by Various
Novel
By Evan Green
Acquired age fifteen, first read age twenty-four
Adam’s Empire is epic, a great Australian story. It has everything; humour, drama, romance and it’s all set in the Australian outback.
So this is what happened. When I was a teenager, Mum subscribed me to the Doubleday Book Club. I hated reading, so I found her eagerness a total waste of time and money. Obviously she saw something I didn’t. Once a week our mail was collected from the post office in town. Adam’s Empire was a big package, a huge hardcover book. Dad loved reading so he was on it straightaway. After work he would plough through each page day after day until finally he finished. Dad was blown away by the story. But no matter how hard he pushed me to read Adam’s Empire, there was no way I was going to read that monster of a book. I had better things to do.
Twelve or thirteen years later I was a student teacher at uni. Now, this is where things changed. To pass, I had to read fiction and complete a journal on each book. I squirmed and complained and squirmed some more until finally I snapped out of it, listened to the lecturer and played the game. After reading twenty or so young adult books, I was actually starting to enjoy myself. Each story transported me to a different world, a different family, another complication that needed attention. I was hooked. I remember looking across the room to my bookshelf. Adam’s Empire stood boldly in front of me, daring me to pick it up. From the moment I started reading, Evan Green had me. And just like Dad years earlier, I read day and night until the book was finished.
It’s a strong, relatable and generous-with-detail type of story. To me, Adam’s Empire does and has everything a good book should. Evan Green was another master storyteller, no doubt about it. He planted a seed so eager to grow, every spare dollar I had was spent on books. From then on I became a loyal member of the local library, consuming up to three books at the same time. From a non-reader to a book monster – who would have thought?
Believe it or not, I continue to read this book at least once a year.
The Book Thief
Novel
By Markus Zusak
Read after its release
Not only a great book but now a movie. What a legend, Markus Zusak.
As a reader, the story of The Book Thief was great, but as a writer the story rocked my world. It just about sent my frizzy hair straight. It was the concept of Death speaking that totally blew me away. I know it has been done before, but this is the first time I had experienced it.
And I’ll be truthful, while reading the first few pages … I had no idea what was going on, absolutely no idea. At the time I was busy with other projects and hadn’t read any reviews. I had no idea Death was telling the story. Yep, I’m pretty embarrassed by this confession but no worries it all worked out; The Book Thief changed me.
I didn’t study creative writing at uni, so I assumed when writing you had to work within a set of boundaries. Having death tell your story totally disintegrated that notion. What a revelation.
See, I don’t like the idea of fitting inside a box. If I can change things up or out, I’m in my happy. Delivering a story that challenges and teases your own beliefs is very appealing. Thanks to Death and Markus’s ingenious decisions as an author, I now have a healthier confidence in how I approach and tell a story. I’ll seek out a story from all its angles including the plot, characters, the environment and the story’s tone.
Ruby Moonlight
Verse novel
By Ali Cobby Eckermann
Read on its release 2012, age forty-four
Ruby Moonlight is another great Australian story about an Aboriginal woman living in the late nineteenth century.
So here it is: I didn’t get poetry. Yeah, I know. Age forty-four, a published author with no connection to poetry. Not a good look, eh? I understood the simple structure of rhyme, but other than that, I was totally lost. I had no idea what a narrative poem was. And to be honest, I would never have gone out of my way to find one. I figured I didn’t have the poetry gene, full stop end of story. Well, that was until I read Ruby Moonlight.
Talk about an onion; I peeled back so many skins after reading this gem that I knew I was changed as a storyteller. No more playing around the surface, I’m going to dive deeper and this time I’ll open my eyes. Ruby is very relatable, she’s from the bush, she understands the bush and she’s Aboriginal. The writing is beautiful and intelligent. I love surprises; Ruby Moonlight offered many.
Now I can show you where the poetry section of our local library and bookshop is. I even have a poetry section in my own bookcase. And dare I say it; I even try to write my own poetry. Sweet Mary and Joseph, old girl here has finally found the light.
I don’t know if it’s timing, maturity or both. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful poetry has entered my life. Connecting with poetry is another profound experience that has and will continue to shape my work as an author and screenwriter.
You know, I used to get embarrassed when asked about reading as a child, and then I thought, well, you know what, I can’t be the only one who didn’t fall in love with books at an early age. Story is gold. Whether you read it, hear it as a yarn, in a song or melody, see it in a photo, canvas, in the sand, on a cave wall, in sculpture or on the screen, it doesn’t matter. Story is gold.
All four writers and their work have in some way made me a better storyteller. My introduction to books may have been delayed and unconventional but it has worked for me. l look forward to hearing, reading and watching your stories.
Knock yourselves out and get creative.
PS
Just for the record, all of these books have dog ears, small rips and are stained with tea and coffee. Whatever their appearance, they are loved and treasured.
James Remembering
James Roy
When I was a young boy of around eleven or twelve, my family left Australia and went to live in Fiji. Live in Fiji. We weren’t staying at some holiday resort with a kids’ club and snorkelling, or even experiencing one of those trendy, eco-friendly village stays, but actually living there. Sounds great, doesn’t it? And it was. Of course it was. That emotion you’re feeling right now? Envy.
Here’s the thing about Fiji. It’s the kind of place where kids can play, and I mean really play. I don’t think kids play the same way they used to, but we can talk about that another time. Right now, my point is that if a child of eleven or twelve wanted to do a lot of playing, Fiji would be just the kind of place to do it.
My father was a teacher at Fulton College, a missionary college where young people from all over the Pacific came to learn how to be teachers, ministers, or accountants. Fulton College was about fifty kilometres north of Suva, and was surrounded by rolling hills, dairy farms, bamboo forests, bunya trees, thick jungle, rivers, creeks and beaches. In other words, exactly the kind of adventuresome place where a kid can not just play, but really play. Serious, military-issue play.
But as anyone who knows anything about children in general – and about children’s books in particular – can tell you, all the adventuresome places in the world are of very little use to someone unless there is another someone. Which is where Shannon enters the scene.
My cousin Shannon was – is – a couple of years younger than me, but as boys we really formed a connection. Lifelong, as it turned out. Part of this was around books, part of it was around play, but almost all of it was around the place where books and play met. We lived in the shaded part of a vast books/play Venn diagram. We would read adventure books like, say, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or Swallows and Amazons, and then, with those books forming a kind of script to our play, we would become Tom and Huck, or the crew of Swallow. Or if not those exact kids, then characters very much like them.
Shannon owned a very impressive library of children’s books. Mine was slightly less impressive. At least, it was until the day my father came home from the post office with a big box from his
university back in Australia. He was studying for his Master of Education degree, and was about to begin a children’s literature unit.
I helped him open the box, and as shafts of golden light burst forth (this is how I remember it) I saw that contained within was a rather impressive and totally instant library of children’s books. For me. And for Shannon too, of course, but mostly for me.
Okay, so they weren’t technically mine, but that didn’t prevent me from taking the entire contents of that box to my room, clearing a shelf of my bookcase, and lining them up, ready to tackle one at a time.
Several of the books in that box would end up as lifelong favourites. The Nargun and the Stars by Patricia Wrightson; Midnite by Randolph Stow; A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle; Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease; Smith by Leon Garfield. (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was in there too, but since Shannon already owned the full set of Narnia books, that one was old news.) The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban was another definite highlight, and now slots in at Number Two on my personal hit-parade of books.
I remember putting one particular book aside simply because it looked … well, kind of boring, to be honest. The image on the front was a washed-out watercolour of a scrawny kid being jostled along by a bunch of sandy-headed boys. It was written by Ivan Southall, and the only book of his I’d previously read had left me underwhelmed. Even the title of this one seemed to be struggling for something interesting to say.
Josh.
Not Josh Gets Jostled or Josh Has a Crappy Day or even Josh Goes to Stay With His Weird Aunt Clara and Has a Ghastly Time of It. Just plain Josh.
That book lay to one side for some time, while I charged like a kid possessed through everything else on that shelf. So many great books! A few duds as well, but mostly good. Lots of good books, and the boring, watercolour excuse for a kids’ book that I couldn’t bring myself to read.
But eventually – mostly because it was made of words, I guess – I picked up Josh, opened it and began to read.
If you don’t mind, I’m now going to give you a bit of background to the book. I’ll try not to include any spoilers, but if I do see one coming I’ll be sure to let you know well in advance.
Josh Plowman is a city boy, born and bred. He’s part of an enormous network of cousins, most of whom have told him that if you want to be considered a proper Plowman, you have to go and stay with Aunt Clara in Ryan Creek. Why? Because that’s what Plowman kids do. Ryan Creek was basically started by Great-grandfather Plowman. He built the famous old timber bridge – everyone knows that. If you’re a Plowman, then you’re Ryan Creek royalty.
Josh doesn’t want to be royalty, especially not in a one-horse town like Ryan Creek. It’s not his style. He just likes reading books and writing poetry. He knows nothing of life in the country, and doesn’t really care to learn. But he senses down deep that he has to do it. After all, he can’t call himself a proper Plowman until he has! He can’t fit into his own family unless he has gritted his teeth and faced up to his scary old meddling aunt, and to the big, nasty, bullying country boys who want to kill him with a cricket ball. Or by drowning him under the old bridge that Great-grandfather Plowman built.
(Sorry, that was a bit of a spoiler. Just so you know, he doesn’t die. But it does get pretty hairy for a while there.)
Now, having considered Josh Plowman, it’s time to consider me, just for a moment. Not 2016 me, but 1981 me. The timid young missionary kid living in a place he doesn’t really know, a place where he doesn’t entirely fit in. A place that oftentimes causes him to wish he could just go home.
Everyone knows that often the best books are the ones that speak to us, the ones that we truly relate to. The ones that make us go, “I know that feeling”. Usually they’re the books that also make us feel okay about our own experiences. When we see a character who is scared, or alone, or stupidly in love, or being unreasonably jealous, it makes us feel just that little bit better about the times we’ve felt that way. That’s kind of the point, I think, especially in books for young people.
For me, Josh was that book. It wasn’t the only book that did that for me, but it was the one that spoke to me the most clearly.
Ivan Southall had one more surprise in store for me, a surprise that contributed to my desire to be a writer. I could name several other books which more directly stoked that fire, but Josh’s role was still important, especially in influencing the kind of writer I would become. This was thanks to a number of sentences in general, but to one sentence in particular. What we will call The Sentence.
First, the many sentences. I have this sneaking suspicion that Josh might have been the first Australian verse novel for young readers. Long before Steven Herrick, Catherine Bateson and others were using free narrative verse to tell longer stories, Ivan Southall had already done it. Not that the text of this book looks very much like verse. But many of the same devices are there: internal narrative; stream of consciousness; short, highly distilled phrases that pack a serious wallop.
Which almost brings me to The Sentence, and I promise to get to it very soon.
When I was in primary school, English was taught a little differently. We had the spelling and the comprehension and the “composition” (just a fancy word for what we now call “creative writing” or “narrative writing”) but we also learned grammar. Proper, “name the subject, predicate and conjunction in this sentence” grammar. Underline the participle phrase. Put a circle around the locational preposition. Then we were tested on it. I know, right?
These days the word processor on your computer will tell you when a sentence isn’t right. In most cases it does this with a green, squiggly line and some comment, such as, Fragmented sentence – consider revising. Back then, in the seventies and eighties, you just had to know that stuff.
I found those rigid rules kind of annoying. I understood that there was a need for grammatical guidelines, mostly to stop society from drifting back to communicating with grunts and confused looks. But at the same time I was starting to stretch my wings as a creative writer, without being quite sure how bendy those rules were, or could be.
So imagine my surprise – and elation – when I read this paragraph, right near the end of Chapter 35, closely followed by The Sentence.
Josh trying to find a bottom to stand on, nothing to hang on to, nothing to put his feet on, nothing but water and darkness and no breath to breathe with.
Josh drowning.
Two words. Josh drowning. No green squiggly line, just one perfect, “incomplete” sentence. Matter-of-fact. No embellishment. Direct. Terrifying.
Yes, I clearly remember reading The Sentence and thinking, Aha! I knew it! Rules can be bent, even snapped in half! Oh happy day! I just knew we were overcomplicating this stuff!
So, now I’m a writer. I hope that one day I’ll be good enough to win the most prestigious children’s literature prize in the world – the Carnegie Medal. It’s only been done once before by an Australian writer – by Ivan Southall, for Josh.
But that’s not why I love this book. The fact that Josh won the Carnegie is not why I value it so highly. After all, most young readers couldn’t care less about things like book prizes. They just want a good story. Don’t they?
They want a story that they can relate to.
They want a story that makes them feel something they recognise, something that makes them feel better about being who they are, about being the way they are and, sometimes, about where they are.
For me, Josh was that book.
Seeing Red
Jaclyn Moriarty
When I was six years old, a girl named Angela called out to the school playground: “If you think you’ve been invited to my birthday party, come and stand here!”
Everyone ran and lined up in front of her. Angela’s family lived in a flat above the local newsagency, so she was the most popular girl in the class. To be invited to her party – to actually see the home above the newsagency, at the same time as ea
ting fairy bread – well, the idea took your breath away. Nobody in that line was breathing.
Angela was holding a stack of white envelopes. As each person reached the front, she checked the stack, and either handed over an envelope or shook her head. Some kids were already weeping. Some had been given envelopes and were celebrating noisily, which seemed insensitive to me. I got to the front of the line. Angela flipped through the pile. She hesitated. She went through again. She gave me an envelope.
I stepped away, light-headed. There was the weight of the envelope in my hand, the brightness of that white. Jacky, it said, which was not how I spell my name. I had a moment of uneasiness about that, but let it go. People never spell my name right. I was used to it. I had an invitation. I began to tear it open.
Then I sensed a kerfuffle in the line. It was breaking up. Angela had moved away, and people were crowding her, “Wait! You haven’t finished giving them out!” but she was pushing through. She was heading for me. She was reaching over. She was pulling the envelope out of my hand.
“This is for Jacky B!” she said. “Not you! Sorry!”
I stared at my empty hands. The sound of Jacky B whooping reached me through a haze.
Also when I was six years old, I liked to pretend I was a circus performer. I walked along the school benches, balancing. These were made of evenly spaced wooden slats. Usually, I slipped and fell through a gap between slats. My leg would get caught. I’d be trapped there for whole lunchtimes. Eventually, Sister Rosalia, the teacher, would come and rescue me by rubbing my leg with warm soapy water. A day or so later, I’d decide to try again.
A girl in my class, Christine W, took an interest in me. She was exactly twice my height. Or anyway, I came up to her shoulder. She liked to squeeze the back of my neck, or slap my arm, or twist my wrist. It all seemed to delight her.
That was the year my mother gave me a pear for little lunch every day. The juice would dribble down my sleeves. I’d get pear juice everywhere. It really depressed me. One day, there was a butterfly cupcake in my bag instead of the pear. I walked towards the playground, holding it before me, admiring the swoop of those cake-wings, the rich red of the jam, astonished.