Archive | June 28, 2014

Our Island

Jun28
Our Island

Our Island

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Island

The children of Gununa, Alison Lester and Elizabeth Honey

Penguin 2014

hbk., 32pp., RRP $A24.99

9780670077687

Our island lies beneath a big blue sky,

surrounded by the turquoise sea.

Turtles glide through the clear salt water.

And dugongs graze on the banks of seagrass…

And so begins the text of a most stunning pictorial book about Mornington Island, the largest of the Wellesley group in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the result of a collaboration by the children of Gununa – the main township- and Alison Lester and Elizabeth Honey. Focusing on the stunning wildlife that inhabits both land and sea, the illustrations have been done by the children of Mornington Island State School using wax crayons and food dye wash.  This makes the focal point of the pictures stand out against the background which blurs and blends as dyes do and the landscape does. Beginning with the sunrise and following through the day until the ghost crabs make patterns on the sand, the local dogs sing to the moon and the island finally sleeps, this is a celebration of life in a unique environment where the connection between the land and life is almost indivisible.  Even though the text is kept to a minimum, the choice of words has been carefully selected to match the pictures giving the whole thing a poetic quality that echoes the rhythm of the day, emphasising the gentle passage of time. Overall, a sense of peace and pride just exudes from this book.

The stories of both the island and how this book came about are fascinating in themselves –all royalties and a dollar from each sale are going back to the school to fund community art projects – and provide another layer to what is already an amazing book.

Each of us lives in a unique community, whatever its geographical setting, that has its own special undercurrent of life that goes on and on providing a continuity that might be interrupted by humans but not destroyed.  How fascinating it would be to have students look beneath the surface of their everyday lives to discover what is there, how it is sustained, how it is impacted by us and then use Our Island as a model to share the findings.  Students would have to draw on all their senses and cross all curriculum boundaries to discover and portray the daily, unchanging routines of nature that cycle on through their lives.

A wonderful work that will probably make the reader want to book a trip to an island paradise immediately!   

A peek inside...

A peek inside…

Laika the Astronaut

Jun28
Laika the Astronaut

Laika the Astronaut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laika the Astronaut

Owen Davey

Allen & Unwin, 2014

hbk., 32pp., RRP $A19.99

9781743318935

On November 3, 1957, after the success of Sputnik 1 which put the Russians at the head of the space race and sparked the development of science and technology in a way not previously experienced, Sputnik 2 was launched to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.  Aboard the craft was a stray dog from the streets of Moscow who had been named Laika (meaning Barker in English) whose sole purpose was to test the viability of putting a living creature into space, test its ability to survive weightlessness and thus pave the way for human spaceflight.

“Laika the Astronaut” is a gentle retelling of the start of Laika’s adventure.  From being alone in the streets of Moscow, wishing on the stars for a family to love her, to her rigorous training and testing regime and finally blast off, it introduces the reader to this embedded-in-history creature.  But even though everyone in the world knew Laika’s name as she circled the Earth, she felt more alone than ever.

Official records show that Laika actually died very soon into the flight from heat exhaustion, but Owen Davey has provided a much happier ending – one that he chooses to believe and one that will appeal to the reader and perhaps spark some speculation about her new life might have been like. “This poor little pooch plucked at my heartstrings, and I wanted to explore this idea of a soul living on through your imagination.”

Davey has rejected the claims that the ending is sugar-coated and that is has avoided the issue of death.  He says, “My intention was to put a positive spin on how we remember our loved ones when they’re gone. The main theme of the book is about finding love and finding a family, but the deeper undercurrent revolves around the way we deal with loss.”  You can read more of the background story at http://owendaveydraws.tumblr.com/post/59479947181 and with this knowledge in mind it might also be appropriate to begin introducing students to the notion of authors doing more than just telling a story to entertain, that many of the stories they enjoy have a deeper, more subtle meaning than appears on the surface and both the writer and reader are the richer for exploring it. In this case, the starting point could be questioning why Davey chose to change history in this way.

With its stylised illustrations in very muted colours which reach back to the style of the times, this is a wonderful picture book that could be used to introduce younger children to the history of space flight but which also has a place with older children who might be considering the ethical treatment of animals – scientists involved in the mission have even stated that they don’t think they learned enough from the mission to justify what they did – or even the ramifications of the Mars 1 project http://www.mars-one.com/ which proposes to have humans inhabiting Mars by 2023 and for which 28 Australians are still in the running. Does the means ever justify the ends?

A peek inside...

A peek inside…