Hi Last week I spent the day at Kincumber Holy Cross Primary School, NSW. I had a great time. The students were enthusiastic and asked lots of questions.
One boy came up to me and said, 'I love Dougie.' So Audrey's little brother has his own fans now.
I'm starting to realise how many faces I pull when I'm telling stories!! (All part of the fun.)
Check out the wonderful and brightly coloured display, done by the school librarian, Deb Tildesley.
Students helped out by colouring in the sheets that can be downloaded from Audrey's Fun Page.
Hi everyone, Reviews of the new Audrey book are starting to come in, and I've put two here for you to read.
'I was immediately immersed in Audrey's life in a bush hut in outback South Asutralia in the early part of last century. Audrey personifies every isolated girl who has a rich inner life ... she works with the magical possibilities of the ordinary. Two visitors to the property ... have secrets they entrust to Audrey, which she must conceal from not only her family but Authority at large. Part social history, part backyard adventure, this will be very popular with children and parents ... Christine Harris has created Audrey's world, and in particular her sense of time, in a way which mmakes it very accessible. The pen and ink illustrations by Ann James support and extend the story and the whole is a satisfying package for the reader new to chapter books.' Margaret Robson Kett, Magpies, September 2009
'A ghost in the night, a stranger in the cubby house and an encounter with the law are all in store for Audrey in this latest book in the 'Audrey of the Outback' series ... Audrey knows only too well the importance of family and what it means to be apart from those you love but in order to protect her friend, Audrey will need to keep the truth from her parents. Our heroine is placed in an awkward position ... Audrey is a likeable character who is loyal and caring and it is through her child's eyes that Christine Harris can weave the themes of the love, loss and the Stolen Generation through the story and present them in a way that is ideally suited to readers six - ten years.' Junior Bookseller Publisher, September - October 2009
Hi
'Audrey of the Outback' was shortlisted for Book of the Year: Younger Readers by the Children's Book Council of Australia.
But there was another sort of judging - the Junior Judges Project. I was interested in how the junior judges decided on their awards and whether they enjoyed their task, so I asked Zach, Marin, Bradley, Kieran, James and Jordan from Gymnea Technology High School.
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Here are my questions and their answers:
Tell us about the junior judges’ awards? One day when our group was reading on the back table (like we normally do most lunchtimes), the Librarian, Mrs Larson, asked if we would like to read and judge the six books in the Older Reader category. We agreed and then were told to select one winner and 2 honour awards.
We think the Young Judges Awards was a good way of letting us express our opinions on which book was considered the favourite and a chance to be involved in an educational activity which is fun and enjoyable. It makes you feel like you’re making a difference voting for the book you really like.
How difficult is it to compare several books that are completely different for one award? Different genres are liked by different people so when the books are all different styles and genres it becomes difficult to decide which is best.
We found it depends on what you are judging the books on. We judged them based on how much we enjoyed them, so it wasn’t really too difficult. If we were judging the books on set criteria, and seeing as the books are different genres, we’d imagine it would be quite challenging and change our end result.
On what basis is selection of winners made? (how do you choose?) When it came to voting for the winners we were mostly in agreement on the top three.Half of us chose “Kill the Possum” because we couldn’t put it down and had become attached to the characters.
The other half chose “Finnikin of the Rock” because of pure enjoyment and personal liking of the fantasy genre. “Lamplighter” was always in third place.
We sat around as a group and discussed what each person thought was the best.When somebody didn’t agree on a point it would be argued until a result was settled. We tried using the suggested criteria but it caused more arguments.
We chose the winner and honour books based on how much we enjoyed the book, the style of writing (Like in “A Rose” was going from ‘present to past’ or “White Silence’s” ‘journal to Authors findings’) and genre played a part.
In the end “Finnikin was our winner but when the results came out the next day half of us were very happy to find that “Kill the Possum” was the junior judges’ winner.
What did you learn from being a judge? It opened some of us up to different genres and styles of writing. In one case, it opened him up to reading as a whole!
It let us express our feelings and argue a lot!It gave everyone a chance to be heard, to prove a point and gave us more understanding of how to debate.
How has it changed your own writing? When we were reading the books we were thinking of how enjoyable a read it was rather than reading them as a case study to change the way we write.
Why do you think the young judges awards winners differ from those chosen by adults? Well, we had the three books that weren’t chosen as winner/honour books by the adults as our winner/honour books. The three books we picked were in the top three for the Junior Judging in the Older Readers Category. We believe the cause of this difference is simply what criteria Adults and Children vote off.We had a different perspective.
A comment from Mrs Larson: The boys were very committed to the project and I was amazed at the animated discussions as individuals tried to convince others about the relative merits of one book or another.They were quite surprised by the official results. I would recommend this project to teachers and groups and will definitely be participating with an extended group/s next year.
As a follow up to the project we organised a videoconference with Blakehurst High school students to discuss the project and have a general chat about books, reading and libraries.
I thought some of the other ideas from the 'My Ten Favourite Things about Australia' competition were worth sharing:
The Veronicas are awesome singers, Gold Coast theme parks are so much fun for the whole family to enjoy, with wicked rides to make you scream or be splashed by a bumper water bucket, my house, I love my family that I can learn things from, rainforests with waterfalls, huge sand dunes, delicious food, it’s a free country, we have Aborigines, Aussie rules, damper, Speedo swim suits, Dynamic fertiliser, my bed, kangaroo sausage, Hamilton Island, Uluru, refreshing beaches, I love Australia because we don’t have elephants and so they can’t tread on you, technology, vegetarian bbqs, shorts, nice tourists, great soccer team that’s fair and good sports, TV shows like ‘Australian Idol’, a great spirit, one of the greatest actors Hugh Jackman, Casey Stoner the motorbike rider, Tim Tams, Vegemite, emus, The Great Barrier Reef, cyclones because they’re cool, Tasmanian lakes, black cockatoos, snow, the night sky, Big things like the Big Banana, unique animals like the echidna and platypus, state of origin rugby, cool camping spots, a brilliant netball team, the smell of bbqs, Holden, Ford, the friendly people, free-style swimming.
I’ve always loved books. As a child I escaped into other worlds via the written page and pretended I was a character in the story. I still do this, but now I write down my own versions of what that character does.
My goal is to make people laugh, cry or gasp when they read my stories. Or when they hear me tell stories. After an especially exciting talk in Alice Springs, in Central Australia, a seven year-old rushed up to me and said, ‘Are you going to be a comedian when you grow up?’ Then he put one hand to his mouth and said, ‘Oh, you are grown up, aren’t you?’ Perhaps that is the key to why I write for younger readers. Part of me is their age.
Truly, I wrote my first book up a tree. Okay, I was only nine years old. But it was a really big tree. That book was never published, but it was one of my most exciting. Not only was I up a tree, I was being rescued by a surprisingly hairless Tarzan.
One of my favourite sayings about books is a Chinese proverb, ‘A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.’
Hi
