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‘Once Upon A Christmas’ dedicated to:-

SANTA CLAUS!

Launched in the heritage courtyard of Balmain Library with community, kids, parents, fabulous librarians on a balmy Sydney night.

Compiled and edited by Beattie Alvarez who did a brilliant job – it contains the funny, joyous, quirky stories, poems, snippets, illustrations of some the best known authors and illustrators about Christmas:-

Ursula Dubosarsky, Libby Hathorn, Duncan Ball, Kate Forsyth, Sally Rippin, Michael Pryor, Kim Gamble, Adele Geras, Pamela Freeman, Stephen Axelson  ……my small anecdote ‘Grandma’s Christmas’ remembers my children’s Grandma and Grandpa … I can’t wait to give it to my family at Christmas.

Melina Marchetta joined in with her daughter

‘Once Upon A Christmas’ is the brainchild of the multi-award winning author Sophie Masson and Christmas Press and the Christmas Press team – Beattie Alvarez, gifted illustrator David Allen and Fiona McDonald.

Fabulous authors Jesse Blackadder and Melina Marchetta came along to cheer on the launch.

Room to Read Writer Ambassadors were there spreading the word about literacy for the kids of Asia and Africa.

Who sets up a new publishing house in this crazy publishing climate? Sophie Masson of course. With its first title last year, it’s already selling out.

Called Christmas Press

A small press with big ideas..

Born in the early months of 2013, Christmas Press specialises in beautiful picture books for children, featuring traditional tales–folk tales, fairy tales, legends, myths–retold by well-known authors and stunningly illustrated in classic styles that reflect the cultures the stories come from. We also publish special anthologies, full of wonderful stories, poems, memoirs and illustrations, with the first of these, Once Upon A Christmas, just released now for Christmas!

The post Who’s Coming down the Chimney? Santa Claus! appeared first on Susanne Gervay's Blog.

 A stunning Australian novel based on the true story of the first woman to set foot on Antarctica

It’s the early 1930s. Antarctic open-sea whaling is booming and a territorial race for the mysterious continent between Norwegian and British–Australian interests is in full swing. This was the era when Antarctica was closed to women, in spite of hundreds applying to expeditions.

Determined to learn more about the first women to reach Antarctica, Jesse Blackadder travelled to Norway where she made the exciting discovery that the first woman to reach the Antarctica Peninsula was not an explorer but Ingrid Christensen, a 38-year-old mother who left her six children behind and travelled there on a whaling boat four times in the 1930s with her husband, taking a female friend or two on each trip.

With this intriguing fact as inspiration, Jesse tells the story of a sea voyage from Cape Town by the Norwegian whaling magnate Lars Christensen and three women: Lillemor Rachlew, who tricked her way onto the ship and will stop at nothing to be the first woman to land on Antarctica; Mathilde Wegger, a grieving widow who’s been forced to join the trip by her calculating parents-in-law; and Lars’s wife, Ingrid Christensen, who has longed to travel to Antarctica since she was a girl and has made a daunting bargain with Lars to convince him to take her.

Loyalties shift and melt and conflicts increase as they pass through the Southern Ocean and reach the whaling grounds. None of the women is prepared for the reality of meeting the whaling fleet and experiencing firsthand the brutality of the icy world.

As they head for the continent itself, the race is on for the first woman to land on Antarctica. None of them could possibly know how their arrival will change them forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jesse is an award-winning short-story writer and freelance journalist, fascinated by landscapes and belonging. Her earlier novels are After the Party and The Raven’s Heart (2011). She was awarded the Guy Morrison Prize for Literary Journalism in 2012 and the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship in 2011/2012, which enabled her to travel there for the second time on a six-week voyage. Born in Sydney, Jesse now lives near Byron Bay.