Fiction
Child's Play by David Malouf & Fly Away Peter by David Malouf
Veronica Brady reviews 'Billy Two-Toes’ Rainbow' by Hugh Atkinson, 'The Same Old Story' by James Legasse, 'Force and Defiance' by Gedaliah Shaiak, and 'Pacific Highway' by Michael Wilding
‘Even when there’s simultaneity,’ as one of Michael Wilding’s characters says, there’s still linearity that needs to be found, and linearity is difficult to find in this group of books. So, it is better, as Wilding’s book also suggests, to let the books perform and then see the pattern they make. Pacific Highway, in fact, is a kind of haiku novel, which coheres into a single expressive emblem, the emblem of the dance its narrator offers us at the end.
... (read more)Children’s Book Week is traditionally a time to take an overall view of the last year’s output of children’s books. Such an overall view is necessarily superficial but it can be interesting to note the appearance of new authors and illustrators, new themes, or different treatment of old themes. This article will look at the picture books and fiction of the last twelve months.
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