MARK MACLEOD BLOG ON

A TREASURE CHEST OF RHYMES

2010-12-02T13:25:00.000-08:00

Don't blame me for the title! That was the publisher's idea and they know their market well. Unfortunately it probably obscures the original nature of the poems and songs. I wanted to call it 'The Fish Wall' and that's still how I think of it, but I can see why they didn't love it.

The dynamic Rebecca Hermann and Nerida Fearnley at Bolinda Publishing asked me to do several audio projects for them: a collection of traditional nursery rhymes for younger and older listeners; a collection of traditional rhymes about size, shape, colour and so on; a collection of original mnemonic rhymes designed to help children learn multiplication; and a collection of my own original poems and rhymes that they would set to music.

They wanted to give these collections an Australian edge. That proved to be harder than I'd anticipated with the traditional rhymes, because although there are many examples in the 19th century of Australian parodies and imitations, such as 'Who Killed Cockatoo?' (you might remember this was the first picture book under Margaret Hamilton's own imprint) they are mostly too archaic in language and too 'clever' for young listeners. Changing tastes in poetry account for part of the problem, but many of those parodies were clearly intended for adults.

Hush-a-bye, baby on the treetop
Grasshoppers ate up the whole of our crop
When the drought breaks the rabbits will come
Hush-a-bye, baby, the outlook is glum.

That's the Australian adults' way of lulling themselves out of it. I did include it eventually, but mostly for the adults listening in the background. Similarly one for all the bank-bashers:

Baa, baa, black sheep,
have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bales full.
One for the master, who grows so lean and lank,
None for the mistress,
But two for the bank!

I'm hoping the sexism is as ironic as the rest of the rhyme.
Writing the multiplication rhymes was fun, but a challenge to try and avoid using the same rhyming words over and over.

1 x 3 is 3
I wish that I could ski.
2 x 3 is 6
Get on the T-bar, quick!

Okay, we're already in trouble. To create a narrative that makes sense as well as finding rhymes and keeping the scansion regular enough for the composer is not easy. English isn't a great rhyming language, and I wanted to avoid the whiff of the thesaurus or rhyming dictionary as much as possible. I think I managed it most of the time, but there are one or two moments where I wince a bit. You try it! It's a tough call.

When it came to the collection of original poems and rhymes, it's as if I had been waiting for someone to ask me. I wrote them over the summer, one every day and sometimes two. The romantic 'the story/poem/play/script wrote itself' line that writers love to trot out has done more damage than good for the way readers perceive the business of writing and the way they regard writers and I had hoped I would never say it about my own work. But these poems did come pretty naturally.

What was tricky was working with the team setting them to music. Peter Sullivan of 'IMT' and 'The Footy Show' fame, who with the Peter Sullivan Big Band has worked with so many Australian and international stars, is brilliant - creative, energetic, endlessly patient - and I feel lucky to have had the chance to work with him. But the difference between the needs of the contemporary poet and the composer when it comes to the rhythm of a song is quite marked. I found both the composer and the singer stressing prepositions and definite articles, simply because the underlying metre demanded it, whereas the poet reading them aloud would skate quickly over the top to get to the key words.

Putting this collection together was a great experience. We had a couple of moments where I had deliberately played round with the gendering of the piece. For example, there is a poem that runs through all the outrageous colours that people wear, and ends up asking if anyone cares whether boys wear pink. I based this on a mother I heard saying quite definitely that pink shirts were not for boys. (Still?) When Peter and his team put this to music, they had a woman singing it. That simply didn't work.

Similarly, I was interested to hear some macho teenage boys one day saying that they let their girlfriends put nail polish on one of their toenails. They were almost boasting, but the fact that it was only one toe told another part of the story. This was what I wrote:

I've put polish on one of my toes.
Two people know.
(It's a secret.)
It shines like a jewel
I found in the sand
and Mum says I can keep it.

When I heard the finished recording, this rhyme had been sung by a woman. And when I asked that it be redone by a man, some of the producers were worried that it would sound gay and that that would be a problem for their conservative market. Even though the cost of redoing this song and a few others was significant, and intimidated me into silence at first, I'm glad that I was worried enough to insist in the long run, and I'm grateful that Bolinda supported and trusted me. So what you will hear is a man singing these words. That was really the point.

Bolinda wanted these songs to be Australian and I was really pleased when a short poem came to me about the prime minister. Unfortunately, the first line, 'Mr Prime Minister', went hurtling into history with Kevin Rudd and it was too late to change it. The words still work, but you'll have to imagine them applied to David Cameron - or maybe Tony Abbott.

I loved working on this project and can't wait to do another collection of songs. Some of them are funny, some are thoughtful and even sad. Hope you have fun listening to them! Maybe I'll leave you with one of the quieter ones.

Drink warm milk with honey and nutmeg,
wash off the day in town,
clean your teeth, switch off the light
and turn the music down.

Count the stars on your pyjamas,
remember to cuddle your friends.
Leave your slippers where you'll find them,
when your journey ends.

Flick the lamp on again! Jump up and check,
lock every door in the place.
Make sure there's no one under your bed
and sleep with a smile on your face.

HITLER'S DAUGHTER

2010-07-31T15:43:00.000-07:00

Maybe like me you've caught yourself mid-sentence, or sat back and reviewed some series of events that has turned out badly, and been alarmed to realise that you are morphing into some worst aspect of your mother or your father. I'm more than happy - privileged - to have inherited their best traits, but the older I get, the more I need to remind myself that I can choose to leave their other traits behind. Or can I?

The young characters Anna, Mark and Tracey in Jackie French's novel Hitler's Daughter ask themselves such questions. It's a story that starts and ends with questions: how do we know what constitutes history? What if Hitler had a daughter called Heidi (ironically named after Johanna Spyri's sugary heroine), who was differently abled and therefore had to be hidden? How do we know who is walking among us - what the future is for that person next to us at the bus stop? What shadows from the past gather round that person who eats breakfast with us every morning?

Mark keeps coming back to these questions and their moral implications: how do we recognise the right course of action? Is there one - or many?

Such questions have clearly disturbed and stayed with the Sydney company Monkey Baa, because they have revisited Hitler's Daughter, which they first adapted for the theatre in 2006. French and Monkey Baa is a natural collaboration: the company believes in so much of what this writer stands for. And the show has been brilliantly directed by one of the company's founders, Sandra (Sandie) Eldridge. It's an outstanding production, and I urge you to take any young people you know - your own children, friends, your class or group - to see it. Next stop for Monkey Baa and Hitler's Daughter is the United States, so your support will help them get there, too.

From the thunder in the dark that opens the action to the final questions Anna directs at the audience, Hitler's Daughter is gripping, funny, touching, deeply unsettling. The full house at Sydney's Seymour Centre last night was absolutely spellbound - and that's a major achievement in such a venue.

This isn't just a great night out: the themes Jackie French and Monkey Baa are exploring have never been more important.

Perhaps we've heard Edmund Burke's warning too often: that evil triumphs when good people do nothing. But for a generation - or a community - that adopts being cool as its default position, Hitler's Daughter is a powerful reminder that disengagement can have dreadful consequences.

Take any action you can to get along to the theatre and see it!

ANNE BOWER INGRAM - TOO SOON

2010-03-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

Two friends in one week? And no, I don't want to hear my (or your) grandmother's warning that bad news comes in threes.

Anne Ingram is another great and sad loss to those who love Australian children's books, and although her work has influenced generations of children here and around the world - children who are now parents and grandparents themselves - you won't hear much about her in the media. If some literary editors had to struggle with their superiors to get a picture or even a mention of Patricia Wrightson into their pages a few days ago, they've got practically no chance of a decent obituary for a book editor and publisher, however influential. Those are simply our community's values, folks.

Not that I want to hurry them up, but when one of our high profile cricketers or billionaire gamblers or - let's be generous and choose someone from another field in the arts - one of our Hollywood stars or shock jocks passes on, the headlines will say '___________ DEAD'. And everyone will know who we mean. Fill in the celebrity blank.

But someone whose talent was to understand for well over 40 years what children would enjoy reading and would learn from, someone who could spot from their first rough drafts the writers and illustrators with potential to become famous around the world, and someone who could steer countless collaborations through the production process and help run a publishing business? Unfortunately, their going is unlikely to be headline news, but the loss to the Australian publishing industry and to their family and friends is immense.

Anne Ingram was such a wise and energetic publisher. I'd use the cliche 'doyenne' and use her full name, Anne Bower Ingram, as she did formally, but they'd make her sound distant and posh, and despite the echo of a traditional Good Education in her vowels, she was too cheeky and too much fun for that!

When Brian Wildsmith's publishers took advantage of the new and less expensive four-colour printing technology in the UK 50 years ago and began to produce picture books with the kind of ebullient palette we take for granted today, they changed children's reading experiences forever. And it was Anne who saw the possibilities in this new technology for Australia. In 1974 she was the first to recognise that Australia had outstanding children's books it should sell to the world, so she formed a small delegation to the children's book fair in Bologna - the important annual marketplace where the rights to Australian children's books are now much sought after.

Anne launched and guided the careers of so many Australian writers and illustrators who are loved by readers all over the world: Pamela Allen, Ron Brooks, Bob Graham, Craig Smith, Deborah and Kilmeny Niland, Junko Morimoto, Lilith Norman, Nan Hunt, Rod Clement, Diana Kidd.

Patricia Wrightson changed the way non-Indigenous older readers saw Australia's first nations, but it's not often recognised that a series of startling picture books by Dick Roughsey and Percy Trezise, beginning with The Giant Devil-Dingo in 1973 opened the eyes of early childhood readers and their adult carers to the power of Indigenous storytelling, which had previously been diminished by the dry transcription of colonial anthropologists and dull black-and-white illustrations. Anne published these groundbreaking books, which embodied reconciliation, because they were the work of an Indigenous and non-Indigenous team.

And her collaboration with the Japanese-Australian artist Junko Morimoto was Australian multiculturalism at its best. I love all Junko's books, but My Hiroshima is special. Listen to the stunned and thoughtful silence when you've finished reading that book to children.

It's hard to pick from so many favourites on Anne Ingram's list - I mean, which of Pamela Allen's or Bob Graham's wonderful books are you going to mention? Anne and I often laughed about Belinda, and of course Crusher is Coming. But I think I'll mention a Bob Graham book that's often overlooked: The Wild. Just in that title alone, he knows how children hook onto the mysterious sound of an archaic adult phrase ('the olden days' is another one) and off go their imaginations. Then there's Whistle up the Chimney by Nan Hunt and Craig Smith. Rod Clement's brilliant Counting on Frank. Lilith Norman's haunting classic A Dream of Seas. The list goes on.

An academic friend of mine said to me yesterday how sad it was that her education students knew so few books from the rich tradition of Australian stories. Keating was right in his Creative Nation speech in 1994. The new technologies, however mindblowing, have resulted in a new wave of cultural imperialism on an unprecedented scale. And one of the casualties has been our own Australian story tradition. These books are where we've come from. What we are is where we've been. But in our rush to be edgy, we're losing our grip on that identity. Thank goodness Sarah Foster, the publisher at Walker Books Australia, has been smart enough and passionate enough to bring back into print Australian classics that other publishers have let go. Get behind her, folks! It's a risk - and she needs people to buy them before the accountants tell her that not enough people are interested.

I hope someone writes a serious account of the huge contribution Anne Ingram has made to the lives of Australian children. I can only give you a few tumbling words in honour of a friend. In constant pain from a disability, Anne never let her body stop her mind from leaping ahead. As a writer, when her marriage broke up, she and her friend Peggy O'Donnell decided that they would write a book about finance for women. At the time, practical support for divorced women wasn't easy to get and although, among her many skills, Peggy had been a bookkeeper, Anne said the idea of financial management and investment didn't come naturally to them. 'We simply went to bank managers and advisers, asked question after question, and we didn't move until they'd given us the answers we needed.' And out of that need they went on to publish several bestselling books for adults and children on managing your money.

Other books of practical advice, or histories, anthologies, picture book texts, written in collaboration with Peggy or alone are in libraries and bookshops everywhere. But the sense of adventure and fun these friends shared extended far beyond writing and publishing into every area of their lives. They loved art, the theatre, boating, gardening, riotous colour in everything, but always with impeccable taste. Well - 'always'. They did have a child's delight in nicknacks and on a whim might buy a set of kitchen cutlery with pictures embedded in the handles, or placemats shaped like tropical fish or a rainbow coloured eraser to stick in a friend's pocket after a visit as they closed the door. So good taste did sometimes give way to fun.

They were intrepid travellers and went everywhere - always grateful for the way their families helped in many practical ways to make it easy. I hope Anne has written some of her stories down. My favourite was always about the cruise to Alaska, where they were to get off the ship and kayak up the sound, taking in the forests, the glaciers, the deep dark water at close range. The crew looked at these two older women and in a kind, if patronising, voice warned them that the paddle would be a challenge and that if it got too much for them, they only had to yell for assistance.

The following day, as the passengers prepared to disembark and kayak up another waterway, the cruise director asked Anne and Peggy to lead the expedition - they had handled the first day's exploring so brilliantly. You could feel the exhilaration in the room whenever they told stories like this.

Going to Peggy's funeral last year was very difficult for me, although imagining her hang-gliding at Stanwell Tops in her 70s did help. And Anne somehow gave a really wonderful farewell speech. But she looked so small up there behind the lectern. She had begun to think about new books and new adventures, but I can't help feeling that for once she had encountered a challenge that was going to be tough to beat: the absence of a friend who was such a source of inspiration, physical support, plain commonsense and fun.

Not to hear those voices jumping down the phone again, saying, 'Mark, when are we going to see you? How about lunch next Thursday, or breakfast if you've got meetings?' Not to have Anne draw me aside to the lounge and pore over the proofs of a new book, and ask for the latest publishing gossip, while Peggy did the cooking. Not to be welcomed at the front door by Peggy with an arm hooked through mine and always the considerate words, 'How much time have we got?' How much?

That's the hardest part of all.

CONSPIRACY 365

2010-03-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

By the time I was in high school, my parents had given up on their conviction that watching television would send us blind and fry our brains, kind of like masturbating for an earlier generation, and each week I couldn't wait for the next episode in David Janssen's classic series 'The Fugitive'.

The idea that a respected doctor could suddenly lose his reputation, let alone his marriage and his life, all because he was wrongly suspected of being his wife's killer, suited my teen sense of injustice perfectly. If only Dr Kimble could track down that one-armed man who was the real killer, he could prove his innocence. So each week as he chased the guy across the United States, the cops chased him. And one of the reasons I was allowed to delay doing my homework to watch 'The Fugitive' was that my dad was completely hooked, too. Apparently at his age you no longer had to worry about your eyesight or your brain.

As I read the first page of Gabrielle Lord's fantastic new series Conspiracy 365, I wondered immediately whether she'd been hooked on 'The Fugitive' as well - although, given our respective ages, she'd probably have had to peer over the edge of the bassinet to catch it. 'My name is Callum Ormond. I am fifteen and I am a hunted fugitive...'

This series is a really bold undertaking for Scholastic Australia, because the success of a series is in the long run about the size of your marketing budget. And they've obviously invested heavily. There's a great website, with teasers, there are competitions with 365 prizes and a guest book with postings that show how enthusiastically teens are responding to it. Here's the concept: one story, 12 books in 12 months - 365 days - one a month. That's a big idea for the Australian market and lots of marketing. Think about it: since the world's most successful consumer products, such as Coke, still cost their producers squillions in advertising, we must be a fickle lot and overloaded with choices if we need to be reminded constantly to buy a few of our supposedly favourite things.

So here's a publisher trying to sell a book a month for a whole year to teens, who are already bombarded with competing entertainments. It's the kind of bold idea that takes imagination and guts. Yes, the publisher, Andrew Berkhut, is a friend of mine - but I've got no reason to suck up to him. I don't need a job and I'm not looking for an opportunity to tell him about a manuscript of mine that's waiting under my chair for a break in the conversation.

In the Quaker tradition, there are no big conventional funerals, but when you've gone, there's a quiet hour when someone stands up and gives a testament to your life - with the inspiring, and funny and sad little anecdotes that make you feel the dead friend is still in the room. And every time after one of these testaments is over, someone says to me, 'I didn't know that about her!'

Well, I'm getting in early. I don't care if this little accolade seems improper: while they're alive we should tell our friends when they've done the right thing. (We have no trouble telling them when they don't!) Conspiracy 365 is Andrew Berkhut's inspired idea, and how smart he was to entice Gabrielle Lord to write it.

It's a massive risk for her, too. How do you invent enough plot to keep teens with you every month for a year? In the first book, January, a man in a dressing gown is being pursued by paramedics and just as they catch him and inject him into silence, he tells Callum that his life is in danger. Callum's father didn't die from some freak illness; he was murdered, because he had discovered a powerful secret buried in his family history and known as the Ormond Singularity. The thugs who murdered him know that he passed information on to Callum before he died, so now this fifteen-year-old is in their sights too. He has to go into hiding for exactly a year - or die.

Gabrielle Lord really packs on the pace in this story. I love the way she uses enough familiar names and details to make you think you know which city the series is set in, but you can never quite pin it down. One minute it feels like Sydney, then Melbourne, Brisbane - it's totally disorienting. And Callum is pursued not only through the urban space - cyberspace figures bigtime. I'm up to the end of April and he's narrowly escaped death on the underground train tracks - Sydney readers will relate to that! - been rammed by thugs in a pursuit vehicle at 200 kays and he's woken up in a white room, in a straitjacket and there's an unfamiliar name on the chart at the foot of the bed. His identity has been stolen.

Lord doesn't preach, but the string of ethical and moral choices Callum has to make on the run - involving life-and-death consequences for his little sister - will engage readers from sub-teens to adults. And here's the bit parents and teachers will want to know: many crime thrillers for young readers are simply not credible, because there are underworld places that young characters have no access to, and because the graphic violence and obscene language of the genre frighten the writers into self-censorship. Gabrielle Lord and her editors succeed brilliantly in making the whole world Callum finds himself in feel thoroughly dirty, without indulging in the kind of storytelling that would keep these books out of the school library.

I think about twice so far I've winced a bit skeptically at a turn in the plot, but the pace doesn't let you dwell on such moments for long - and anyway, it's a story, okay? There's certainly enough of everyday life to keep you going. I remember feeling relieved when I was a bit older than Callum and someone first said to me, 'Just because you think they're getting at you, doesn't mean that they're not!'

Conspiracy 365 will reassure teens who need to hear that line just as I did. Watch this series go! Right around the world and into the publishing record books. I can't wait for the rest of it, but I'm not sure that I want to know how the story ends.

WRONG WAY

2010-03-25T07:54:00.000-07:00

I hadn't met Judith Rossell when she agreed to do the pictures for my new book, Wrong Way, but as soon as I saw the way she had brought to life the independent little duck at the centre of the story, it was as if we'd been best friends for years. When he's up on his mother's back, lording it over Right Way and Your Way (who always do whatever she says) and doing the exact opposite of what is expected, I can see at once that Jude understands him - and humans like him - perfectly! I feel so lucky and honoured to have her pictures along with my words.

The origins of a story are quite scattered and complex. The title goes back to my delight the first time I saw one of those freeway signs when I was growing up: 'GO BACK: YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY'. Drivers going in the right direction couldn't read these words unless they were well past them and looked back. So I loved the idea that someone had imagined what it would feel like to be a driver and suddenly realise they had gone down the wrong ramp. And the traffic authority had produced a sign that would hardly ever be of any practical use. The idea made me smile. Little did I know that the first time I drove on the 'wrong' side of the road in the United States I would take the wrong ramp on one of those complicated flyovers and the panic would wipe the smile off my face quick smart, and show me just how practical those Australian signs were!

Then years later I was with my three-year-old daughter on a walk to see the summer palace in Denmark. The sky was cloudless and sunny, but the cold was searing and I hadn't taken gloves. (To an Australian unused to punishing winters, gloves seemed a bit of a wussy affectation.) So when the long walk proved beyond my daughter's little legs and she said they were bored and that she wanted to be carried, I had no choice but to take my hands out of the depths of my pockets and carry her. When we got back home, I had no feeling in my hands at all. Hot water, armpits, radiators - nothing would bring them back to life. And when they did revive in their own good time, the ache was unforgettable. 'But didn't you know that a clear sky means the day was going to be colder than ever?' My host couldn't believe that anyone could have been so stupid.

The third memory I have is of the old man who lived beyond our back fence when I was quite young myself. He sat at the table in big baggy khaki shorts and a navy blue singlet. He always ate his dessert first and after that he had the meat and vegetables. He liked dessert the best, he said, so why should he leave it till last? We ate our dinner in the conventional order at our house, but I remember thinking how exciting it was to find a man of his age being so deliberately 'naughty'.

So all these images were playing round in my head when I was thinking about my years as both a teacher and as the parent of young children. The students I tended to remember were the difficult ones who challenged me: the kids for whom school was rarely a good fit and who consequently did things their own way. And when I came to tell stories about my children growing up, they weren't stories about the countless wonderful times when they were delightful company. The stories were about the times when there were things I felt had to be done, but they had other plans. Mem Fox says that 'trouble' is the energy source for all stories really. And she's right - happy, comfortable times are wonderful to luxuriate in, but there's a sameness and an ease about them that makes them quite boring to write about.

So we tell stories about the difficult times, the unexpected situations, the characters who are rebels. They challenge the ways we see the world, and since we're mostly social beings, we try to see whether we can reconcile their ways with our own, so that we can live together. Of course, foolishly, we often try to change them and punish them for not fitting in. But as any parent or teacher knows, in the long run that strategy's bound to fail. We learn and learn to change at our own pace. And that's what Wrong Way is about.

Some adult readers won't like the allegorical names. Well, that's okay. I know families who give each other nicknames like these, and in any case, by introducing them on the first page, the story is offering chidren a playful code. It's just a game, with a few winks and nods, but I hope just enough truth to life to make it worthwhile.

My wonderful editor Ali Lavau/ Frances Watts, who is such a talented writer for young readers herself, wisely suggested I get rid of the original opening line: 'Everyone knows that a mother's life isn't easy.' (But that is partly what the book's about. No doubt it didn't need to be said.) And she suggested I include more refrains, since they would make the story more fun when it was read aloud. My publisher felt there were too many words on one spread and wanted me to drop the lines where Wrong Way scoffs down the fat snail he's been hoarding, and does a short bum dance for the benefit of the other ducklings beneath him. But I loved that scene and said I would really like it to stay. I don't think I've done much triumphal dancing myself in situations like that, but I know siblings will recognise it and I've certainly been on the receiving end of it - unless my telling this story about being an uncooperative author is a little bum dance of my own. Maybe it is.

FAREWELL, PATRICIA WRIGHTSON

2010-03-24T23:20:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe the news of Patricia Wrightson's death. No doubt like all her friends, I thought she would live forever - with that sharp, searching intelligence, that gravelly voiced, old fashioned correctness of delivery, that passion for justice, that kindness and modesty.

Few Australian writers for young people have equalled and none have surpassed her achievements. Today, writers for young people sometimes begin their publishing careers when they are barely out of school themselves - and that's great. It might not earn you much money, but being a fulltime writer for children is no longer regarded as a virtual impossibility in Australia. This week, in fact, books by Australian children's writers and illustrators are being sought by publishers from all over the world at the annual children's book fair in Bologna, because they are energetic and varied, they tell compelling stories and they are brilliantly written.

Patricia Wrightson set out to provide something different from the mainly British books that were available to Australian children after World War 2. But it was such a risk at the time. The idea of children in Sweden, Slovenia, Korea, Brazil - not to mention those behemoths, the US and the UK - reading stories about young Australians was almost unheard of.

Both the United Nations and Australia's Children's Book Council were set up in 1945, the year the war ended, with an ideal (no doubt too simple, like all ideals) of creating a different future for humanity. If the Children's Book Council had an edge over the UN, it was in the hope that if you changed children's books, you could change children's minds; change children's minds and the adults they would become, and you might change the world - and never see the unspeakable horrors of world war again.

Like the Jindyworobak poets before her, Wrightson thought that it might be possible to reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures and create a new kind of pan-Australian narrative, in which the human characters from both cultures were strongly aware of and influenced by the metaphysical world that Indigenous Australians had known for 60 000 years. It was a project in total alignment with the slogan for the first children's book week in 1946: 'United Through Books'. She was creating a new Australia of the imagination.

Her first novel, The Crooked Snake, was awarded Book of the Year in 1956 by the Children's Book Council. Wrightson was 35. Today that might be regarded as a late start for a writer, but even in this first book her writing shows the advantages of having waited: there's a maturity in her understanding of family life, children's relationships with one another and the natural environment. She went on to win Book of the Year a further three times and to win many other awards, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the most prestigious international award for children's literature. No other Australian writer has won it.

Although from that first book you can see Wrightson developing her career-long passion for the integration of Australian mythologies, it is in The Nargun and the Stars (Book of the Year 1974) and The Ice is Coming (Book of the Year 1978) that it is achieved with greatest success. Of course by this time Indigenous Australians were at last becoming a political force and their own voices in the arts were so strong and unique that Wrightson's project began to appear inappropriate. As women and gay and lesbian people in the 70s insisted on the right to speak for themselves, Indigenous Australians needed no one to speak for them. So the idea of a non-Indigenous woman writing about Indigenous subject matter to some readers began to feel like cultural appropriation, imperialist exploitation all over again.

Twenty-five years later, Clare Bradford would give a scathing account of Wrightson as not just politically incorrect but racist: a judgement that gave no concession to the writer's stated intentions or historical context. By then Wrightson herself had realised that her project should now be laid aside: there was no longer a need to remind non-Indigenous Australians about the richness of the land's first cultures, which so many of them had destroyed. Indigenous writers and artists had made her ideals irrelevant.

She continued to publish beautiful, poetic books such as Shadows of Time, which is a kind of coda to her major work, and to write short chapter books for much younger readers that returned to the politically safer ground of earlier novels such as I Own the Racecourse. Although her reputation intimidated reviewers and interviewers, Patricia Wrightson was a private and unassuming woman, who always spoke of her career as an apprenticeship. She answered the endless questions about her work thoughtfully, as if she were being asked for the first time, with the true humility of one who is always learning.

And now, she rides the wind of memory and enters the realm of pure story, like those wonderful, unforgettable spirits - those shadows of time - above the land she loved so much. Loved companion of so many readers, she has given us books for the journey together, some of them now out of print in hard copy and available only in the digital environment that was strange to her but not to her young readers. At the end of The Nargun and the Stars, the great spirit that moves across the landscape comes to rest, apparently defeated and silenced by the human forces of 'development'. But in the concluding line it utters the name of the young protagonist, and Patricia Wrightson says 'the name was only a whisper in the dark'. The old spirit lies there waiting - like the storyteller; like her book.

It's such a privilege to have had Patricia Wrightson's stories on our journey - even moreso for some of us, this wise and strong and gentle woman herself - and to be able to whisper along with her readers across the world, 'Dear friend, fare well.'

BEAR AND CHOOK BY THE SEA AT LAST

2009-08-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

In Wake in Fright, one of the images that promise freedom to the teacher who feels he is stranded so far away from everything he understands is that of the tumbling surf off Sydney's coast. And many Australians take coastal living so much for granted that they forget there are kids who have never swum at the beach and that pre-schoolers in remote areas might ask their teachers to bring them back a wave in a bottle as a souvenir of their Christmas holidays.

So Bear and Chook by the Sea arrives in the mail like a refreshing whump of a wave and will delight young and old readers alike with both anticipation and memories.

I was lucky enough to be one of Lisa Shanahan's publishers and she sent me the manuscript Bear and Chook a long time ago. It's a Laurel-and-Hardy story about a bear who is a big galumphing romantic - into everything, no boundaries - and a thin-beaked sidekick chook, who is more cautious and has to pick up the pieces, when reality brings the bear's adventures to a sudden halt every time.

I had started to work with wonderful Emma Quay and knew straightaway that she was the right illustrator. Fortunately, she did too and Bear and Chook was a huge success. Instant classic. Then Lisa sent me a second adventure for the pair. Meanwhile, both her career and Emma's had really taken off. Emma was doing books she had written herself and was working with Andrew Daddo; Lisa was working on picture books with Wayne Harris and on her fiction. But they had become close friends and of course wanted to repeat the happy experience of working together.

I left Hodder Headline to work for the ABC and to freelance - and six years later here is the book we all started out on, which they've done with the guidance of one of Australia's best publishers, Helen Chamberlin. Making picture books takes time and patience! And Lisa and Emma have done a terrific job.

Over that time they have both changed. The words and the pictures are more richly textured and I love the irony that this time Bear is not quite as resilient and wants to go home when he gets dumped in the surf.

Young readers will love to read aloud all the sounds the two friends make as they hike to the beach and back. And there are some lovely visual jokes in Emma's pictures - especially in the exhilarating scenes where we find out exactly what Bear has been carting around in his beach bag.

Like Emma, my father was born in England and although he loved Australia, in later life he suffered the ravages of the hot sun on his pale northern skin. So when I saw that at the beach Chook wears on his head a white handkerchief, knotted at each corner I laughed at the image. My father wore one every weekend as he poured concrete and dug the garden. What did thousands of workers like him think that it did for them? Bear's big straw sunhat might not be as macho, but there's nothing macho about skin cancer. Images like this in Emma's illustrations make me smile at our frailty.

I love this book!

Opening Bear and Chook by the Sea is like that first deep breath of salty air as you finally plonk your things down on the sand in summer, and it will be a hugely popular book this Christmas, so don't miss out.

Once more in the conclusion there's the hint of a further adventure. Emma likes to strike out in new directions with every book, though, so I'm not sure that she would want to go back to the same illustration style yet again. And it's always smart to exit on top and leave the audience wanting more.

But you never know...

WHO ARE YOU, NANNY PIGGINS?

2009-08-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

I have no connection with this book and haven't even discussed it with my friend who published it, Linsay Knight at Random House. So this is simply a fan letter. RA Spratt's Nanny Piggins is one of the funniest novels I have read for a long time.
I was doing some work for Scholastic Australia's Core Library project, where we choose forty books, for in this case middle primary readers, and provide suggestions that will help both teachers and students extend their appreciation.
And we were all surprised to find how much there was in this new Australian title.
Mr Green isn't like Mr Sheffield! He doesn't particularly care about his children and he goes for Nanny Piggins because she is cheap, available and he doesn't have to advertise. Only slight problem is that she is literally a pig.
Where the literary stereotype is about running away from home to join the circus, Nanny Piggins has run away from the circus and finds herself employed by the Greens.
That turns out to be great as far as the kids are concerned, because she recommends the eating of chocolate at every possible opportunity and couldn't care less about homework.
The opening page is a very funny parody of the opening page of Seven Little Australians, where the author tells us that we need to abandon all our preconceptions about what we might be going to read, because Australian books always break the rules.
The great thing about children's specialist booksellers is that they actually read the books they sell. They see it as part of their job. (This applies to independent sellers of adult books too!) So when I dropped in to the always busy Lindfield Bookshop across the road from Scholastic and asked them about this book, they said it had divided the market. I can always depend on them to know their customers and their stock.
Some readers thought it was terrific; others thought it was meaningless fluff. When adults tell me that a book for young readers is silly, it is usually a good sign that the writing is on target. Comedy generally does divide the audience.
I'm intrigued by the names: RA Spratt is the author; Gypsy Taylor is the illustrator. Their websites tell me they are real and well known (I need to get out more!), but they would probably enjoy the fact that the layers of joking in this book made all of us suspicious.
Anyway, give Nanny Piggins to any readers over 8. Teens will enjoy subtleties in the text that won't bother their younger brothers and sisters. I've given a copy to my 95-year-old mum and she is loving it. Give it a go yourself. I can't wait for Nanny's next adventures - but I hope there won't be too many books in the series. Even Fran Drescher didn't know when we'd had enough of a good thing.

ABC BOOK OF CHRISTMAS

2009-08-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

When Megan Drinan at ABC Books asked me if I would like to write the text for The ABC Book of Christmas, I knew it was a risk, because on traditional stories every reader has an opinion - let alone a traditional story from the Bible. If I got it wrong, people would denounce me for messing around with the source of their beliefs. Dangerous stuff! But I wanted to have a go.
I was also a bit afraid of being typecast. However unconventional, my previous book, God Is was obviously about God and the one before that, Tomorrow, although not religious was about our journey through life.
My fears seemed justified when the first bookseller I told said, 'And what's the book after that?' and the next one said, 'Is the next book going to be different?' Ah well, several books following had nothing to do with religion, so maybe the typecasting would be temporary.
I knew the story of the birth of Jesus, but I reread five or six versions of Matthew and Luke and then tried to forget them. I wanted to be able to retell the story in language that young listeners as well as readers would understand.
First problem, what to do with King Herod. Retellings for children often leave him out. I started that way, because the star of this anthology was going to be the collection of illustrations and I didn't have much room on the page to play with. But the travelling to Egypt and back didn't make sense without him. So he was in, but I tried to tone down his murderous response and relate it to the jealousy that even the smallest toddlers would recognise. They can hear about the true horror of his actions from someone else when they are ready.
Second, that word 'manger'. I argued that if we restored the sense of a feed box, or hay cradle to the story, then we would be renewing the symbolic ordinariness that is an important part of the meaning. Although the sense of Jesus feeding his people has indicated for some people the violence of Judaeo-Christian cultures, to me the simplicity of the great leader being a baby and eventually an executed victim, and in between a source of spiritual nourishment or nurture for his people, is powerful.
So 'feed box' it was, and to me the slight roughness was not disrespectful at all. However at the last minute someone got cold feet, it was changed back to 'manger' and by the time I was told it was too late to argue. Not that as the writer I had any power to influence the outcome anyway!
And there were 14 illustrators to think of too. If the publishers were right and 'feed box' would discourage many book buyers, then everyone's income would be affected. I know some readers have a romantic view of the book as art, but the book as rent-payer needs to be taken into account too, and those who refuse to do so perhaps have no such concern in their own lives.
I feel a bit disappointed that Christmas buyers apparently weren't ready for this tiny bit of realism, but The ABC Book of Christmas is still an absolutely beautiful book and I feel privileged to have been asked to write some words for the illustrators to work with.
Look out for it in September.
The illustrators are Gaye Chapman, Bettina Guthridge, Wayne Harris, Sally Heinrich, Ann James, Stephen Michael King, Caroline Magerl, Beth Norling, Cheryl Orsini, Sally Rippin, Greg Rogers, Judith Rossell, and Anna Walker. I wouldn't tell you my favourite, even if I could, but there are some wonderful surprises in there!

GOD IS

2009-08-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

How's this for friendship? I was chatting with my wonderful friend the writer Christine Harris and said my new book probably wouldn't be reviewed by the metro media because of the title, God Is. And her immediate response was, 'I'll interview you for my blog.' Although to the kids she's a celebrity, like so many other writers for children in Australia, Christine could always do with some publicity herself, but her first thought was to be generous.

Check out her website and her new books about Audrey of the Outback. They're terrific! And this is how the interview went:

CH Mark, you’ve had many roles in children’s publishing. You have been editor, publisher, reviewer and now writer. How do you switch from one to the other and what are the differences?

MM Because from the age of ten I was writing for and editing whatever paper or magazine was being published for my fellow students, I think it was a conversation I was having with myself - and I'm still having it. My goal has always been to listen to the unique voice of the writer, hear it at its best, and then take that as the standard. I'm not interested in imposing my voice on another writer.
One of the two writers I will never work with again said to me, 'You editors just can't wait to get your grubby little hands on what I write.' Well - yes, I can. I've never felt that I was a frustrated writer. If I want or need to write, I do.
Editing is an opportunity to use whatever information I have gathered over the years to help another writer. It is also a bit of a game. Unlike many literary friends, I hate crosswords and jigsaw puzzles because the outcome is so anticlimactic. I know, I know - it's about the process! But editing is about the process, and it also produces a fantastic result if you both play the game effectively.
Editing teaches me new tricks, too, so the teaching and learning process is mutual.
And to be honest, when I was a young father of three with a mortgage, it paid more than writing. Later I discovered that for some people writing paid way more than editing ever would, but I knew the limits of my talent.
To be a good writer, you have to take risks and run with the unconscious. Editing is far more conservative and conscious, but it has made my writing sharper. While I was publishing inhouse, I kept most of my writing to myself. But intimations of mortality have made me less cautious. And I don't care as much as I used to whether people like me and what I do. So I've come back to putting what I write Out There. I still have to edit to keep the electricity flowing, though.
All aspects of producing and consuming books - writing, editing, publishing, selling, reviewing, choosing, buying and more - can be creative if you're willing.

CH Was writing your picture books easier because you know the industry, or more daunting – why?

MM I started out as a poet and I think writing a picture book text is the most like writing a poem. It has to start with a compelling idea or image, and if you're going to maximise the energy in the finished text, you can't waste words. Of course, when this turned out to be my main interest, I thought I'd lost it. What a time to get into picture books! Every publisher has found them tough going. But the opportunity to reach younger imaginations, and to combine my love of the visual arts with words was irresistible. And in any case, you can't determine whatever talent life has given you. Well - I suppose you could ignore or repress it, but the world has more than enough bitterness and guilt. Who wants to add to it!
Being a part-time bookseller for many years was more daunting than either reviewing or lecturing. As I shelved the stock, I would read the back cover blurbs and become increasingly depressed. Brilliant, innovative, heartwarming, uncompromising, bestselling, will change the course of the twenty-first century. An hour of reading such accolades was enough to persuade me that no one would ever attach these words to anything I wrote and that I should give up immediately. I just had to remind myself that one of my first paid jobs in publishing was to write those blurbs, and that Angus & Robertson gave me ten dollars for each one.
Unfortunately, although as a publisher I have tried to be generous and constructive, and I have always been aware of how little I actually know, I also know that as a writer a few people will be waiting for me to fail. But that's their problem. I expect to have to earn any success that might eventually come my way.

CH Tell us about the place you wrote GOD IS. Was it significant to the story?

MM I was chatting to one of my adult children and mentioned God. It was so natural and I thought of no consequence that I don't even remember the context. Then she said, 'Oh, Dad, I don't know if I believe in God anymore.' I know perfectly well that people can lead happy and fulfilling lives without belief in God. But her response shocked me. Not because she didn't have the right to take a different path from the one I was on, but because we've always been close and I felt bad that I hadn't noticed this change. I wrote God Is not long after that.
A writer friend who is an atheist said to me once in one of those mellow after-midnight conversations, 'It must be good believing in a god, because it would answer so many questions.' That's a common misconception. I think belief starts more questions than it resolves. Take that old phrase 'the problem of evil'. Why is it a problem? Why would 'When Bad things Happen to Good People' be a catchy title? Such questions start from a belief in goodness or God, and - believe me - they don't come to an end.
I know there's a lot of romantic mystification about the writing process and I have always hated writers saying 'it wrote itself', but the truth is that the text for God Is came easily, in one go. I had to add a whole scene when it was pointed out to me that I had miscalculated the number of pages. Ironic, when knowing such properties of the picture book has been my profession for many years. But writing that scene came easily too. In a way I feel bad that I can't say I sweated over it.

CH What are the differences between the reactions of adults and children to the text?

MM Children love Kirrily's pictures as much as I do. And I notice that reading the book aloud has a calming effect on them. (I don't think it's sleep!) They like the humour in her work, and you can still convey to Australians some pretty serious ideas by using humour - even though I suspect that we've lost a lot of our traditional ability to laugh at ourselves.
The first time I read God Is to adults I was nervous, because I was worried that the deliberate repetitions would bore them, but they clapped at the end of the reading. The poet Mark O'Connor once wrote a nifty poem exploring the use of intonation in English. It starts with the line 'What is this thing called love?' and simply repeats it five times, each time emphasising a different word in the line. It's clever and funny. And it showed me very early on that in English you can use your voice to achieve subtle variations of meaning in even the most obviously repetitive structure.
So the fact that every scene in my text starts out 'God is' and ends with 'And more' was a challenge. Somehow, it can work.
Adults ask what age the book is meant for. They think the pictures signal very young readers, but that some of the images in the text indicate older. No one is fooled by the apparent simplicity of Leunig's work into thinking that it is not for adults, and Kirrily's work reminds me of Leunig and also of The Little Prince.
Unlike reading in a classroom, when you read at home, you have children of different ages listening and looking on. So to me the wide age range is useful. Children of primary school age are the main audience I had in mind for God Is, but older readers and adults seem to like it too. Pre-schoolers enjoy the pictures, but parents tell me you have to talk around the ideas in the text, rather than expect them to understand the words fully. And that's fine by me.

CH The minimal, yet emotive artwork allows the words to resonate. How closely did you work with the illustrator, Kirrily Schell?

MM Kirrily and I haven't met yet - but I can't wait. She lives in Melbourne and I don't get down there as often as I used to or would like. A publisher is like a marriage broker - or a couples counsellor - and sometimes you work with the partners separately. That's how it was with God Is.
Writers who are new to picture books are often quite difficult, because they are not used to teamwork. If you want total artistic control in a project, the picture book is not for you. Luckily I learnt teamwork in television and in teaching. I'm glad that my publisher Belinda Bolliger did not get Kirrily and me together, because it meant that Kirrily could make the story her own. I had the opportunity to give feedback early on, and I suggested that because her characters were wonderful, she should celebrate them and not feel obliged to include much background storytelling. But my experience as a publisher has made me wary of becoming too involved in the illustration part of the process, so I've been happy to stand back. And I love the result.

CH The story includes moments of wonder, the spaces between people and nature, where marvellous things are experienced. Tell us about your moments of wonder.

MM A couple of publishing friends immediately liked the scene about friends needing no words to tell the story of a perfect afternoon, and that is one of my repeated moments in life. I love communication by silence. It is a Taoist ideal and as a Quaker I place a high value on silence too. Sitting with a friend by a river or looking out onto the ocean, or enjoying the wind and clouds - some of my best times have been spent that way. That's especially true when at other times the friend is an enthusiastic talker, as I am myself. I appreciate the irony.
Children approach the world with wonder, and I think childhood probably stops when we lose that sense. That's why although God Is looks like a children's book, I hope it can reach people of all ages. Some of my oldest friends have never grown up, and they'll have me to deal with if they ever try to!