Archive for the 'Young Readers' Category

Review: Taj and the great camel trek

Cover of "Taj and the great camel trek"

Book review:

Rosanne Hawke: Taj and the great camel trek.

Published in 2011 by University of Queensland Press.

Two weeks ago I was privileged to attend the Adelaide launch of Rosanne Hawke’s latest novel. I am becoming addicted to launches of her books; this is the fourth one I’ve attended in three years. As anticipated it was a joyous time of celebration because I know how hard she has struggled with this story over the last 4 years.

The main character, twelve year old Taj, lived in Beltana in outback South Australia in the 1870s. His father is a cameleer and Taj has his own camel Mustara, a character in its own right. In fact, Taj and Mustara have featured in another Hawke book, the picture book Mustara.

Cover of "Mustara"

Taj and Mustara are invited to join explorer Ernest Giles on his second expedition  across Australia from Beltana to Port Augusta and then on to Perth in Western Australia. It is not a journey to be undertaken lightly because much of the territory they planned to cover is desert, for most part uninhabited even by local Aboriginal people. The team accompanying Giles struggle with coming to terms with the isolation, their own feelings of fear,  the harsh environmental conditions and the almost total lack of water. At times, they traversed many hundreds of miles without finding a drop of water. The whole journey has them on the very edge of disaster throughout, giving the reader a sense of the extreme hardships they endured.

While this is a novel, written as fiction and from Taj’s point of view, many of the incidents and characters are based on real events and real people taken from Giles’ own journal and the records in newspapers of the day. Taj himself is a fictitious character which points to the real strength of this book. Rosanne revealed at the launch that this book was originally conceived as non-fiction, but early on in her research and early drafts discovered that fiction was a far more powerful vehicle to tell the story. In this way the author has brought history to life for the reader, a delicate balancing act at the best of times. She has handled the transition with great skill. We see and feel the anxiety of the party through the eyes and emotions of Taj.

Highly recommended reading.

Links:

Disclosure: Rosanne was my supervising lecturer when I completed my Master of Arts (Creative Writing) course recently. Apart from being a great friend and an amazing mentor, I gain nothing from promoting her books and the merchandise associated with it. Reviewing her books is just my way of saying ‘thank you, Rosanne.’

Rosanne Hawke and a friend

 

Children’s Book of the Year winners 2010

The Children’s Book Council of Australia has announced the winners of this year’s Book of the Year awards.

For the full list of both the winning books and the honour books click here.

Permit me a few moments of dreaming: I hope one day my name will be listed in these awards.

Okay – dream over – back to editing my novel so that someday I can be in the running.

Good writing.

Journal Writing

Some writers do not understand the power of regularly writing in a personal journal.

Journal writing is an excellent way of honing many writing skills that are essential to the writing process. It doesn’t matter much whether you write fiction, non-fiction, articles or blogs, regular writing practice is essential. If possible, I’d encourage all writers, especially beginner writers, to write every day, even if in the first few months or years journal writing is all you do.

I’ve kept a personal journal since July 1990. That means the 20th anniversary is coming up very soon; I must remember to celebrate it here on this blog. I write about anything that comes to mind about events and people in my life. I filled several hand written volumes at first but in recent years I have tended to use my computer. One day I might get around to printing it all out and binding the pages into booklets.

More recently I have also been keeping a writing journal. In this I have recorded the processes I have gone through in writing my stories, especially my recent novels. The journals include details of my ideas, sources of  inspiration, research findings and the decisions I had to make along the way. In part you can read how I went about ‘Writing a Novel’ here.

When I was a classroom teacher I used Journal Writing as an integral part of encouraging children to write. The skills developed in my programme had some amazing results, not just with writing. I wrote about it in this article: The Power of Journal Writing – a Story of Hope.

This article relates the experience I had with one of my former students. I bring it to your attention now – especially for my many new readers who may have missed it at the time.

Good writing.


Australian Children’s author Ivan Southall

One of the most influential and respected authors in Australia is Ivan Southall. He was a prolific writer whose main works, mostly for children and teenagers, were published in the 1960s and 70s. He had a profound influence upon me as a teacher and writer. I think I’ve read most of his books; it’s about time I revisit the best of them as I haven’t read any of them in many years, despite taking up space on my bookshelves.

I was saddened to hear late last year that Ivan Southall had died, aged 87 after a short battle with cancer. He is best known for his novels Hills End, Ash Road, Josh and To the Wild Sky. He wrote 30 novels and many other books, some for adults. He was a four time winner of the Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award, just four of many awards in his lifetime. His works have been translated into at least 20 languages.

Southall’s writing was exciting and he often put his characters in difficult and dangerous situations, often without adult help. I found his writing to be very lyrical, pushing the boundaries of what many regarded as good literature for children.

Before his writing career began he was a pilot in the RAAF during WW2, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross in the process. His early books draw heavily on his war time experiences.

Vale Ivan Southall, 1921 – 2008.

Book Launch: The Wish Giver

Yesterday I had the wonderful privilege of attending a book launch. Rosanne Hawke, one of my lecturers in my Master of Arts Creative Writing Course, is a writer of children’s books.  This new book is her 15th book to be published, and her third picture book.

The Wish Giver

Written by Rosanne Hawke and her daughter Lenore Penner.

Illustrated by Michelle Mackintosh.

Published by Windy Hollow Books.

The Wish Giver  is a delightful book for young children. The Wish Giver lives on “the biggest and brightest star.” His job is to make children’s wishes come true. Unfortunately he falls off the star and lands in Layla’s garden.

Layla has a problem. She has no friends and no-one will play with her at school. She wished she had some friends to play with. She helps the Wish Giver return to his star, and he in turn helps her to find some new friends to play with.

One of the privileges we had being in Rosanne’s class was getting a view of the printer’s proofs many weeks before publication. The book was launched by well known South Australian author Phil Cummings. One of the interesting aspects of this book was that Rosanne’s daughter Lenore was also credited as the joint author. The original story of the Wish Giver was written by Lenore as a high school assignment. It was this story that initially got Rosanne into writing. It was also very much a family event, with Rosanne’s grandchildren also present.

After leaving the launch my wife told me she had been taking notes on how to run a book launch. Rosanne, when signing our copy of the book, added: “It’ll be your turn next.”

Now it’s up to me to get some of my manuscripts off to publishers.

Good writing.

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