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Driving out of Sydney, crossing the Hawkesbury River on a punt, heading into the bush – one of Australia’s treasures – to speak to young people. Fantastic!

There are education department schools in the bush where kids from all over the country can come to discover indigenous bush tucker, environmental secrets of the land, trek, tell stories – the Writers’ Camp happens once a year and 4 authors go bush.

Multi award winning Simon French who was one of the founders of the writing camp at Brewongle Environment Education Centre was there of course.

Deborah Abela and James Roy came this year and there was me. Even award winning illustrator Donna Rawlings dropped in.

James Roy brought his ukele and Steve – one of the fabulous staff – brought his guitar and kids joined in.

I was in the old school house 1878 – how fantastic is that!  I didn’t use the cane, but put the fire on with Queen Victoria’s photo looking over us all.

Young people are so insightful, so much to share and it was wonderful as always.

The post Strange name – brilliant place with bush, writing at BREWONGLE on the Hawkesbury River appeared first on Susanne Gervay's Blog.

I have not been as up-to-date as I might have been with posts about what is now last year’s Reading the World Challenge.   This is partly due to time generally running away with me, and also being unable to keep proper track of our three Challenges running at once… So did we manage it? Well, I have to admit that unless we put all our efforts together, we didn’t quite; and we also went over on the time… reading aloud time is sadly having to jostle with other evening activities, and Saturday morning Book Sessions are now relegated to the holidays for the same reason. But that’s okay – we certainly read a broad range of books that might not have got to the top of the to-be-read pile otherwise…

Here are details of the rest of the books we all read (you’ll have to go back to here, here and here to find out the first ones…)

Together we read Goodbye Buffalo Bay by Larry Loyie with Constance Brissenden (Theytus Books, 2008). Even though I’d read it before, it was very hard to keep my composure for some of this traumatic but ultimately uplifting story, all the more engaging because it is both autobiographical and narrated in “Lawrence’s” engaging teenage voice. The first half of the book deals with Lawrence’s last year at a Residential School for First Nation children in Canada; and the second part is about how Lawrence then sets about finding himself again after leaving. It was the first time my two had become aware of residential schools and it provoked a lot of discussion about the treatment of First Nation people both in Canada and elsewhere. And as well as the ethical discussion, there was also plenty to talk about as regards Lawrence’s actual, individual experience. We all loathed Sister and we loved Sister Theresa. Then later, Lawrence’s different itinerant jobs, such as firefighting and working at a sawmill, were heroic in the boys’ eyes, and they were delighted at the end that his ambition to become a writer had so obviously come to fruition. We all of us cannot recommend this beautifully written story highly enough – and I would say that it would be a perfect book for reluctant readers, boys especially, as it is fairly short and succinct.

We also read and enjoyed Golden Tales: Myths, Legends, and Folktales from Latin America by Lulu Delacre (Scholastic, 2006) and Myths and Legends of Aotearoa, which I blogged about recently; and Little Brother and I read together the powerful and moving Grandfather’s Story Cloth/ Yawg Daim Paj Ntaub Dab Neegwritten by Linda Gerdner and Sarah Langford, illustrated by Stuart Loughridge (Shen Books, 2008).

Older Brother and Little Brother both read Señor Cat’s R