelings of loss & regret.

Susan's introduction sums up what she has done in this book better than I can,

"Some of my friends suggested I keep a journal about the experience...but for a long time I couldn't even begin to translate my thoughts into coherent words....

Instead I went looking for writers who had already found the words for me....

what I wanted were personal stories with which I could identify. Evidence that I was not alone or mad....

Everyone's story is different and so much is the same....

Many of them said writing their story was an intensely emotional or cathartic experience....

The stories are about lifelong relationships. A part of us goes with them....

It has been a ridiculous and comforting revelation for me that the world is full of people without parents who carry on living. With loss there is also growth....

we hope to offer companionship, insight and solace to anyone who is or will be a member of the club."

What follows is a moving, heart-felt conversation about our parents. We see difficult childhoods and constant battles, happy memories and nurturing care. The revelations that can only come with time are aired with tenderness and wonder. The guilt, regrets and sorrow that come after defy expectations and surprise many.

I have not found this book to be a sad or depressing book. 

Poignant - yes - occasionally heart-breaking & sometimes funny. It's full of  "ahhh" moments as Susan and her writer friends succeed in offering "companionship, insight & solace".

The common thread that joins all these stories, is that in the end, we are all left with the memories. Good, bad or indifferent these memories become a part of our stories. And that's what keeps us going.

For my Australian friends the other contributors in My Mother, My Father are Margaret Barbalet, Caroline Baum, Thomas Keneally, Susan Duncan, Nikki Barrowclough, Helen Garner, Jaya Savige, Kathryn Heyman, David Marr, Margaret Rice, Mandy Sayer, Gerald Windsor & Linda Neil.

Possum Magic by Mem Fox & Julie Vivas

The inaugural AusReading Month would not be complete without featuring this modern day children's classic.

Possum Magic features Hush and Grandma Poss living in the Australian bush. Grandma Poss is worried about the dangers the other animals pose to Hush, so she makes her invisible.
It seems like a great idea to start with, but then Hush wants to be visible again...and Grandma Poss doesn't know how to do that.

The book then follows their adventure to make Hush visible again.

As it turns out, Hush needs traditional Aussie food to be visible. Little by little, body part by body part, she becomes visible again as she eats a Vegemite sandwich, a lamington, an Anzac biscuit, a piece of pavlova etc.

Julie Vivas' illustrations have a nostalgic feel to them - the animals are sweetly and affectionately drawn with muted colours and attention to detail.

Over three million copies of Possum Magic have been sold since 1983.

It was one of the first books I bought during my teaching training years. I loved it. I was so proud of this great Australian picture book and couldn't wait to share it with my classes. I imagined creating fabulous lessons that combined cooking the food in the book and nature studies around the animals featured inside.

But it never happened.

Every time I tried reading the book to a class, it fell flat.
And at some point I stopped trying.

I developed two theories about this.

One is the nostalgia factor. The book appeals to adults more than children. It has won awards. Every child in Australia gets given a copy at birth.  But most 5 years old don't give a hoot about any of that.

These books might work one-on-one as a quiet, bedtime story, but they don't work for a preschool teacher. Or at least, they have never worked for this (ex) preschool teacher.

Theory two is that because every child gets this book at birth, they've had it read to them soooooo many times by their parents that by the time they get to preschool, they're over it!

Either way, Possum Magic is an Aussie icon, a modern day classic that celebrates our native flora, fauna and foods.
And in my heart of hearts, I still love it too.

The October Child by Eleanor Spence

I read The October Child when it first came out, which meant I was only about 9 or 10. I found it pretty heavy going at the time, although I often found myself identifying with young Douglas, the responsible, sensitive and slightly anxious protagonist. 

I knew nothing about autism at the time and didn't realise that the baby in this book was autistic. Spence doesn't use the term anywhere in the book, but describes exactly the tendencies and habits of an autistic child and the impact this can have on an entire family.

This book moved me as a child but also scared me - so much so that I never reread it again - until this week.

And I can see why.

This is a powerful, emotionally charged book. The new baby wrecks havoc on this quiet family. It strains relationships, exhausts the mum, alienates one of the siblings and causes the whole family to move to the city to be near a special school exacerbating all their difficulties to breaking point. 

There is no happy, hopeful ending; but a realistic, thoughtful ending instead. 
A little bit of knowledge, a new way of seeing things and a baby step forward in understanding is all that we are left with. 
No wonder I found this so disconcerting as a child - a child also growing up in a family with a sibling with a disability.

The October Child was awarded the 1977 CBCA Book of the Year. It was shortlisted for the British Carnegie Medal. In 1999, Spence received the Australia Council for the Arts Emeritus award "for her outstanding and lifelong contribution to Australian literature." Spence was also made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2005 for her "contribution to Australian literature and her services to autism."

Eleanor Spence died in 2008. In her obituary in the SMH, Maurice Saxby, the children's literature expert, wrote: "More than any other writers, Eleanor Spence and Joan Phipson have perhaps helped guide the direction of Australian children's literature in the past 30 years. They have both expressed in their novels of family life not only social changes but the concerns and preoccupations of a growingly complex Australian society."

The October Child is not an easy read, but it is a worthy and worthwhile read for mature 10+ readers who like their stories real & gritty.

Dancing on Coral by Glenda Adams

Glenda Adams won the 1987 Miles Franklin Award with this novel about Lark Watter's determination to leave Australia for the big, wide world.

This is a theme that reflects the real life experiences of a whole generation of Australian writers, scientists, artists, philosophers etc. throughout the 50's, 60's & 70's.

Australia was viewed as a cultural backwater by these people and they experienced cultural cringe from the vast majority of Australians who didn't feel that way. Clever, artistic people were viewed suspiciously, especially clever, artistic people who liked to talk about and promote their work and art.

To this day, we still have the "tall poppy syndrome" where anyone who is "getting too big for their boots" is brought back down to size. We're one of the few nations that doesn't wholeheartedly support, encourage and glorify it's successful people (unless, of course, we start talking about sport!)

In high schools all around Australia, it is the sporting heroes that gain social success & kudos, not the academic kids. It's okay to say you won your race or game, but it's not cool to talk about coming first in science again.

Which is why we had a whole generation of smart people leave our shores during the 50's, 60's and 70's.

Europe and America were seen as the places to be if you wanted to be part of a thriving, stimulating, intellectual and creative world.

Lark (and her father) both felt a desperate need to leave Australia to experience a full, enriching life.

Mr Watter wastes his life trying get rich quick schemes and other bizarre attempts to leave the country.

Lark just wants to immerse herself in the intellectual culture of another country....and get married to one of the smart ones!!!

"she hoped that one day she would be qualified to marry Tom, after she had improved her mind. "

She hooks up with a group of atrocious pseudo-intellectuals at uni. They are rebels with a cause - judgemental, superficial, self-righteous and full of their own morality.

"Donna Bird...looking like some kind of court jester, always arguing and waving her arms about, always surrounded by groups of the important students - the libertarian who wore no shoes and tied his khaki trousers with a piece of rope and wrote lewd columns for the newspaper; the architecture student who was caught by a security guard on the floor of the library stacks with the psychology fresher; the leader of the student conservative club who was only known by his initials."

I'm not sure I liked any of the characters, or even cared very much about what happened to them. I wanted Lark to wake up to herself and stand on her own two feet. I wanted her to see through the vacuous show these other people put on; they were no better or no worse than anyone else; she had a right to her own opinion without these ghastly people laughing at her or putting her down for them.

It was a frustrating read, funny at times; even uncomfortable. It was certainly a fairly faithful portrait of a certain group of people in Australia at a certain point in time, with variations on the theme still present today (I went to uni with a Donna Lark-like group as well!)

Like A House on Fire by Cate Kennedy

I'm one of those people who love a good short story, although I don't read them all that often.
I usually keep a book of shorts by my bed for those nights I'm too tired to get into whatever book/s I'm currently reading.

A good short story draws me in, shows me a little nugget of truth, then gently lets me go again.

I don't always remember the characters or their dramas; short stories aren't made for that kind of reading experience.

Instead, for me, short stories are about the feeling, the atmosphere, the beautifully turned phrase, the authentic experience.


Masters of this type of short story are Alice Munro, William Trevor, Angela Carter...and now, Cate Kennedy.

Her stories range from dysfunctional families to tenderness, loyalty to despair, deceit to good deeds.

As I was going through them I realised I was building up a collection of 'd' words to describe each story. By the end I was determined to find as many 'd's as possible!

The last few stories were a bit of a stretch, but I came up with 'desire', 'disappointment', 'disability', 'do-over' & finally 'dick-head'!

As with all collections of short stories, there are a few that linger on for days & weeks afterwards, a few that you wish were longer & a couple you remember nothing about.

Guest Post Libby

Today's guest post comes courtesy of my dear colleague Libby.

Libby has been almost as excited as me about the possibilities for AusReading Month and she jumped at the chance to write about her 4 favourite Australian books.

This is what she had to say...

"Eucalyptus by Murray Bail - An exquisite fairytale set in a one-horse town in NSW. 

The father will only agree to marry off his daughter to the man who can name all the eucalypts on his property. 

Delicious writing and an award winner."

There Should Be More Dancing by Rosalie Ham - An amusing story of old-aged women who live in Fitzroy, Melbourne.

Margery's family want her to move into a nursing home but with great determination these life-long neighbours hold out to keep their independence.

Wonderful insight into family, ageing and the changing nature of a suburban street over a life-time."

Indelible Ink by Fiona McGregor - Set in the summer heat of Mosman, Sydney, a recently divorced lady transforms her life with a visit to a tattoo artist in Kings Cross.

Despite her adult children being fairly indifferent to their mother and lonely life, her life flourishes with newfound freedom.

Funny, sad and beautifully written."

Gilgamesh by Joan London - Set in the remote bush of Western Australia in Nunderup before it even appeared on a map, cousins arrive from the Middle East.

Edith and Francis are enchanted by the visitors.

As the story unfolds, Edith travels to Armenia with her baby to reunite with the baby's father.

Beautifully written fable."

I've only read Eucalyptus from Libby's selection - many years ago for my bookclub. I barely remembered it, so I dug out my old notes and found these comments...

"A Shakespearean style comedy with a fairytale father/daughter relationship disguised by a whole lot of bloody tree stuff!! Side stories more interesting that the main drama."

But that's what I love about books and reading - so many different opinions and reactions and interpretations to the same book.

Ruby Red Shoes Goes to Paris by Kate Knapp

My first brush with Ruby Red Shoes left me a little unsure.

The story & illustrations were sweet, delightful and wholesome, but a part of me was going "ohhh - too sweet and wholesome for my liking."

But over the past few months, Ruby has been worming her way into my heart.

I started following her on Instagram and facebook where I saw some of the pictures for the Paris book as works-in-progress.

Ruby Red Shoes has been a success story in our little Indie bookshop - it gets regular requests and is a storytime hit - especially with grandma's and 6 year old girls.

Publication date for Ruby Red Shoes Goes to Paris was flagged on social media and I found myself getting a little bit excited.

And it doesn't disappoint.

The story is as sweet and delightful and as wholesome as before, but this time with a chic, European sophistication.

Below are two little quotes that tickled my fancy...

"fizzing with excitement" &

"delicate chinks as coffee cups kiss their saucers."

Knapp has created a lovely early reader that will delight generations to come, especially if she adds to the series with more "...goes to..." titles.

Yes, this is a talking animal story (see Midnite review below) but the rabbits only talk to other rabbits. And that makes all the difference!

The Classics Club Spin #4

Wahoo!

Here we go again with The Classics Club Spin #4.

I love the #ccspins.

They help me read another classic in the company of a great group of like-minded readers and bloggers.

I try to match my list to as many other bloggers as possible, to guarantee a reading companion.

The rules are simple (and meant to be broken)!

• Go to your blog.
• Pick twenty books that you’ve got left to read from your Classics Club List.
• Try to challenge yourself: list five you are dreading/hesitant to read, five you can’t WAIT to read, five you are neutral about, and five free choice (favorite author, rereads, ancients — whatever you choose.)
• Post that list, numbered 1-20, on your blog by next Monday.
• Monday morning, we’ll announce a number from 1-20. Go to the list of twenty books you posted, and select the book that corresponds to the number we announce.
• The challenge is to read that book by January 1, even if it’s an icky one you dread reading! (No fair not listing any scary ones!)

My list is:

1. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier    -     Reading with Riv @Bookish Realm

2. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolfe    -    Reading with Anbolyn @Gundrun's Tights

3. Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie    -    Reading with Athena @Aquatique

4. Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac    -    Reading with Rachael @Ranger Cookie

5  Diary of a Nobody by George & Weedon Grossmith     -     Reading with Karen @Booker Talk

6. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe    -   Reading with Margaret @Books Please

7. Ulysses (uggghhhh!)    -   Reading with CC

8. The Good Earth    -    Reading with Chrissy @A Good Stopping Point

9. Parade's End by Ford Maddox Ford    -     Reading with Ellie @Lit Nerd

10. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky   -   Shared author with Bree @The Things We Read

11. The Hobbit (reread)    -    Reading with Erin @Quixotic Magpie

12. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte    -     Shared author with Sam @Tiny Library & Jenna @Lost Generation Reader

13. Nana by Zola       -      Reading with Katrina @Pining For the West

14. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell    -   Reading with Karen @Books and Chocolate

15. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov     -     Reading with Katrina @Katrina Reads

16. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy    -     Reading with Athena @Aquatique

17. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust    -     Reading with Jackie @Jackiemania

18. Diary of Anne Frank (reread)    -    Reading with CC

19. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (reread)   -    Reading with @Crafts 4 Others &  Karen @Booker Talk

20. Hunchback of Notre Dame    -    Reading with Karen @Books and Chocolate & Helen @She Reads Novels

Monday night - The lucky spin is no 10 - a hefty Russian for Bree & I to tackle over the summer holidays! 

Now I just have to decide which translation. The original - Constance Garnett; the faithful, award winning combination of Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky; or David McDuff's lively version? 
Do you have a preference or opinion to help me on my way?

Random quote that has whet my appetite for this book: 

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Dartmouth College has a webpage entirely devoted to TBK, the author, teaching notes etc which I will check out more thoroughly as I start reading.

And according to Schmoop, TBK is " generally considered one of the best novels ever written in any language." 

I'm beginning to feel a lovely sense of anticipation.

Happy spinning everyone :-)              

Midnite: The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy by Randolph Stow

I remember our school librarian reading Midnite to us in 5th or 6th class. I remember how the class laughed out loud over and over again. I remember how this was became of the few books that had a waiting list full of boys names. I also remember sitting there with everyone laughing around me and not really understanding why!

That is, I understood on an intellectual level why the book was funny - a dopey 17 year orphan in WA becomes a bushranger with the help of his talking cat, horse, cockatoo & cow. It was a non-stop comedy of errors and silliness.

As an adult I now understand exactly why this book didn't appeal to me back then - the talking animals!
I seriously disliked talking animal stories, especially if the talking animals talked to humans.

I still struggle with animals talking to humans in books. It's fine for animals to talk to each other (i.e. Watership Down) or for the author to let us into the thoughts and feelings of the animal (i.e. Black Beauty & My Friend Flicka). I'm also okay with human/animal relationships where there is a form of non-verbal communication and understanding (i.e. Lassie, Skippy and Flicker).

I've come to love stories like Winnie the Pooh thanks to the language and humour.

But I still couldn't read The Knife of Never Letting Go. As soon as the dog started talking, I was out of there!

And, sadly, the same thing has happened during my reread of Midnite.

I had forgotten the story completely, except that it was funny and about a bumbling bushranger.

That unusual sound you heard two nights ago was me groaning out loud when at the bottom of pg 2, Khat, the Siamese cat, started talking to young Midnite!

Then it all came flooding back. The memories of sitting in class and pretending to laugh when everyone else laughed & being grateful for the first time ever about the slimness of a book!

Midnite can be seen as a precursor to the Andy Griffiths school of humour. Perfect for the 10+ reader who likes lots of silliness and outrageous events.
It won the 'highly commended' CBCA award the year I was born - 1968. It was Randolph Stow's (1935 - 2010) one & only children's book.

Don't let my review put you off - there's a lot about this book that is endearing and funny; it's just not for me.

Pastures of the Blue Crane by H.F. Brinsmead

When I first discovered Pastures of the Blue Crane on my school library shelf as a teenager, I thought that I had struck gold - that I had uncovered some little known Aussie treasure.

I have since discovered that Pastures of the Blue Crane won the CBCA Book of the Year Award for 1965 & that Hesba Fay Brinsmead (1922 - 2003) wrote a lot of children's book.

I recently found Brinsmead's 2003 obit in the SMH which summed up nicely a lot of what I wanted to say about this book...

"Brinsmead's most famous book remains her first, Pastures of the Blue Crane, published in 1964. 

This novel, set in the Tweed district, won the Children's Book of the Year Award and the Mary Gilmore Award, and achieved an international reputation. 

She also won a Children's Book of the Year Award for her landmark Longtime Passing (1971), the first of a semi-autobiographical trilogy set in the Blue Mountains. 

Pastures of the Blue Crane was also the source of one of the first mini-series on ABC television. It is a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl, Ryl Merewether. Ryl is all alone in the world - or so she thinks - when she suddenly inherits a rundown shack in northern NSW, which comes complete with a crusty old grandfather and some other surprising relatives she didn't know about. 

In this little adventure story, Brinsmead tackles many big issues, including the irresponsible property development ruining the pristine Tweed coastline, and the casual racism, sexism and narrow-minded conformity of Australian society. 

Brinsmead was a generation ahead of her time as an environmentalist, being an early campaigner for Lake Pedder and the Franklin. She led the way as a sensitive and wry commentator on Australian society, a chronicler of pioneering days, a keen and witty observer of family life, and was among the first authors to tackle indigenous issues. 
She was a valiant writer, who overcame adversities that would have stumped a lesser person. 

Hesba Fay Hungerford was born in the tiny Blue Mountains settlement of Berambing in what was then the remotest of wildernesses.  

All her life, Hesba was known as "Pixie" to her friends and family. The nickname suited her spritely personality, her will-o'-the-wisp frame and her sparkling demeanour."

This book struck a chord with me at the time. 
My dad grew up in the Tweed and we spent many, many family Christmas' in the area with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandma. My memories of the area date from the early 70's on...just 5 or 6 years after Brinsmead wrote Pastures of the Blue Crane. 

As I read, I was able to picture the streets, the mountains, the banana plantations, the cane fields, the beaches exactly as she described them. I could smell the smoke, the humidity & the lush ripeness of the area. I could taste the fruit and hear the screeches of the insects, birds & bats.

I also really related to Ryl - the loner, the outsider, who didn't feel like she belonged to anywhere or anyone.

One of the curious things for me as I've reread a number of these Australian children classics this week has been remembering the " casual racism, sexism and narrow-minded conformity of Australian society" at the time. 

There are times I despair that Australian society has moved on very far from those days. 

But rereading these books and being shocked by the blatant, casual, very un-PC comments by some of the characters has made me realise that we have indeed moved on. Not far - and certainly not far enough - but enough for my stepsons to be disturbed by the sexist, racist language used by some of the characters in these books.

Pastures of the Blue Crane still holds up as a sweet coming-of-age story despite the dated use of language. The themes of belonging & identity bind it together. 

Highly recommended for anyone looking for a 'real' story - there's not a vampire, werewolf or dystopian baddie anywhere in sight!

Friday Flashback - Dirt Music by Tim Winton

After reading Eyrie recently, I'm feeling more ambivalent about Tim Winton than I've ever felt before.

I went through a similar phase after trying to read The Riders - a novel I miserably failed to engage with on any level. It also had the dubious honour of being one of the first books I decided not to finish. (I was about to turn 30 and had reached a point where I felt that life was too short to read a bad book, or a book that wasn't working for me)!


But about 6 years later, I decided to try again with Dirt Music.

And I loved it.

I had had my first holiday to WA in 1999 and I felt a more personal affinity for the WA landscape that Winton wrote about so beautifully.
I pictured David Wenham as Fox. And the soundtrack played in my head the whole way through.

I enjoyed the unusual relationship that developed between the two main characters; it suited the frame of mind I was in at the time.

In hindsight, the relationship doesn't look so satisfying. But I'm not sure that satisfying and comfortable are words that Tim Winton would be very comfortable with either!

I remember Dirt Music with a great deal of fondness. Even the long anticipated, over-dramatic, far-fetched ending brings a smile to my lips. For me there was a cinematic element to Dirt Music. I was desperate to see it on the big screen where justice could be done to the over the top ending!

But after my experience with Eyrie, I'm a little concerned about revisiting Dirt Music in case I come away thinking, "oh no it's just another lost in WA blokey story".

This post is linked to Flashback Friday and AusReading Month.

Climb A Lonely Hill by Lilith Norman

My uncle's death at the beginning of November has thrown my reading schedule for AusReading Month.

I've resorted to the easy, comfort rereads of my childhood as a way to soothe my soul.

Not that any of the books I've read this week have had comforting themes or easy topics!

I've relived bushfires, catastrophic floods, car accidents and the death of parents!


Climb A Lonely Hill was a particularly harrowing read when I was younger. And it's still a pretty tough assault on the senses for an adult.

In primary school, we had the best librarian.
She read out loud to us right up 'til the end of Year 6. She read difficult, challenging, inspiring books. Books I remember fondly to this day.

Climb A Lonely Hill was one of the last books she read to us.
It was very frightening. I remember hiding my head under one of the library chairs to try and block out some of the images. But I had to keep on listening - I had to know what happened.

To this day I remember the scene in the desert, when the kids contemplate drinking their own urine with a shiver of horror!

Climb A Lonely Hill won the CBCA 'commended ' award for 1971.

It's not for the faint-hearted, but it's such a remarkable story of survival, courage and determination that I think the fear it inflicts in places is worth it.

Trivia Answer: If someone is having a "bo-peep" - they are announcing their intentions to go to sleep in rhyming slang.
Rhyming slang is not used as often these days as it was during my parents and grandparents eras.
The main ones we still use are "it's time to hit the frog and toad" meaning that it's time to hit the road (and go home). And "Pat Malone" - as in, I'm sitting here all on my Pat Malone (alone).
People still occasionally refer to Sydney as "steak and kidney", their phone as their "dog and bone", their mate as "china plate" and their wife as "trouble and strife".

Hills End by Ivan Southall

The recent death of my uncle has thrown my AusReading Month schedule out the window. I had all these heavy, complex Aussie classics on my TBR pile. I was so looking forward to getting stuck into them, but my head and heart haven't been in it.

Instead I've gone for ease and comfort. After devouring and enjoying Ash Road in the first few days, I hunted through my bookshelves for more Aussie children's classics. Books I haven't read since primary school; books that are delighting me all over again and reminding me of simpler times (even as the books themselves deal with some pretty harsh tragedies!)


Hills End was Southall's first children's book written in his new style. Previously he had written boys-own adventure stories.

This book marked the beginning of a new and very successful phase for Southall. Children, on their own, facing extreme conditions, fending for themselves, overcoming obstacles, fears and crises.  He uses multiple points of view and lots of internal monologue.
They're rich, satisfying, complex coming of age stories that resonate to this day because we can recognise parts of ourselves in many of the characters.

In Hills End, the disaster is a once in a lifetime flood that cuts off a small group of children from their entire town. They face down death, destruction and despair. Courage and leadership are shown to come in lots of different ways & to take different forms.

The story is frightening but heart-warming.

Southall writes true-to-life and avoids saccharine sweet endings. He gives us a believable resolution to the crisis with growth and hope, but not a happy ever after.

I can't recommend these books highly enough.
They're perfect for mature 10+ readers who like real-life stories.

Guest Post - Girl Booker

This week's guest post for AusReading Month is from my dear friend, Girl Booker. I recently featured Girl Booker for the Classics Club - here.

You can also check out her blog - here.

But for now - here is Girl Booker...


"I have chosen a list of my top 5 contemporary Australian female writers to share with you all on Brona’s blog. I have absolutely adored what I have read by each of these women and actively try to force their work on to others at every given opportunity.

Rosalie Ham

The Dressmaker is a gothic, gloomy, take on life in a small Australian country town. I read it many years ago and don’t remember the details of the book but it made an impression. I remember lapping it up and being excited by it.

Ham’s most recent book, There Should Be More Dancing is very funny, dark, and touching. I recommended it to a customer who loved it so much she volunteered to act as the publisher’s PR and marketing team for free. (This same customer once asked someone to hold her shoe, but that’s another story for another time and should in no way detract from what a great book There Should Be More Dancing is).

Liane Moriarty

I read The Husband’s Secret and was in awe of how many literary balls Moriarty can simultaneously juggle; she does characters, competing plots, sense of place AND pace to perfection. It is so well written but it’s fun and easy to read, and the suspense keeps you hooked.

Lisa Pryor

Pryor has written two books of non-fiction: The Pin Striped Prison and A Small Book About Drugs. They are both easy to read and incredibly insightful. Pryor always manages to find the unexamined angle of a topic and bring it to light in a really fresh and engaging way. She is a former journalist, so her facts are solid and flow thick and fast through the work, yet she balances this with a chatty tone that I find very appealing.

Kirsten Tranter

“Dreamy. Lots of space. Airy. Mysterious. Lush.”

Those were the words I jotted down the other day while planning this post. What I loved and what I remember most vividly from reading both The Legacy and A Common Loss is the sense of falling into a swirly, dreamlike world. Tranter’s work is the reading equivalent of floating quietly in gently bobbing water.

Charlotte Wood

The other day for the classics club I reread Lolita, which I had originally read over 10 years ago and declared to be my favourite book. This time around, I reached the conclusion that it is no longer my favourite, and after a little thought I decided that Charlotte Wood, with her precious and delightful Love and Hunger, has wrested the mantle from poor dear sad old Vladimir Nabokov.

I have given several copies of this book as presents because I want to share it so much. I love the messages of everyday nourishment, helping and healing, and bringing people together through food. A friend of mine once told me that he cooks for people to tell them he loves them. A beautiful sentiment, and Love and Huger is essentially a book length version of this idea. It is inspiring in a quiet way, it makes you feel good about life, it’s a joy to read and  - most remarkable of all – it made my vegetable-shy Love want to eat lentils because Wood makes them sound so delicious!"