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Gregory Rogers

Alive in the Death Zone by Lincoln Hall & 30 Australian Sports Legends by Loretta Barnard and illustrated by Gregory Rogers

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March 2009, no. 309

As I sat down to write this review, two news stories jostled for prominence on the ABC’s website. One was the unfolding story of two brothers who were trapped on Mt Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain. Only one brother would come back (the other fell 500 metres to his death). Lincoln Hall would understand what the brothers went through. Hall is an Australian mountaineer who was, famously or infamously, left for dead at 8700 metres on Mt Everest. Having made the summit, Hall was heading back down with sherpas when he was struck down by an oedema, a brain malfunction caused by oxygen deprivation. His body gave out. Without a pulse or any sign of life, Hall was abandoned on a rocky ledge. (Ten days earlier, an English climber had been left to die on the mountain as others trekked past him. Hall was luckier, but both these events sparked condemnation, including from Sir Edmund Hillary.)

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There Once Was A Boy Called Tashi by Anna Fienberg and Barbara Fienberg, illustrated by Kim Gamble & The Boy, the Bear, the Baron, the Bard by Gregory Rogers

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December 2004–January 2005, no. 267

We read for pleasure; perhaps this way we find out more about ourselves. Pleasure comes first, a fact that is often lost when a book is overanalysed, always a danger when questions follow a pattern of interpretation designed to trace a line around a response. Picture books are particularly vulnerable, as their words are few and they are becoming more sophisticated, drawing on traditional, modern and symbolic art. Whether a child will find delight would be my first criterion for the purchase of a picture book. It doesn’t have to be all sweetness and light: a shiver of fear may be just as engrossing as laughter.

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