Get ready for NAIDOC Week with Fremantle Press’s Indigenous titles

As NAIDOC Week approaches, take advantage of our wide range of Indigenous titles for children and young adults to join in the community celebrations. Some Indigenous authors are still available for school and community events and can be booked using this author booking form.

This year the festival runs from Sunday 8 to Sunday 15 July, following the theme ‘Because of her, we can!’ The nationwide festival celebrates the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Junior fiction

Fremantle Press’s most recent Indigenous title is the latest book in the Waarda series, Bush and Beyond by Tjalaminu Mia, Jessica Lister, Cheryl Kickett-Tucker and Jaylon Tucker. Written by three generations of authors, the book is about the older generation sharing knowledge about country with the younger. Also in this series are story collections Cyclones and Shadows and Eagle, Crow and Emu. Teaching activities and bookmarks are available for all three titles.

Middle fiction

Indigenous author Sally Morgan’s novel Sister Heart is already an award-winner. In 2016 the book won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and that same year was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Inky Awards, and named an Honour Book at the 2016 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards.

Now, this relevant and engaging verse novel has been shortlisted for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Children’s Literature Award. Sister Heart is a poignant story of family and kinship following a young Aboriginal girl as she’s taken from the north of Australia and sent to an institution in the distant south. There she slowly makes a life for herself and, in the face of tragedy, finds strength in new friendships.

Young adult

In September, Fremantle Press will publish Meet Me at the Intersection, an anthology of short fiction, memoir and poetry by authors who are First Nations, People of Colour, LGBTIQA+ or living with a disability. In this diverse collection, 15 writers explore issues of race, gender, sexuality and culture.

Meet Me at the Intersection grew out of the initiative Voices from the Intersection, led by authors Ambelin Kwaymullina and Rebecca Lim. The initiative seeks to support Own Voices stories by emerging young adult and children’s authors, illustrators and publishing professionals by providing avenues to publication or mentorship, and by broadening the idea of what it means to be ‘Australian’ in our cultural sphere. Teaching notes and packs of 12 mixed bookmarks are available for this title.

To find more Indigenous titles for your school, please take a look at our catalogues or browse our website.