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On 25 April 1916, 2,000 Australian and New Zealand troops marched through London towards a service at Westminster Abbey attended by the King and Queen. One of the soldiers later recalled the celebratory atmosphere of the day. This was the first Anzac Day. A year earlier, Australian soldiers had been the first to land on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of an attempt by the combined forces of the British and French empires to invade the Ottoman Empire.
"What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before." Mark Twain put his finger on one of the minor problems for a relatively new nation: making an impact in the world of famous quotations. All the good lines seem to have already been used somewhere else, by somebody else.
T 20 / 20 T ICC World Cup हमारे देश में क्रिकेट को लेकर बहुत प्रेम है भारत पाकिस्तान का मैच इस बात का जीता जागता उदाहरण है. पाकिस्तान तो टी 20 मैच की इस सीरीज से बाहर ही हो गया है पर जैसे जैसे मैच आगे बढता जा रहा है वैसे वैसे मैच के […]
Happy Australian Library and Information Week! We’re wrapping up Library and Information Week here in Australia. This year’s theme is “Imagine.” Help us celebrate all of the fantastic libraries and librarians doing great things over on that side of the world. Oxford University Press has put together a quiz about all things Australia and New Zealand. Once you’ve made it through the quiz, reward yourself with a dollop of Vegemite or catch a Russell Crowe flick to get your fix of the good old outback.
In just a couple of days we commemorate the legacy of the brave soldiers and the tragic events of World War 1 that occurred one hundred years ago. A beautiful selection of ANZAC books for children have been reviewed by Dimity here, but here’s a few more that certainly captured my heart with their touching […]
The Last Anzac, Gordon Winch (author), Harriet Bailey (Illus.), New Frontier Publishing, March 2015. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing. For this significant Anzac Centenary, a myriad of children’s books have been released to teach our young ones about the physical, emotional and historical impact of war, and to celebrate our […]
I grabbed this book solely on the back of a tweet from Joss Whedon but it then languished in my TBR pile for months. With the book finally being released in Australia I thought it was time to pick it up and was immediately sucked in. Catherine Lacey’s writing style is electrifying. She skillfully balances […]
We invite you to explore the biography of New Zealand painter Rita Angus, as it is presented in Grove Art Online.
New Zealand painter. Angus studied at the Canterbury School of Art, Christchurch (1927–33). In 1930 she married the artist Alfred Cook (1907–70) and used the signature Rita Cook until 1946; they had separated in 1934. Her painting Cass (1936; Christchurch, NZ, A.G.) is representative of the regionalist school that emerged in Canterbury during the late 1920s, with the small railway station visualizing both the isolation and the sense of human progress in rural New Zealand. The impact of North American Regionalism is evident in Angus’s work of the 1930s and 1940s. However, Angus was a highly personal painter, not easily affiliated to specific movements or styles. Her style involved a simplified but fastidious rendering of form, with firm contours and seamless tonal gradations (e.g. Central Otago). Her paintings were invested with symbolic overtones, often enigmatic and individual in nature. The portrait of Betty Curnow (1942; Auckland, A.G.) has generated a range of interpretations relating both to the sitter, wife of the poet Allen Curnow, and its social context.
In her self-portraits, Angus pictured a complex array of often contradictory identities. In Self-portrait (1936–7; Dunedin, NZ, Pub. A.G.) she played the part of the urban, sophisticated and assertive ‘New Woman’. Amongst her most candid works are a series of nude self-portrait pencil drawings, while her watercolours also constitute an important body of work, ranging from portraits and landscapes to painstaking but striking botanical studies such as Passionflower (1943; Wellington, Mus. NZ, Te Papa Tongarewa). The watercolourTree (1943; Wellington, Mus. NZ, Te Papa Tongarewa) carries a sense of mystery, with its surreal stillness and emptiness. Angus’s ‘Goddess’ paintings are equally mysterious. A Goddess of Mercy (1945–7; Christchurch, NZ, A.G.) is an image of peace and harmony. Angus was a pacifist and a conscientious objector during World War II. In Rutu (1951; Wellington, Mus. NZ, Te Papa Tongarewa), she modelled the goddess on her own features, but created a composite figure, half Maori, half European, which suggests an ideal condition of bicultural harmony. The lotus flower held by Rutu reflects Angus’s interest in Buddhism. She thought the Goddess paintings were her most important, and it is on the basis of these works that Angus was hailed as a feminist by subsequent artists and writers.
Cass Station, Canturbury, which inspired Rita Angus’s painting, Cass. Photo by Phillip Capper. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.
Angus aimed to evoke transcendental states of being, or a vision beyond mundane reality. In this respect her work connects to European modernism, more so than on the basis of any stylistic affinities. Nonetheless, Angus absorbed some of modernism’s formal innovations, notably degrees of simplification and flattening of form. Towards the end of her career, while she retained motifs based on observation, these were schematic and assembled into composite images, such as Flight(1968–9; Wellington, Mus. NZ, Te Papa Tongarewa). Her Fog, Hawke’s Bay (1966–8; Auckland, A.G.) manifests elements of the faceting and multiple viewpoints of Cubism. Angus’s hard-edged style influenced a younger generation of New Zealand painters, including Don Binney (b 1940) and Robin White.
Bibliography
Docking: Two Hundred Years of New Zealand Painting(Wellington, 1970), p. 146
Rita Angus (exh. cat. by J. Paul and others, Wellington, NZ, N.A.G., 1982)
Rita Angus (exh. cat., ed. L. Bieringa; Wellington, N.A.G., 1983)
Rita Angus: Live to Paint, Paint to Live (exh. cat. by V. Cochran and J. Trevvelyan; Auckland, C.A.G., 2001)
V. Cochran and J. Trevelyan: Rita Angus: Live to Paint, Paint to Live(Auckland, 2001)
M. Dunn: New Zealand Painting: A Concise History(Auckland, 2003), pp. 85–8
P. Simpson: ‘Here’s Looking At You: The Cambridge Terrace Years of of Leo Bensemann and Rita Angus’,Journal of New Zealand Art History, xxv (2004), pp. 23–32
J. Trevelyan: Rita Angus: An Artist’s Life(Wellington, 2008)
Rita Angus: Life and Vision (exh. cat., ed. W. McAloon and J. Trevelyan; Wellington, Mus. NZ, Te Papa Tongarewa, 2008)
“Toucan Can Do Lots of Things! Toucan Dances! Toucan Sings! Toucan Bangs a Frying Pan! Can You Do What Toucan Can? A tongue-twisting, ludicrous rhyme full of escalating hilarity and off-the-wall characters. It will have you tripping and flipping and dancing and singing.”
If Toucan can, YOU can!
Opening
“Toucan can do lots of things!”
Review
What can you do? Toucan can do many things and might have toddlers showing off what they can do, too. Toucan and his group of goofy animal friends will have you and your child laughing. The rhyming text works in all but three couplets, where the beat goes bonk. Otherwise, the lines will roll off your tongue until your tongue is twisted. All this tongue-tying will add to the fun. With a couple run-throughs, you can have those lines sounding like Toucan can read, because Toucan Can!
The illustrations have a high-end coloring book look, but with child-like coloring; meaning, as example, the purple of Toucan’s not very big bottom blotches beyond the border. Characters and background images consistently bleed. The illustrator’s technique or a printing problem? Curious and not wanting to criticize something I didn’t understand, I asked the illustrator. Here is what she wrote,
“The bleed is deliberate – for this book I wanted to find a style of working that was really loose and energetic, and the opposite of neat and precise. I hand painted tissue and then laid torn chunks of it down, then did the linework and detail on top. The idea with letting the colour bleed out around the edges is that there’s so much life and movement in the text that it can’t be contained. Toucan is such an irrepressible character that I didn’t want to colour him inside the lines – he needed some chaos.”
Every character, on every spread, is moving. “Happy Chaos” is a good description of the spreads, as the animals swing from trees, twirl, and dance. An exception to the merriment is a joey in mama’s pouch. I fear Toucan might have awakened the joey from its snug pouch. It takes only a minute—one spread—to soften the joey’s slanted eyebrows and rolled up fists. Mama’s energy is still passing to her baby.
The text is fun to read a-loud and young children will enjoy hearing all Toucan can do. When asked if “you” can do what Toucan can, young children will be out of their seat bopping about, jumping, skipping, and singing, but mainly dancing. All the animals love to dance and they all dance with exuberance. Very contagious.
Originally published by Gecko Press in New Zealand, Lerner Publishing Group brings ToucanCan to the US and Canada. Toucan Can has hilarious images, interactive suggestions to keep young kids moving and laughing. The rhyming text and tongue twisters will keep the reader—mom or dad—determined to get it right, making Toucan Can a book young kids will have no trouble getting their parents to read over and over.
After months of planning, preparation and final presentation run-throughs, I stood at the front of Seminar Room 3 within the State Library of Victoria, looking across the tables carefully decorated with our OUP goody bags and name placards. It was 8:30 in the morning and I was ready to meet my first librarians from “Down Under”. Back in the office in the United Kingdom, a colleague and I had planned the two meetings (one in the morning for academic librarians, one in the afternoon with state, public, and school librarians) with military precision. The refreshments, the sessions, the materials, the presentations, the timings, even our entertainment at lunch (a local author was coming in to give a lively talk on his book) was planned to a tee. But what you can never plan when dealing with people, and perhaps especially passionate librarians, is how they will respond to those plans…
I was nervous. My colleagues were more relaxed, being based in Australia, they were more familiar with the subtle culture differences; they knew the drill. I, on the other hand, needed to fit in, be approachable, and most importantly I needed to ensure I listened and absorbed everything they had to say so I could fully represent them and their needs back in Oxford, on the other side of the world.
Shortly after 8:30 a.m. the librarians started arriving, one by one, picking up their coffees and muffins, huddling in small groups, and started chatting. I needn’t have worried.
The important thing about these events (which we are labelling our “Library Advisory Councils”) is giving the librarians an opportunity to talk with their peers on issues that matter to most to them, and we, as publishers, have the privileged to be part of those conversations. I learnt early in the sessions that they rarely get the chance to discuss issues that they want to discuss. In their usual meetings they are presented with a specific theme and asked to represent only on that area.
Ahead of the meetings it was really important that we asked what they wanted to discuss, and then we would make that a big part of the day. Of course we also have things we want to update them on — as our “Advisors” it’s important that we are able to give them information on our strategies and plans for the future — but this was never intended to be a sales pitch. We want to give them the stage and sit alongside them in the discussions, rather than it being an “us and them” debate.
For me, this was my first time on antipodean soil, surrounded by librarians who were having good and bad experiences with publishers, and this is my opportunity to do something about it. I felt lucky to sit amongst them and openly eavesdrop (whilst furiously taking notes).
Underway with the LAC
It would be naïve to think that a meeting like this could solve all the problems discussed. Some of the topics discussed were huge hitters that have been discussed and debated in various forms at library conferences around the world over the last few years. It was acknowledged that these issues are larger and more complex than we could possibly hope to remedy within a day. But, as the group were together, the very act of them venting and sharing their experiences enabled them to strengthen their own network and not feel so isolated. It also gave me first-hand experience of their thoughts and feelings on the topic, so that I can now better represent their views when I’m back in Oxford.
Once we got past those larger issues, it was now time to buckle down to get some actionable takeaways: what could we actually impact on a short term basis?
The majority of the actions that I brought away from the sessions were based around workflows: how can publishers work with librarians to make their jobs easier; cut out complexities within processes; and just generally make things simpler. The renewals process is complex and long-winded: what can we do to streamline and simplify the process? We supply our meta-data to discovery service tools but it’s getting stuck with that intermediary for months before finally getting added to their system: so how can we influence our partnerships to move things through more quickly?
Much discussion was had around business models (and we have a Future Business Models group at OUP), including Patron Driven Acquisition and Evidence Based Acquisition. Librarians had both positive and negative experiences and expectations around the impact of those on budgeting and workflows. Again, this was all gold dust to take back to Head Office and sprinkle liberally into the agenda!
So, after brainstorms, lively debate and summarising in groups, I came away with an armful of flipchart paper, covered in ideas, straight from the people who really matter. As the librarians left at the end of the sessions, they were exchanging contact details, thanking us for the day and the opportunity to be involved, and promising to pop by to say hello to us the following week at VALA (a library conference being held in the city).
The Victoria State Library, Melbourne
In addition to the fantastic feedback, I have also made some real connections with those librarians on the other side of the world to me — librarians with diverse workflows, audiences, and requirements of publishers. But now, with their voices and opinions still ringing in my ears, my intention is to carry their specific ideas and challenges, the 17000 kilometres across ocean and continents back to the working groups and strategy-makers in Oxford. There, librarian voices from all around the world, whose ideas are communicated through other Library Advisory Councils, will be heard.
Annabel Coles is the Senior Marketing Manager in the Institutional Marketing team at Oxford University Press, promoting our online products and journals to institutions across Europe and Australia and New Zealand. She has held various sales and marketing roles within OUP for nine years.
Regional “Library Advisory Councils” are held within various territories across the world to facilitate conversations with our customers (librarians) on issues that are of mutual interest to ensure that we are feeding back appropriate information and intelligence directly from our markets to our product and platform development, business model and publishing strategies across the business. This provides an opportunity to listen to our customers on their turf, alongside their peers and in their local language and specifically to speak on issues relevant to them in their part of the world. We hope that this will ensure we are bringing the customer voice back into the heart of the products and services we develop within the Global Academic Business. For more, see the OUP Librarian Resource Center.
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Image credits: (1) Photograph of Steacie Science and Engineering Library at York University by Raysonho@Open Grid Scheduler. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2-4) ANZ LAC images courtesy of Annabel Coles. Do not reproduce without permission.
Maggie Steele, the storybook heroine who vaults over the moon, has been attracting thousands of visitors from around the world. So many visitors, in fact, that she’s using a time zone map to keep track of them all.* People are … Continue reading →
0 Comments on Maggie Welcomes Thousands of Visitors Worldwide as of 7/26/2013 4:42:00 PM
Margaret Mahy, one of the world’s leading children’s authors, has died aged 76. The celebrated writer died in Christchurch this afternoon after a brief illness.
Kiwi animation outfit Mukpuddy made Meanie Pants as part of New Zealand’s annual 48-hour filmmaking competition, placing 3rd overall and taking home Best Animated Film.
Friday: Friday in Auckland began with a Publisher's Forum. About 50 people from the New Zealand publishing industry were on hand for the discussion. The session opened with a panel on rights selling in the international market. I think the main takeaway of the session is how important the face-to-face meeting is, how important relationships are. As Stephen Maat (Bruna Netherlands) said, he could meet with a publisher every year for ten years and never buy anything, but there will be that day that they call him up, or send him that email and say, "This is the perfect book for you" and it will be.
Then, I was on a panel along with Tom Mayer (Norton) and Fergus Barrowman (Victoria University Press). Hal Wake (Vancouver Writers' Festival) moderated. A lot of what we talked about was how eBooks were changing the publishing industry--in NZ and Australia, eBooks have yet to hit the level that they have in the States, because they don't have the Kindle, Nook, or iBookstore. Tom talked about the opportunities and potential changes that eBooks and the market of Kindle Singles could have on the industry, particularly with nonfiction--eBooks may make it more acceptable to publish a 25 or 50 page book, as opposed to having to expand a nonfiction subject into longer, book-length work. Other advantages include being able to update nonfiction more frequently. We talked about the shift of making paper books more gifty, more objects to keep, vs the type of books that may eventually become e-only.
After a networking lunch we had one-on-one meetings with New Zealand publishers and agents--some just wanted to talk business/pick my brain about publishing in the US, some pitched books.
I finished up with meetings early enough to go for a run before dinner--unlike the rainy Wednesday, the weather was perfect for a run in the Auckland Domain.
I had a delicious sushi dinner with Cassandra Clare and her husband Josh--I had run into them in the lobby earlier--and then I was off to a cocktail party hosted by the Fesivals' board of trustees. Then back to the hotel where once again Karen Healey, Garth Nix, Sean Williams, Margo Lanagan, and others were convened in the hotel lobby for wine and sea breezes.
Saturday: In the morning I met up with Alexis Warsham (Crown) in the lobby and we walked over to the Aotea Center where our Publishing Panel (this one open to the public) was housed. We found our way through back passages to the Green Room where Tom, Nikki Christer (Random House Australia) and our moderator publishing consultant Geoff Walker were already convened. We covered much of the same ground as our Industry Publishing Panel--talked a lot about eBooks, Amanda Hocking, Barry Eisler, etc etc. But of course when the Q&A portion began, we got a bunch of the expected "how do I get published" questions, and even one woman who was bold enough to actually pitch her book--luckily, it wasn't a children's or YA book, so I didn't have to turn her down in public, OR invite her to send it. One audience member asked us what we thought of the recent news that an agent was becoming an eBook publisher--to be honest, because I hadn't been able to check email and read the news as regularly while in NZ, I hadn't yet read about the news. Some of the others had heard the recent news of agent Ed Victor exploring eBook publish
3 Comments on Leg #2: Auckland, Part 2, last added: 6/15/2011
We met at Kidlit Drink Night during BEA and you were kind enough to give me a few ARCs. I just wanted to let you know that I've reviewed Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which I ADORED. (I also loved The Shattering, but I'm waiting to post my review until it comes out because I wanted to say a couple of spoilery things.) In fact, your books were my two favorite BEA ARCs, so thank you!
Sorry to post on a group blog; it seemed from some cursory Googling like this was the best way to get in touch with you.
In this the last post in our Authors Remember their Grandparents series, we welcome author Trina Saffioti, whose recently published picture book Stolen Girl (Magabala Books, 2011) is our current Book of the Month. Illustrated by Norma MacDonald it is the story of an unnamed girl whose experiences as a child of the Stolen Generation of Australian Aboriginal children are based on what Trina imagines may have happened to her own grandmother. abased on her grandmother who was one of the Stolen Generation of Australian Aboriginal children.
Trina is also the author of The Old Frangipani Tree at Flying Fish Point. Descended from the Gugu Yulangi people of Far North Queensland, her writing is influenced by the stories her mother and grandmother used to tell her as she was growing up. Trina lives in Wellington, New Zealand.
My Grandmother
My grandparents were very different. On my mother’s side my Indian and Muslim grandfather died when my mother was very young and her memories of him are few. Her mother, my grandmother, was Australian Aboriginal, Kanaka (Melanesian), and Chinese. My grandmother was a devout Christian and I am amazed by what I consider her bravery and devotion in marrying a man of another faith in what would have been the 1940s. She was a real trailblazer in other ways. I remember her as a very short, very dark-skinned old lady. She had a wonderful singing voice and she sang in the Orpheus Choir in Innisfail, North Queensland. We have a photo from the 1970s of her singing with the choir and you see hundreds of white faces and then this one black face.
She deliberately raised her children away from what she felt were negative influences (drinking, gambling) in the community. She was very strict with a lot of rules. We always had to use a tablecloth; you couldn’t just spread jam out of the jar at the table: it needed to be transferred to a special dish. Always cups and saucers, never mugs, and plates and cutlery always – even for takeaways. We always had to dress up for church. When Granny came to visit us in New Zealand, we would sit at the table eating nicely and sitting up straight, and go to church smartly dressed – and as soon as she returned to Australia, we would revert to our uncivilised ways, eating in front of the television when my mother would allow it, going to church in t-shirts and jeans, slurping out of mugs and (my favourite) drinking cordial straight out of the jug. Drinking cordial straight out of the jug is trickier than it sounds as you have to be both sneaky and silent to avoid making any noise when opening the fridge door. It couldn’t be risked when Granny was around because a) she had eyes in the back of her head, and b) she would’ve had a heart attack if she had seen me swigging away at the jug.
Granny loved shopping and beautiful things. She could be sick in bed all week but on pension day my teenage cousins had to take her to the shops. She would be waiting on a chair at the end of the drive.
She was also a storyteller and told me the traditional Aboriginal Dreamtime stories but also family stories, sometimes with a bit of embellishment. She kept her cards very close to her chest and was very fearful of people in authority. We knew very little of her story and her past right up until she died and even now we only know fragments. We know that she spent a perio
0 Comments on Authors remember their grandparents: My Grandmother by Trina Saffioti as of 6/13/2011 3:26:00 AM
Release dates have been announced for the Peter Jackson‘s two Hobbit movies.
According to Variety, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will come out on December 14, 2012 and The Hobbit: There and Back Again will hit theaters on December 13, 2013. The video embedded above features a tour of The Hobbit‘s set.
Here’s more from the article: “Jackson began shooting the two films in New Zealand in 3D in mid-March with a cast including Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins and Orlando Bloom, Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett reprising their roles from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Bloom joined the cast Friday to portray the elf Legolas.”
After Melbourne, I was off to Auckland, New Zealand. It struck me as I exited the plane that this was the first time in a while I'd set foot on a country I'd never visited before. The last time was Japan two years ago, but even then that wasn't quite accurate, as I'd set foot on the Tokyo airport as a child.
The weather when I arrived was amazing. As I walked towards the airport exit I couldn't resist taking a picture of the scene outside of the window--the sky was amazingly large:
And here's the sky from the airport parking lot:
I was eager to ask my driver for some tips on what to do on my one day off. However, it turned out that the driver, Gun, had just move to Auckland from Brooklyn! In fact, he had lived in Fort Greene, a neighborhood in Brooklyn adjacent to my own. He did give me a few thoughts on New Zealand, though, but mainly recommended that I try to get out of the city. Alas, I didn't have time for that.
That night I walked around the city, had dinner at a Thai place in a little food court in front of an Asian grocery store, and later spied the Sky Tower from afar:
Before my trip, my friend Rose had said, "The Biggest Loser went to Auckland, and they jumped off the Sky Tower! It looked like something you would do!" Indeed. I signed up for a combo Sky Walk and Sky Jump for the next day.
Unfortunately, the next day, Wednesday, was stormy: wind and pouring rain does not make a happy Sky Tower walk and jump--I rescheduled for that Saturday, and decided to trek over to the Auckland Domain to go to the Auckland Museum instead. First, I stopped in a little French cafe for a breakfast crepe and a flat white (coffee with milk):
its nice to read a useful article for beginner like me. Some of points from this article are very helpful for me as I haven’t considered them yet. I would like to say thank you for sharing this cool article. Bookmarked and sharing for friends.
I loved this post.....it reminded me of what it felt like to get off the plane there -- immediately, DIFFERENT from anyplace I've ever been. It's hard to say why: how clean the air was, how blue the sky, the quality of stillness....it felt really far away.
NZ is one of my all-time favorite countries and I'd go back in a heartbeat--thank you for this really interesting glimpse.
And Pavlova is one of my all-time favorite desserts!
Hi all! I'm finally back from my travels to the Southern Hemisphere--returned to New York last night. Don't have time for a real post, so I thought I'd leave you with this video of Karen Healey kicking off the New Zealand Listeners Gala Night of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. Eight authors, including Meg Rosoff, Fatima Bhutto, and A.A. Gill were tasked to tell true stories inspired by the alphabet. Here's Karen's story:
This week is Book Expo America here in NYC, so I'm diving right back into the swing of things...more next week!
2 Comments on Karen Healey tells a true story, last added: 5/24/2011
Have you ever wanted to peek inside Johnny Mackintosh’s spaceship, the Spirit of London? For those out there who don’t know, she sits at 30 St Mary Axe in the City, the capital’s financial district, and also goes under the name the London Gherkin.
Three months after the dreadful events of 22nd February when Christchurch, New Zealand, was struck by an earthquake, the Gherkin is unlocking its revolving doors to make way for the Step up 4 Christchurch Earthquake Appeal. You have the chance to walk or run (there’s even a race) all the way up the 1037 steps to the top or, if that sounds a tad too much effort on a Sunday morning (shame on you), there’s an alternative route to the top via the lifts. Sadly, these will be the conventional type rather than the antigravity ones normally used on the Spirit of London.
The event, taking place on Sunday 22nd May 2011, been organized by the Evans Randall Investment Bank so full marks to them. I was alerted to it by Meg Ellis who’ll be taking part as one of her 100 things for charity. There’s an entrance fee that goes to the earthquake appeal and, if you’re taking part, get yourself some extra sponsorship too.
One last thing, watch out for aliens when inside, including this one in the lobby …
Earlier this month Besty Bird at Fuse 8 said of Playing by the book “this site just pours its heart into each and every post“. She’s right. I’ve always been told I wear my heart on my sleeve, and today is no different. Except that perhaps today’s post is even more personal than usual. It’s about something that has profoundly touched my heart.
Photo: Olgierd Pstrykotwórca
Two months ago today a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck the Canterbury region in New Zealand’s South Island. My thoughts immediately flew to Christchurch resident Bronwyn, a reader of my blog, a person I’ve never met, I’ve never even spoken to, but with whom I had a small connection thanks to comments here on Playing by the book. As it happens we first “met” via last year’s International Postcard Swap for Families (I do wonder what unknown friendships and consequences lie ahead as a result of this year’s swap!)
Upon hearing the news I wanted to let Bronwyn know I was thinking of her and her family, and to do something to help her and the others affected. A few short tweets later I was happy to hear that Bronwyn and her family were safe, their house was damaged, but they were alive. We exchanged some ideas and very quickly these coalesced around two ideas ; working together to get books quickly into welfare centres for those who had lost their homes and setting up a scheme to pair families from around the world with families in Christchurch to send a book parcel as a sign of friendship, support and solidarity through a very difficult time. To find out more, you can read the original blog post here.
Thanks to the incredible, humbling, heartbreaking kindness of strangers Bronwyn and I worked together and got approximately 565 books into welfare centres and care packages to provide families with something to enjoy, some relief as they started to try to move on and rebuild their lives.
I want to thank so very much author Justin Brown, Nic McCloy from Allen and Unwin, Julia Marshall of Gecko Press, Darnia Hobson, Emily Perkins, Rachel, Ngaire Mackle and Nikki Crowther
for sending books and vouchers to Bronwyn for distribution in Christchurch.
We also paired up 50 families from the UK, US, India, La Reunion, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand with families in Christchurch, some of whom had lost everything including all their books. I want to thank, honour and celebrate these tremendously generous people who reached out, who shared their love of books and extended a hand of friendship at a time of need.
Natalia Ortega-Brown said, on 4/21/2011 5:02:00 PM
I’ve loved children’s books forever, but it was only two months ago that I decided to profess my love out loud by blogging about them. Since then, I feel like I’ve discovered this whole new world of bloggers who share the same love and passion…and it almost makes me sad to have not been aware of it before. I truly believe the past two months reading and writing about children’s books has changed me.
I say all this, because your most recent post really touched me and solidified those feeling I just mentioned. How truly AWESOME it is that you were able to make that connection with someone so far away! And make a difference in the lives of so many families! Again, awesome!
Let me just add that I look forward to reading your posts.
Kind Regards from Peekskill, NY
Natalia. Natalia Ortega-Brown recently posted..While You Are Sleeping
victoria said, on 4/21/2011 5:38:00 PM
What you did was a wonderful thing.
Three Australian picture books on your theme of helping others are:
* Amelia Ellicott’s Garden by Lilliana Stafford & Stephen Michael King
* Nobody’s Granny by Tess Brady
* Leaves for Mr Walter Janeen Brian
All should be available in libraries if not still in print and at shops.
One thing that really came home to me was that if you just give people the chance, they want to help. Sometimes it’s hard to know how to help – with Christchurch, and then Japan I think we all felt overwhelmed, like it was/is just too enormous and awful for us as individuals to make any difference. This project (for want of a much better word) gave us all a way to make a small difference, and those small differences have added up to make a bigger difference.
Allie said, on 4/22/2011 12:52:00 AM
I agree that what you guys did was a wonderful thing — my kids have been really stressed and upset and getting those books and knowing someone was thinking of them made a world of difference. To cap it off my middle son, who is not a confident reader, has flown ahead in his reading thanks to wanting to read his new books by himself in bed at night.
Thank you a million times over for the idea, for carrying it out and for making my kids happy. Special thanks to Amy and family who were so generous to my kids. Between you all, you really did make a huge difference.
The Gaelyn Gordon Award is given annually for a children’s or young adult book which did not win a New Zealand award at the time of publication but has been in print for more than five years and has proved itself a favourite with New Zealand children.
“At first publication, Tangaroa’s Gift: Te Koha a Tangaroa was a finalist for the AIM Children’s Book Awards, the Esther Glen Award for writing and, unusually, also for the Russell Clark Award for illustration,” says Storylines Trust chair Dr Libby Limbrick. “It is wonderful that this fine and enduring book by an accomplished writer and illustrator… should now be honoured with this award.”
Of Ngati Rongomaiwahine and Ngati Kahungunu descent, Mere Whaanga is a writer, illustrator, historian and an academic. Raised on an isolated sheep station on the East Coast of New Zealand, she was inspired by her father’s respect for the land and his love of Mâori history and mythology. She completed her M Phil Maori Studies at Massey University in 2000 and says of her writing “I write from a Maori perspective, always with the intention that the work has integrity while being accessible to those who may know little about our culture and people.”
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After months of planning, preparation and final presentation run-throughs, I stood at the front of Seminar Room 3 within the State Library of Victoria, looking across the tables carefully decorated with our OUP goody bags and name placards. It was 8:30 in the morning and I was ready to meet my first librarians from “Down Under”. Back in the office in the United Kingdom, a colleague and I had planned the two meetings (one in the morning for academic librarians, one in the afternoon with state, public, and school librarians) with military precision. The refreshments, the sessions, the materials, the presentations, the timings, even our entertainment at lunch (a local author was coming in to give a lively talk on his book) was planned to a tee. But what you can never plan when dealing with people, and perhaps especially passionate librarians, is how they will respond to those plans…
By: Aline Pereira,
on 7/23/2012
By: John,
on 7/8/2011
By: Linda S. Wingerter,
on 6/13/2011
By: Maryann Yin,
on 5/31/2011
And here's the sky from the airport parking lot:
I was eager to ask my driver for some tips on what to do on my one day off. However, it turned out that the driver, Gun, had just move to Auckland from Brooklyn! In fact, he had lived in Fort Greene, a neighborhood in Brooklyn adjacent to my own. He did give me a few thoughts on New Zealand, though, but mainly recommended that I try to get out of the city. Alas, I didn't have time for that.
Before my trip, my friend Rose had said, "The Biggest Loser went to Auckland, and they jumped off the Sky Tower! It looked like something you would do!" Indeed. I signed up for a combo Sky Walk and Sky Jump for the next day.
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In this the last post in our Authors Remember their Grandparents series, we welcome author Trina Saffioti, whose recently published picture book Stolen Girl (Magabala Books, 2011) is our current Book of the Month. Illustrated by Norma MacDonald it is the story of an unnamed girl whose experiences as a child of the Stolen Generation of Australian Aboriginal children are based on what Trina imagines may have happened to her own grandmother. abased on her grandmother who was one of the Stolen Generation of Australian Aboriginal children.
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By: Keith Mansfield,
on 5/8/2011
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By: Zoe,
on 4/21/2011
Hi Alvina,
We met at Kidlit Drink Night during BEA and you were kind enough to give me a few ARCs. I just wanted to let you know that I've reviewed Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which I ADORED. (I also loved The Shattering, but I'm waiting to post my review until it comes out because I wanted to say a couple of spoilery things.) In fact, your books were my two favorite BEA ARCs, so thank you!
Sorry to post on a group blog; it seemed from some cursory Googling like this was the best way to get in touch with you.
Take care,
Sam
LOve this post and the view of Auckland Harbor. I want to go back!
Oh my god, I'm SO jealous of your stunt! I want to do that!
meghan, who needs to go on some sort of adventure soon or else