A Fairy Tale Revolution

The series, A Fairy Tale Revolution, consists of four picture books from Vintage Classics, that 'remix and revive' well-known fairy tales and give them a modern, feminist twist. Featuring four amazing UK authors - Jeanette Winterson, Kamila Shamsie, Malorie Blackman and Rebecca Solnit - flexing their authorial muscles in a new format.

Like most fairy tales, however, they are not really designed to be read with or by very young people. Fairy tales are cautionary tales offering up dire consequences to those who do not take heed. They're stories created to keep you safe by alerting you to the dangers of jealous partners, controlling partners, death, grief and loss. They warn you of the consequences of selfish behaviour, greed, laziness, arrogance and self-indulgence.

The old tales, pre-Disney, do not mince words. 

If you don't pay attention, you could end up dead. You could be eaten by a wolf, enslaved, lost forever in the forest, cast out of your community, orphaned or maimed. Sometimes it was a stranger you had to beware, but even way back when, everyone knew that the biggest danger lurked much closer to home. 

Domestic violence and the awful way that families can treat each other have always been the main causes for concern in fairy tales. Dressing them up as a story, only took away some of the power and pain. The Brothers Grimm struggled with this harsh image of family life, changing many of the original stories from being about mothers to stepmothers, and fathers to devils, to soften the blow.

Wicked, cruel, selfish mother-figures and strict, controlling, violent father-figures haunt the pages of most fairy tales. Obsessive husbands, manipulative wives, lying, lazy children - families were viewed as toxic danger zones. Safe families could change at the drop of a hat, or the death of a parent. The big, bad world was full of injustice and inequity. 

These were adult stories designed to frighten and instruct. There were always consequences, but not necessarily the ones you would expect. They urged you to be vigilant. Fairy tales highlighted some of the evil, wicked and unfair practices that exist in our world.

Most of the modern retellings sanitise these older tales. The lazy little pigs don't get eaten by the wolf, they merely run to the next house. The wolf doesn't get boiled alive, he jumps out the window and runs away. Cinderella's stepsisters don't lop off parts of their feet to fit into the slipper, birds no longer peck out their eyes. The consequences for being lazy, inept or selfish are watered down. Our darker selves are ignored or discounted, while all the bad stuff is removed, onto an 'other'. The modern retellings take away the morals embedded in the old tales about our own personal development, our dual natures, the good and bad inside us all. All the bad is put out there, away from us. The lesson now is that we're all fine just as we are. The bad people are out there, out of our control, but nothing to do with us. We don't have to change, we just have to be cautious and keep out the baddie (other).

Many years ago I devoured Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. I was fascinated by the idea of children returning to a story over and over again to satisfy some inner conflict. I saw this in my teaching career all the time. Certain stories resonated with some groups and individuals in a very deep way. They had to be read multiple times over an extended period of time, until the need was met.

These stories were always the 'darker' ones. Stories that were considered scary or sad. Stories where someone died, got lost, faced down a fear or suffered a major disappointment. Books like Koala Lou, Dogger, Harry the Dirty Dog, The Spooky Old Tree, The Deep, The Gingerbread Man (where the GM got eaten by the fox), The Hobyahs, The Story About Ping, The Giving Tree, A Lion in the Meadow, and The Story of Ferdinand.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with two particular fairy tales - Snow-White & Rose-Red and Rumpelstiltskin. Bettelheim, observed that fairy tales about siblings often “stand for seemingly incompatible aspects of the human personality.” There was also something in there about trust, and appearances being deceiving and our wild natures that haunted me as well. While Rumpelstiltskin taught me about the perils of bragging, and making bad decisions and why it's important to name the evil forces acting upon us, to take away their power. 

Much of Bettelheim's research has been debunked in more recent times, but his ideas about the darker elements in stories, their psychological impact and how they resonate with children, still holds true. 

These new retellings of Cinderella, Bluebeard, Hansel and Gretel, and The Ugly Duckling are deep, dark and delicious. They are adult stories dressed up in picture book form. 

Jeanette Winterson in Hansel & Greta turns the known story into an environmental tale of greed, destruction and wickedness. Her word play is delicious and witty. This was probably my favourite story of the four.

Malorie Blackman gives us the very modern Blueblood complete with video surveillance and mobile technology. Nia Blueblood is the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Bluebeard. She is a vigilante outing men who have abused other women and gotten away with it...until now. This was dark and shocking and subversive. I loved it!

Kamila Shamsie's Duckling, is a disturbing tale about body-shaming, fear of the other and bullying. The fate of the outsider, the refugee, and the loner are considered in this sad tale of belonging and being true to yourself.

Cinderella Liberator by Rebecca Solnit maintains a more traditional structure until Cinderella and the Prince just become good friends who help each other to be their best selves. Transformation, asking for help and helping others are the main themes. Economic independence and liberation from traditional roles are seen as being good things for both sexes. 

All four stories share feminist twists that delight the reader. At least, they delighted this reader. They also feature woodcut illustrations in the style of Arthur Rackman, by Laura Barrett. Check them out, I think you will love them too.

Such A Fun Age | Kiley Reid #USfiction

I had no intention of reading Such A Fun Age. The premise sounded mildly appealing/interesting:

When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for 'kidnapping' the white child she's actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right. 

But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix's desire to help. When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know – about themselves, each other, and the messy dynamics of privilege.

But really, I'm rather over the whole adulting trope with a world peopled by no-one but twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings. Yet it was hard to completely resist the buzz surrounding the release of this book.

It was everywhere.

Then a colleague read it and came back with a surprisingly good reaction, so I decided to turn Such A Fun Age into a lunch time read.

It's the perfect pick-up, put-down book, ideal as a holiday read or a complete change of pace between your usual fare.

While the dynamics were initially quite tantalising, not being quite sure in which direction this story was going to go, it quickly settled into a book about other people's self-made dramas. The only likeable characters were Emira, the babysitter, and the toddler, Briar. They had some genuinely awkward moments to contend with, but they just got on with life and didn't make a fuss. They didn't spend their time over-thinking every action and reaction, they just got on with having a mutually heart-warming and caring relationship.

Everyone else was pretty annoying. Alix and her friends were ghastly, Emira's friends were tiresome, the husband was a non-event, the children accessories and the boyfriend, Kelley was just creepy.

Class privilege, racial and gender issues bubbled away behind the scenes but were never really resolved. Perhaps there was more actually going on here that an American reader would pick up on, but I simply got weary of all the talk about clothes and hair and social media status. But maybe I'm just showing my age!

There was some interesting stuff about memories, personal bias and how we perceive ourselves compared to how others actually see us, but since no-one really rose above their stereotype it was hard to know what to make of it all. It's this more than anything that leaves me feeling disappointed. A world peopled by no-one but more people of the same age is ultimately dull and an unhealthy place to be. It felt much like watching an episode of a more ethnically diverse Friends.

Don't get me wrong. Reading this book was a tremendous romp and if I'd been lying on the beach as I did so, it would have been perfect! It's only as I've started to think about it more deeply to write this post, that I see how fluffy and flawed it is. But then, not every single book has to be high literature. Some books are just for fun, at any age.

Girl, Woman, Other | Bernardine Evaristo #BookerWinner

I'm still trying to catch up on posts leftover from my magnificent Christmas reading binge.

Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel by Bernardine Evaristo is the final one. It is certainly not the least though. In fact, it very nearly overtook The Yield as my favourite book for 2019.

What stopped it from doing so?

Mostly time.

I have lived with and loved The Yield for many months now. It's wonderfulness has been a part of me for a much longer period of time than Girl, Woman, Other. It also has the advantage of being home grown. Poppy's very special Indigenous language dictionary is another stand out feature that I think about often.

But this is about Girl, Woman, Other and it definitely deserves it's own time in the sun to shine.

The twelve interconnected stories about growing up, living, working and loving in London by mostly black British women of various ages, had me hooked from the very first voice, Amma. Via these women, Evaristo talks about feminism, double standards, gender, racism, sexism and ageism.

The twelve chapters read like twelve separate portraits, with Evaristo revelling in the characterisations of each and every one. Her loose-flowing poetic prose was full of vitality and complexities. I was engrossed by each and every story, not wanting them to end, but then getting caught up in the next biography and wondering how they might interconnect.

The diversity and otherness suggested by the title, was explored on many levels. Part of my enjoyment came from reading such a fresh perspective and experiencing a reality different to my own. Note to self, read more diversely in 2020 (most of my 2019 reading was Australian and Indigenous).


Evaristo, herself, said:

I wanted to put presence into absence. I was very frustrated that black British women weren’t visible in literature. I whittled it down to 12 characters – I wanted them to span from a teenager to someone in their 90s, and see their trajectory from birth, though not linear. There are many ways in which otherness can be interpreted in the novel – the women are othered in so many ways and sometimes by each other. I wanted it to be identified as a novel about women as well.

Finally, I will tackle the co-winning of the Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. I have read both and enjoyed both, but Girl, Woman, Other is by far the richer, more interesting and certainly the more original of the two. Labelling a book 'the best novel of the year', obviously leaves things very open to individual interpretation, but to my mind, Girl, Woman, Other stands head and shoulders above any of the others shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and deserved to win in it's own right.

Facts:

• Joint Winner of the Booker Prize 2019
• Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2019
• Named one of Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of 2019

Ordinary People by Diana Evans

Ordinary People by Diana Evans found its way onto my TBR pile thanks to its shortlisting in this year's Women's Prize.

Evan's is quite magnificent in describing the daily grind of marital malaise for thirty-something's. We see two couples who have settled down with the one they happened to be sleeping with in their late twenties. They had lots of giddy love feels, hot sex and lots of fun and decided to have babies and/or get married.

However to those of us (the readers), looking in from the outside, we're not so sure this will work out. We're not so sure that the great sex and all that love/lust will translate into actual likes and a lifetime of compromise and working stuff out together. We're not so sure they share enough in common including parenting styles and interests. Like most young people, they actually haven't thought about what it might be like to really get old together.

The angst is real. They're pulled in different directions by different desires and beliefs. So many of these beliefs and desires come from external sources - movies, social media, advertising - that tells them they should be living a certain type of life, and loving it all the time. They love their kids, but it doesn't feel like enough.

Part of being in one's thirties is about coming to terms with the disconnect between the imagined or the social media show and the real world we actually live in. The compromises we all have to make, the ordinariness of real life, the drudgery that defines so much of adulthood with kids. Until we have that ah-ha moment.

For some of us it's a sudden, decisive change that often catches us by surprise; and for some its a more gradual, dawning realisation. However it comes to you, it's the sign that you've matured into the next phase of adulthood. And it's such a relief when you get there.

This is a story about four people on the edge of that moment.

I can see why this story was shortlisted for the Women's Prize but I can also see why it didn't win. The beginning was tremendous, extraordinary even. Evans explored the emotional lives of her four protagonists in a believable, sympathetic manner. But the ending veered off into a weird group holiday to Spain, with some gothic ghost story elements thrown in for good measure. I thought this was going to lead to a post-natal depression discussion, but it just fizzled out into nothing in the end. There was also a rather long bow drawn between the nearby decaying Crystal Palace and human relationships. And all that Michael Jackson reverence at the end was just weird given the turn his real life story took in recent times. Perhaps she was trying to say that even black heroes can fail the human decency test?

The bonus play script at the end, was a fun look at urban myths, what is real and what is fake. But by this point I was quite confused about Evans' message or purpose and felt that she had tried to include too many things all at once.

The very London setting with all its multi-layered socio-economic and political undercurrents was superbly realised. I loved the naturalness & ordinariness of reading about black middle class families.   I see by reading a few other reviews, that not everyone was as disappointed with the end as I was, so don’t take my word for it; read it yourself and make up your own mind.

Favourite Character: All the adults were pretty annoying by the end and I just wanted to shake them (in that same way that I'm sure my parents wanted to shake me at the same age)! Young Ria, however, was delightful with her curiosity, innocence and independence.

Favourite Quote: favourite by default - it was the only sentence I underlined in the whole book,

Sometimes in the lives of ordinary people, there is a great halt, a revelation, a moment of change. It occurs under low mental skies, never when one is happy.

Favourite or Forget: I enjoyed this enough to pass on to Mr Books to have a go at too.

Facts:

• Spotify playlist created by Evans available to listen to as you read. Highly recommended.
• One of the New Yorker best books of the year 2018.
• Shortlisted for the Women's Prize, Rathbones Folio Prize and Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Book 21 of 20 Books of Summer Winter

An A - Z of Diversity in my TBR Pile

I'm trying very hard to make a dint on my stupendous Mount TBR this year. Once a month or so, to keep me motivated, I thought I'd join in the current trend of A-Zing. 

However A-Zing my TBR pile is simply way too easy.

So I will nominate a theme for each list. This month, it's DIVERSITY.

We're talking books in translation, books set in other countries and books featuring non-Western cultures.

Little cheats are allowed (the letter can be represented by the title or the author, although I will aim to mostly use the book titles) but the book HAS to be on my current TBR pile. If I can remember, I will also share the story of how this book came to be on my #MountTBR.

Without any further ado, my TBR A-Z of Diversity is:

An Artist in the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

I've been an Ishiguro fan ever since I saw the 1993 movie The Remains of the Day.

I've been slowly reading & adding his backlist to my library.

Benang by Kim Scott

My very first week in the bookshop, we had a visit from an author & publicist.

The author was Kim Scott and to my immense (future self) shame, I didn't know who he was or what he had written. 

In my defence, I had spent the previous 20 years focused on children's literature in my professional life & personally tended to gravitate towards classic novels written by dead white men.

However I've been wanting to rectify this glaring social faux pas ever since.

When Fremantle Press published this gorgeous hardcover edition of Benang a couple of years ago, I knew I had to have it.

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

Loved the title, the Amy Tan tag and the chance to add to my Women's Prize (Orange Prize) backlist.

The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa

A sale book that caught my eye with its Nobel Prize tag on the cover.

The End of Loneliness by Benedict Wells

Got nothing on this one.

I have no idea how it ended up on my #MountTBR

The Famished Road by Ben Okri

I found a secondhand copy of this book in a Blackheath community market garage sale.
It was autumn and the cover jumped out at me.

The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A fictionalised account of Simon Bolivar's final days that caught my eye after reading The Invention of Nature in 2016. Alexander von Humboldt met Bolivar during his travels in South America. They both also had a Cuban connection which caught my eye at the time.

Hiroshima by John Hersey

I've been planning (in my mind) a trip to Japan for a very long time.
With the trip finally on my near horizon, I will hopefully find time to read this classic.

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

A number of years ago I decided I wanted to read more of the Nobel Prize winners. I also had a brief visit to Istanbul in 1991 and am curious to know more about its history. This book ticks both boxes.

The Jew's Beech by Annette Von Droste-Hulshoff

A Goodreads recommendation from Thomas that is still waiting patiently to be read.

The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki

Another one of those books that I have no memory of how it ended up in my house.

Little Jewel by Patrick Modiano

Purchased after Modiano won the Nobel Prize a few years ago.

The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami

Recommended by a colleague who made it sound too intriguing to pass by.
Loved the cover too.

Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin

Ha Jin attended last year's Sydney Writers Festival. I didn't get to see any of his talks, but his books sounded appealing.

Origins by Amin Maalouf

I discovered Maalouf about 20 yrs ago during an exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW where his books were on sale in the gift room. I came home with Samakand and Leo Africanus. When I spotted he had also written a memoir many years later, I snapped it up.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Asian literature has always fascinated me. Not even a bad cover was going to keep me away from this one.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene 

Acquired for a trip to Vietnam after I had seen the movie, but then I found a book of short stories actually written by a Vietnamese author that came on holidays with me instead.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

A fairly new addition to my TBR. After reading Exit West last year, I decided I wanted to read more works by Hamid.

Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich

Another Nobel Prize choice that coincides with my fascination in all things Russian.

Twain and Stanley Enter Paradise by Oscar Hijuelos

A customer who knew of my Cuba trip, recommended I should read this book. I can only assume that Stanley and/or Twain visit Cuba in the story at some point.

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

Another Nobel Prize book.

Views of Nature by Alexander Von Humboldt

Acquired after reading the Humboldt memoir mentioned above (letter G).

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

After reading 1Q84, I've been gradually stocking up on my Murakami backlist. I believe this is one of the weirder books.

The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin

A Chinese classic that I really will read one day.

Frog by Mo Yan

Yet another Nobel Prize winner.

The Zigzag Way by Anita Desai

During my Indian lit phase in the late 90's I read quite a few Desai books (mother and daughter). The Zigzag Way was one of the few I didn't get to at the time (probably cause it wasn't actually written until 2004!)

Now I want to stop everything that I'm doing and binge read for a week!

Of course, that won't actually happen, so which one book from the list of 26 should I prioritise to the top of Mount TBR?

Readathon Reads

Part of the feeling of success and enjoyment that I had with this year's Readathon was mostly reading junior fiction, short stories and essays. It allowed me to switch between genres and feel that I was getting through books and pages. In previous readathons I would read through the pile of half finished books by my bed. I ended up reading a similar amount of pages, but maybe only finished one book. This year actually finishing books felt like a big deal and kept my enthusiasm keen until the end.

But now I have a stack of book responses to write #postreadathonblues!

To make my life simpler, I'm going to combine the junior fiction books into one post. I saved my two junior reads for the end when I was getting tired eyes and a smushy brain.

I read Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden and The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd.

Miss Happiness came to me thanks to a recommendation within another book. Chasing the Sky is a book about twenty Australian women architects and utterly fascinating in it's own right. However, one of the architects mentioned that she had read Miss Happiness as a child and that it had been one of the inspirations for her to become an architect. I was intrigued.

I knew that I would enjoy Godden's writing style as I had thoroughly enjoyed The Greengage Summer unexpectedly last year. And I knew that it would be the prefect choice for late in the readathon as soon as I opened it and saw the big font, generous spacing and black and white illustrations.

The Japanese theme also appealed to me thanks to our planned trip to Japan in 2018.

The story is aimed at the 8+ age group and features a young girl sent to England to live with her aunt, uncle and cousins from India. She is unhappy and shy and not fitting in, until a great-aunt sends her two little Japanese dolls for Christmas. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower are also aliens in this very English world.

Young Nona sets out to make them more comfortable by making a Japanese doll's house for them. She befriends the local librarian who helps her pick the right books and gradually the rest of the family get involved in building this miniature home complete with niche, bonsai and tea ceremony.

The real delight for any budding designer though are the detailed drawings and instructions at the end of the book showing you how to make your very own Japanese doll's house. A quick google also revealed a whole world of people who have made their very own Japanese doll's house inspired by this charming book.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower was published in 1961 and has a few cultural clangers relevant to it's time, but the universal themes of belonging, tolerance and friendship make it all worth while.

Jump forward to 2007 and The London Eye Mystery. Siobhan Dowd's story is set in a very modern London with characters who also share a love of architecture and design.

It would be easy to call this book A Curious Incident of the Dog at Night Time for 10 year olds, but it probably shares more in common with the feel-good Wonder by R J Palacio.

At it's heart is the mysterious disappearance of cousin Salim, who went into a pod on the London Eye, but didn't come down. His cousins, Ted and Kat spend the book working out what happened using logic, patterns and inductive reasoning. Ted is high functioning on the autism spectrum whilst Kat is a young girl of action.

The mystery is fairly simple to work out, but there's enough tension to keep young readers second guessing for a while. The part that appealed to me the most, though, was the love-letter to London feel that infused the whole story. Having spent quite a bit of time in London over the years, I was able to picture myself walking the same streets, riding the Tube, hearing the accents and experiencing the weather along with Ted and Kat.

My copy of The London Eye Mystery is a new edition (2015) with an Introduction by Robin Stevens. She says,

A mystery writer must play fair, but also play tricks: all the clues must be laid out in plain sight, while at the same time the reader is persuaded to ignore them until it's too late.

As an adult you can see how Dowd has done this, but there are enough distractions along the way to keep even the most critical reader a little wrong-footed at times.

Sadly, Dowd died in 2007 leaving behind one unfinished book idea (which Patrick Ness turned into A Monster Calls). Robin Stevens has now written a follow-up book about Ted and Kat called The Guggenheim Mystery published last month. I'm keen to see how the transition works.

David Dean's iconic retro covers may look familiar as his work has been used for many of Michael Morpurgo and Lauren St John's recent editions as well.

Just Saying...

I am truly delighted that George Saunders has won an award for his fabulous book, Lincoln in the Bardo. I loved it from start to finish and it deserves to be inundated with accolades and prizes.

But I also loved Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire just as much, but for very different reasons (review still to come). I was terribly disappointed that it didn't make the shortlist as I feel that it deserved a chance to be shown off to a wider audience. The kind of audience that being shortlisted for a major award can give you.

I like to read books from authors all around the world. But there is so much choice, which can make it hard for me to decide which book I should try next.
Longlists and shortlists help me narrow down the choice.

If you'd like to read more award winning books from around the world try these awards and prizes -

Stella Prize (Australian women writers)

Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction from Commonwealth countries)

The International Dublin Literacy Award (world literature including translated works)

Women's Prize for Fiction (women's writing worldwide)

Miles Franklin Literary Award (Australian literature)
Man Booker International (translated works worldwide)

Giller Prize (Canadian literature)

Crossword Book Awards (Indian literature)

Costa Book Awards (UK & Ireland, all ages)

Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (worldwide, children's literature)

Prize for South Asian Literature

The Jerusalem Prize (worldwide, for works about the freedom of man in society)

Nobel Prize for Literature (worldwide for a body of work)

New Zealand Book Awards

This is just the tip of the award winning iceberg.

If you're lucky enough to be able to read books in other languages, there are oodles and oodles of awards and prizes for you to check out too.

#justsaying

Yours Sincerely, Giraffe by Megumi Iwasa

One of my recent #readathon reads was the delightfully eccentric Yours Sincerely, Giraffe by Megumi Isawa. When my eyes started to get tired and words began to blur on the page, the simple but fun illustrations from Jun Takabatake were just the eye candy I needed.

The premise of the story is simple - Giraffe is bored. Until, that is, he spots a sign on a tree from an equally bored pelican who has decided to start up a postal service, 'willing to deliver anything anywhere'!

Giraffe decides to write a letter. He gives it to pelican with the instruction 'give it to the first animal you meet on the other side of the horizon.'

What follows is a rather absurd, but oh so charming tale of mistaken identity and misunderstanding as giraffe and his new penpal, penguin, try to imagine what each other look like and what it would be like to live on the other side of the horizon.

For teachers and parents, the added bonus with Yours Sincerely, Giraffe is the chance to discuss letter writing, difference and perception with your emerging reader. It's also a fabulous book to read aloud together.

New Zealand based Gecko Press have become renown for their promotion of unconventional, diverse and humorous books for children. These include Rose Lagercrantz's My Happy Life books and Ulf Nilsson's Detective Gordon series. Yours Sincerely, Giraffe is another quirky addition.

Antoinette by Kelly diPucchio

Kelly DiPucchio has won me over - head, heart and soul - with her two enchanting picture books about Gaston and Antoinette. They ooze charm, cuteness (but don't tell them!) and good humour.

Antoinette continues the very chic tale, that began with Gaston, about these two adorably diverse dog families from Paris. Fee-fe, Foo-fo, Ohh-la-la and Gaston have remained friends with Rocky, Ricky, Bruno and Antoinette, but this time it is Antoinette's turn to question where she belongs and what she is good at.

It's not until Ohh-la-la goes missing that Antoinette realises what her special talent is.

When Antoinette not only finds but rescues the missing Ohh-la-la in the nick of time, Mrs Poodle cries out in relief, "You found my Ohh-la-la." I defy the hardest of hearts not to chuckle at this point!

Caldecott Honoree Christian Robinson has illustrated both books with his mixed media collage and acrylic pictures. In a Q&A on Fishink, Robinson says of his artistic influences that,

I’m a bit of a sponge and my work is influenced and inspired by so many illustrators and painters that I love. Illustrators like Ezra Jack Keats and Abner Graboff inspire me to play with collage and cut outs. Designers like Paul Rand and Bruno Munari inspire me to keep things simple and have fun. Artist like Picasso and Mattise push me to explore color and shapes.

Given that I adore the simple designs and complementary colour palette that Robinson uses, I would have to say that he has successfully found his own unique style.

We can only hope that DiPucchio and Robinson have much more to say and illustrate about Gaston and Antoinette, because, I for one, am certainly not done with these two canny canine families.

Circle by Jeannie Baker

Circle is one of those amazing, gorgeous picture books that I love and adore...right up until the very last page.

But that last page does my head in every single time I read it. Before I go into the final page, let me tell you all the reasons why I love and adore the rest of the book.

Firstly, I had the very great privilege of attending the book launch and exhibition opening for Circle at the Australian Maritime Museum in Sydney last year. Being able to see Baker's collages up close and personal is a real treat that I would move heaven and earth to be a part of (I also attended the opening of her exhibition for Mirror six years ago).

The collages were hung between child and adult height for everyone to enjoy. They're not huge pieces, which makes the precision details in each one even more impressive. The colours, the textures, the perspectives are an aesthetic delight.

Secondly, Circle is the story of the bar-tailed godwit, a migratory bird that I knew nothing about until the launch/opening night. This incredible little bird takes a six day flight from Australia/New Zealand via the Yellow Sea to Alaska each year.

Thirdly, this is a story about our environment and our climate and what we have been doing to it and how it affects the smallest members of our planet. It's a story about our global ecosystem and how everything is connected. Circle is the ultimate tale of belonging.

And now the ending.

The very first illustration in the book shows us a boy in bed with a wheelchair beside him. We have no explanation for this. The assumption I made was that the boy had a permanent disability. There was nothing in the image to suggest to me that he was only injured for a period of time (i.e. wearing a cast for a broken leg, get well cards on the bedside table etc). Instead he is reading a book about birds and day dreaming about flying.

Baker refers to an injury in the teacher's notes provided on the night. If this had been obvious to me, I could have accepted this very same boy at the end of the book on crutches, rushing to save the godwit on the beach, dropping his crutches and suddenly walking/running. If I'd known he was recovering from a protracted injury, I could have applauded his hard work and apparent recovery.

The teacher's note conclude with 'thus, the bird's year long migration is given a human perspective'.

However it looked to me, like a child with a permanent disability who suddenly walked. It didn't make sense. I certainly didn't experience the human journey within the bird's journey that the notes indicated. It felt like it was something added on as an afterthought.

Part of judging whether a picture book for children has been successful or not is if the illustrations and the stories work alongside each other. According to the CBCA judging criteria for early childhood books, there needs to be a 'unity of purpose' where the issues in the text and the pictures revolve and resolve together.

Perhaps this is why Circle has been longlisted for the Picture Book of the Year award (which focuses on the illustrations) and the Eve Pownall Book of the Year (which focus on the information/non-fiction elements within the story) and not the Early Childhood Book Award.

+ Winner of the 2017 Australian Indie Book Children's Award.

Swords and Crowns and Rings by Ruth Park

Ruth Park (1917 - 2010) won the 1977 Miles Franklin Award with her penultimate adult novel, Swords and Crowns and Rings.

Until it was republished under the Text Classics umbrella in 2012, I had never even heard of it, let alone read any reviews about it.

I've been wondering how this was possible?

I read and loved some of Park's children's books when I was young - Callie's Castle, Playing Beatie Bow and When the Wind Changed. In 1986/7 I adored the TV series based on her books Harp in the South and Poor Man's Orange and subsequently read both books. But I never knew she had won Australia's primary literary award.

The Miles Franklin Award aims to celebrate a novel each year that 'is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.'

Swords and Rings and Crowns is all of this.

There is nothing experimental or challenging about the format or structure of the book. It is straight forward historical fiction with a coming of age element and some romance. But it is beautifully realised.

Park's writing is evocative and authentic. She brings the hardships and the details of Depression era NSW to life so vividly that you can feel the hunger, the cold and the fear along with her characters. However, the bleakness of the times was compensated for by the warmth and grace of her central characters.

Jackie, the dwarf, his mother, Peggy, and stepfather, Jerry are a loving, strong unit. They tackle life with practical good sense, kindness and a togetherness that is enviable. Jackie's dwarfism was never allowed to be a disability although it obviously played a large role in shaping his character. His parents taught him resilience and that being a good man had nothing to do with size but everything to do with who you are on the inside. Their mission in life was to make Jackie's 'soul grow.'

They gave him books on mythology that featured whole worlds of 'clever and heroic dwarfs'. When he was young, Jackie believed that the nearby hills housed a whole race of people like him because 'the mines in the hills (were where) the dwarfs dig gold and makes swords and crowns and rings.' This sense of mythology and belonging served him well as time went by. It became the solid foundation that was never rocked by the trials of adult life.

Jackie was also blessed throughout his life with the unconditional love of two young women. Cushie, the girl next door and Maida, the cruelly treated step-cousin.

Clearly, Jackie's personal growth and sense of self was heavily informed by Park's own growing interest in Zen Buddhism at this time in her life. He was able to live for the moment and accept 'the fate that seemed to be his.'

Although I studied the events and effects of the Depression at school, it was still shocking to be reminded about the harsh conditions of this time. In the hands of Park, who had an intimate knowledge of the poverty and joblessness during the 30's, the scenes of Jackie and Jerry wandering the countryside looking for work, are heart wrenching in their authenticity. They brought to mind the gritty, dirty realism of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Emile Zola's descriptions of grinding poverty in Germinal.

The Sydney scenes were particularly meaningful to me. Cushie's grandmother lived in Balmain (my home for the past 8 years) 'in a house she would not leave, though the district was running down and becoming industrial.'

Cushie's first experiences of living in Sydney were familiar as she came to terms with the old narrow, winding streets for the first time.

So she began to learn a little of the city that lay, like a lump of irregular, time-worn stone, on the palm of a huge hand that was the blue-fingered Harbour. It was a city she had not even guessed....The warmth and squalor of the unknown town appealed to her strangely; she felt almost happy sometimes.

Sydney can have that affect on you!

The ending was predictable, although Park kept it from us for as long as possible. I would have liked to see Jackie and Cushie together, working to bring her grandmother's behest to help the poor, to fruition.

But I guess that's what imagination is for.

#AusReadingMonth
#AustWomenWriters

The Hate Race: A Memoir by Maxine Beneba Clarke

I've been trying to write my review for The Hate Race over the past few days. The problem has been not what to say, but what not!

The other thing I have found difficult has been taking myself out of this review to make it all about the book and what Clarke has to say rather than being all about me.

After much dithering, I realised that my strong reaction to this book is a big part of its importance.

Clarke has written a powerful, poignant memoir.

The Hate Race is a searing portrayal of growing up black in the suburbs of white Australia in the 1980's.

So many of her childhood stories crashed up against things I had seen and heard and experienced during my own white suburban childhood. My schooling years were ten years before Clarke's. I often felt despair as I read her book, to see that nothing had changed in the Australian schoolyard a decade after mine, let alone what may still be happening forty years later.

I remember the primary school positive affirmation lesson of 'what I like about...' that so many well-meaning teachers inflicted on their classes during those years.

It was an agony of pleasure and pain when it was your turn to be featured, waiting for the slips of paper to come in, wondering who had said what. Trying to take pride in all the "I like Bronwyn because she's quiet' comments but eventually realising that I was surrounded by a class of others who didn't know anything about me at all.

My dad was a bankie - we moved every few years or so. Being super shy and quiet made it hard for me to make friends. It took so long to work out the new rules at each school. I was always worried that I was wrong. Belonging and fitting in and staying out of sight became my survival thing.

Sitting on the sidelines allowed me to watch what the other more popular kids got up to. I saw that belonging to those groups could be just as hard as being on your own or not fitting in. The constant checking and searching for approval and just how quickly it could turn against you. Belonging was hard work for most of them. Their apparent confidence was often only skin deep. To maintain their popular position meant keeping those different others firmly in their place - way down the school yard pecking order.

I was on the low priority teasing list at school. My difference was my newness and my shyness and most of the time I was not worthy of notice. There were others, who were more different, who were much easier targets.

The kids who had disabilities, those who came from poor families or those kids who were non-Anglo were the prime targets in all the playgrounds I've ever been in.

And they had it really tough.

The subtle and not so subtle taunts, the 'funny' comments (come on, can't you take a joke? Don't be so sensitive), the deliberate ostracism and the really cruel joke where they pretended to be your friend for a while so they could find out more stuff about you that they then told everyone at school about to use against you.

There was a rhyme my mother had told me at home which always confused me, about sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Names did hurt though. They hurt deep inside my chest. they hurt inside my head. They hurt inside my heart.

My mother used to tell us the same thing and my internal reaction was exactly the same as Clarke's.

Like Maxine I heard this comment so often, "you're so sensitive...just ignore them."

And like Maxine, "I learned to stay quiet."

Obviously the 'teasing' I was subjected to was much less than what Maxine and her siblings suffered. But I know how awful that little bit of hurt was and how long the effects have lingered for me and my siblings.

Trying to imagine what it would be like to times my experience by 100, by a 1000, just breaks my heart.

I would love for The Hate Race to be put on the school curriculum. But I suspect the people who really need to read this book, those folk who could really benefit from the chance to walk in someone else's shoes for a while, never will.  

It turned out to be an impossible ask for me to stay out of this review.

But, I think, that's where the real power of Maxine's memoir lies.

We're ALL in this story one way or another.
This is our story too.

This is how it happened, or else what's a story for.

We are the bullies and the bullied and we are those who stand on the sidelines staying silent.

I'll finish with Maxine's final, hopeful words -

This book is dedicated to the children of Australia, including mine. May all your classrooms and playgrounds be kept safe.

15/20 Books of Summer (winter)