How to use this Page

This musical, rhythmic dinosaur book is a delight for small children getting ready for bath time.

‘Real’ books to read are sought after by those introducing young children to the exciting and vital world of reading. Many picture books are invaluable in opening children’s minds and imaginations to story but only a small number of these can actually also be read by readers at the earliest stages of reading for themselves […]

Sadie and Ratz
By Sonya Hartnett
Illustrated by Ann James
Candlewick Press
$14.99
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5315-6
Ages 7-10
On shelves now

Children are literal creatures. They have to be. If you tell them something that says one thing and means another they need a certain level of sophistication to be able to parse your speech. And generally speaking the older they are the more likely they may be to interpret you correctly. Does that mean that all children’s literature should be inherently straightforward and matter-of-fact? No! Just because kids can be literal that doesn’t mean a bit of metaphor doesn’t do them any good. Metaphors are fantastic for kids. Aside from juicing up otherwise boring narratives they learn how to read fiction in whole new, enterprising ways. That’s why handing a third or fourth grader Sadie and Ratz isn’t going to throw them too much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s weird, it’s like nothing else on the shelf, and there’s a darkness at work not normally seen in books for this age group. It also happens to be pretty much the best book for kids published in America in the year 2012. Kids will like it and grown-ups will be mildly freaked out. What’s not to love?

Hannah likes lots of things like ponies and stroking her mom’s hair. She also likes her hands which she has named Sadie and Ratz. Unlike Hannah, Sadie and Ratz are wild beasts. They like to scrunch and twist and scratch things. Unfortunately for everyone, what they like to scrunch and twist the most is Baby Boy, Hannah’s naughty little 4-year-old brother. She feels it’s the only way to keep him in line, and so she’s utterly unprepared the day he turns the tables on her. One moment he’s drawing on the wall and the next he’s ratting out Sadie and Ratz for his crime. Suddenly Sadie is reconsidering the wisdom of punishing him every time he fingers her for a new crime (which only gets HER in trouble). Still, when Baby Boy pushes his luck and goes too far, Hannah realizes that she may have more in common with her little brother than she ever expected.

So I’m going to go out on a limb here and compare this to Where the Wild Things Are. I acknowledge that to do so is relatively crazy. I mean, Sendak’s classic is considered the pinnacle of modern children’s literature. To compare any book to it is to do that title a disservice. All that understood, hear me out. I breathe these two books in one breath because at its heart Sadie and Ratz does something I think Mr. Sendak would appreciate. There’s this strange dark undercurrent to your average everyday child. A streak in them that understands jealousy and cruelty and that is simultaneously attracted and repelled by the children in books who exhibit those same qualities. Max in WTWTA embraces his worst aspects at the story’s beginning, is punished, and then builds his own world where he has the power. Hannah is similarly punished when she gives in to her darkest feelings but her fantasy lies not with another world but within her o

Moya Simons,Ann James, Stephen Measday

End of year cheer with Lateral Learning Speaker’s Agency  Christmas Party. HAD A FUN, FUN, FUN night with heaps of authors and illustrators.

Moya has NEW hair & Stephen thinks it’s funny, but Ann James is just amused. 

I love the vivacious author Deb Abela

Illustrator Wayne Harris, with brilliant duo team of author Simon French and Illustrator Donna Rawlings with their baby Quinn hugging Dad

HEAPS of GOOD NEWS with Moya Simon’s wonderful ‘Let Me Whisper You my Story (HarperCollins) to be released June 2010, Deb Abela’s Aurelie … coming out in the USA next year, Stephen Measday with a new fantasy series with publisher Little Hare,Sarah Davis with so many new picture books out next year, that I have lost count - look out for her gorgeous FEARLESS writting by Colin Thompson - the fat, endearing FEARLESS dog finding his courage. Look out for the sequels published by ABC Books (HarperCollins imprint) … and lots more. How much TALENT is in OZ!!!!

Author Chris Cheng, holding Quinn, with BiniAuthors Jeni Mawter , Lisa Forrest, Kate Forsyth

Hazel Edwards is one of Australia’s most loved children’s authors as well as an author of adult fiction and non fiction. She has represented Australian Authors nationally and internationally and I regard her as a close friend.

It was wonderful to see her receive the award among her peers - including  many people in publishing and of course authors and illustrators such Libby Gleeson, Sophie Massion, Jeremy Fisher, Elise Hurst, Rosie Scott, Pamela Freeman and many more …  

Continuing our series of illustrator posts, today we feature Australian Gaye Chapman.

Gaye is a well-respected painter with an international reputation, but beyond her painterly skills, she’s also had what she feels is the ideal life for a children’s book illustrator. Her bush childhood remains an inspiration. Childhood dreams of a life full of travel, art and adventure have been fulfilled. “I have sailed in an Indonesian fishing boat around the Arafura Sea, jumped out of airplanes, designed posters for the National Theatre in London, hitch-hiked through the Sumatra, motor-biked across Java, lived with a hill-tribe in Morocco and been artist-in-residence in a rainforest,” she reports.

“I use any materials at all to make a picture, including real objects like mud, feathers and grass,” Gaye says. “I then cut out my finished paintings and paste them down again in new ways.” Her work has an Asian feel. She collaborates with serious writers getting across important ideas. In her first children’s book, Heart of the Tiger (2004) with Glenda Millard, a tiger sacrifices himself to bring green back to the earth. Breakfast with Buddha (2005), with Vashti Farrer, recounts the saga of a proudly independent cat who learns humility from monks in a temple. Kaito’s Cloth (2007), again with Glenda Millard, is a delicately rendered study of loss.