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I’m thinking I may be a country person after all.  My father was a farmer.

I just love the bush, the villages, the ‘ships in the field’ and cows.

Also love the beautiful birds and our kangaroos.

The kids of Cundletown Public School live in beautiful countryside.

It was great talking as an ambassador for the National Year of Reading to the kids.

Also shared NO to School Bullying with I AM JACK.

We’ve all just got to keep schools safe – so that kids can be all they can be.

They LOVE Jack.

Australian author Susanne Gervay (visit her website and blog) has had a very busy year this year and social justice has been high on her agenda. She is one of the contributors to Fear Factor: Terror Incognito, an anthology of short stories featuring ten Australian and ten Indian writers, edited by Meenakshi Bharat and Sharon Rundle (Macmillan Australia/ Picador India, 2010). She has been writing about her travels to India and Kiribati, a “Pacific atoll nation drowning under climate change”. She has just launched Always Jack, the third book about Jack, following on from her wonderful I Am Jack and Super Jack. Most recently, Susanne was in South Korea for the Nambook-010 Fesival, the 5th Nami Island International Children’s Book Festival. She was there because she was taking part in Peace Story, a very special project. We are very grateful to Susanne for telling us all about it here. For those of us who couldn’t be there in person, Susanne’s description and photographs are definitely the next best thing!

In these troubled times with North Korea’s military attack on South Korea, the international publication of Peace Story is poignant and important. Twenty-two children’s authors and twenty-two illustrators from twenty-two countries engaged in an international cooperative to create a unique anthology, Peace Story, for young people. Respected academic author on Irish children’s literature Valerie Coghlan and Irish Laureate for children’s literature Siobhán Parkinson were the co-editors of Peace Story.

‘Peace Story’ was part of the Nami Island International Children’s Book Festival, South Korea which was first held in 2005 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen. It is a six-week bi-annual festival of children’s books, the environment and peace, featuring outstanding exhibitions of children’s books and illustrations from all over the world. Much loved Korean illustrator Kang Woo-hyon, President of the Nambook-010 International Committee headed the ‘Peace Story’ project with the support of the Nami Island Minn family who published and translated some of the stories, and hosted the authors and illustrators on Nami Island. It was supported by National YMCA Korea, UNICEF and UNESCO Korea, the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism, and Nami Island the official sponsor of the IBBY Hans Christian Anderson Awards.

My Australian story ‘To East Timor with Love Australia’, illustrated by the award-winning Frané Lessac, opens the anthology Peace Story. Frané Lessac’s vibrant colours of bright pink bougainvillea and yel

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Aussie kids at Auburn North was like the United Nations.

Kids whose families come from Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, China, sixth generation Aussie background and more … welcomed Aussie authors.

Their Principal Mr Harris celebrated books as a way to fulfil kids’ dreams of reaching their dreams.

Their Librarian, teachers, CBC President Carole Keeble welcomed authors, kids and parents.

The MC, talented author Deborah Abela, who co-ordinated this CBCA Book Week event, had the packed library in love with her book ‘ The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen.’

Oliver had them laughing; Jeni had them laughing even more; Chris has them engrossed in his amazing zoo stories and I was deeply touched that my JACK was on the feature StoryBridge painting that covered the main wall.

Thankyou to bookseller Kay from Shearer’s Bookshop, to the wonderful librarian  Catherine Clift, Leanne Hodges and President CBCA Carole Keeble and especially Deborah Abela.   

Thankyou to the kids of Auburn North for loving JACK.

I’ll be in Canberra on Wednesday and speaking about my talks at the Kippax Library in

Canberra on ABC radio with Louise Maher.

There are workshops on Thursday for kids and an general talk at 5.30 p.m.

at Kippax Library.

For bookings and more information

Contact the ACT Public Library:

www.library.act.gov.au or phone 6205 9000

I Am Jack, Super Jack and now - Always Jack

Kids ALWAYS know when a parent goes out at night for their ‘adult’ functions that they’ll be run-over, have an accident, not come home …. so they ring heaps of times, fall asleep waiting at the window, wait and wait … they are afraid.

When I got breast cancer and my kids were 6 and 9 years old, they were afraid. AlWAYS JACK is the book I’ve ALWAYS wanted to write for my kids and all those other kids waiting for their parents to come home.

It’s about giving kids a voice when your Mum gets sick. Working out what happens with cancer and that the world will be safe.

Just finished the manuscript. Cathy Wilcox will illustrate it. It’ll be published for Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October 2010 and be part of the National Breast Cancer Foundation campaign.  www.nbcf.org.au

Remember to Buy a Pink Ribbon for our kids.

I realise that the last update I gave of our progress in the PaperTigers Reading the World Challenge 2009 was just beyond the half-way point - however, the deadline was over a month ago now, at the end of July, so I thought I’d better round it off!

For our last three books we read together:

Toad Away by Morris Gleitzman (Puffin, 2004). All about a brave cane toad wanting to make friends with the human race and traveling with two cousins to the Amazon to find out the secret of their ancestors as to how to achieve this… My two loved this and laughed uproariously at the rather revolting antics that cane toads are wont to get up to. I have to admit that I would probably have encouraged them to read this one on their own if I’d realised at the outset what it was going to be like - but actually, it was good to be a part of something that so appealed to their typical-boy sense of humor…

Super Jack by Susanne Gervay, illustrated by Cathy Wilcox (Angus & Robertson, 2003). The sequel to I Am Jack, this story focuses on Jack’s relationship with his family, especially the newly-introduced son of Rob, his Mum’s boy-friend. A family holiday intended to help everyone get to know each other is certainly eventful before the desired outcome is achieved… This is to be recommended to older children who may be trying to make sense of complex family relationships in their own lives.

Tom Crean’s Rabbit: A True Story from Scott’s Last Voyage by Meredith Hooper, illustrated by Bert Kitchen (Frances Lincoln, 2005). A very special, true story which is a great way to introduce early Antarctic exploration to young children - you can read a review from Create Readers here. This had the added kudos for my children of being a story which their grandad, who spent a year in the Antarctic quite a long time ago now, did not know…

Older Brother rounded off his Book Challenge with The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud and illustrated by Erin Susanne Bennet (Candlewick Press, 2005); Not so Fast Songololo by Niki Daly (Frances Lincoln, 2001); and a launch into the Asterix books by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo.

Little Brother read: The Two-Hearted Numbat by Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina (Fremantle Press, 2008); The Shaman’s Apprentice by Lynne Cherry (also the illustrator) and Mark J. Plotkin (Voyager Books, Harcourt, 2001) (which Older Brother had also read…); and Babu’s Song by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen and illustrated by Aaron Boyd (Lee & Low, 2003).

If you took part in this year’s Challenge, it would be great to hear from you - whether you completed it or not.

Next year may or may not follow a similar rubric - we are open to suggestions…