Category: Subjects & themes
We’re all familiar with school sports carnivals but how familiar are you with writing competitions? This guest post by author Melinda Tognini discusses writing competitions for young people. It is a great resource for teachers who have talented young writers in their classrooms. A downloadable poster is also available.
Kids and parents can help create a rainbow collage as part of a new exhibition at the State Library of Western Australia’s Story Place Gallery this month.
Swimming on the Lawn by Yasmin Hamid follows the adventures of Farida, who lives with her family in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Sudanese culture and customs are brought to life, from the ubiquitous tea service and hearty breakfasts to the commemoration of Muslim holidays and the rites of birth and death.
We have class sets of our free teaching activity; ‘Do you know your Aussie animals?’ available to order or download now. In the meantime, author Deb Fitzpatrick talks about her new novel, The Spectacular Spencer Gray, and why it features Australia’s most endangered mammal.
Find out how to get the latest free bookmarks and teaching activities from Fremantle Press.
I Love Me by Sally Morgan and Ambelin Kwaymullina is longlisted for the Australian Book Industry’s award for Small Publisher’s Children’s Book of the Year.
The world premiere of Hellie Turner’s The Lighthouse Girl is set to take place in Albany, the birthplace of the much-loved Anzac story. Based on Dianne Wolfer’s acclaimed books, Lighthouse Girl and Light Horse Boy, the play will premiere at the Albany Entertainment Centre on 22 April before its Perth season at the State Theatre […]
Dropping In by WA author Geoff Havel has been chosen for the prestigious 2017 IBBY Selection of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities. This is the only Australian book to be selected and one of just 50 books selected worldwide.
Red Read’s life takes an alarming turn when his mother sells him to an infamous smuggler plying his trade off the north-west coast in the closing days of the 19th century. Author Norman Jorgensen provides a sneak preview.
Sally Morgan received award recognition for the second time this week with the announcement that her verse novel Sister Heart is an honour book for older readers in the 2016 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book Awards. It follows the book’s shortlisting for a Gold Inky, which was announced on Monday.
Sally Tinker of S. Tinker Inc. is the world’s foremost inventor under the age of 12 and creator of Brobot: Just as a Brother Should Be (patent pending). Fremantle Press is offering five lucky schools the chance to win two special Brobot gift packs: one for the classroom and one for the person who designs […]
The Indigenous Support Unit at Central TAFE was donated a beautiful portrait of author May O’Brien, which was painted by Geraldine Carrington in a workshop organised by Goldie Cannon a few years ago.
Sister Heart by Sally Morgan has been shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year. The awards, which are celebrating their 70th year, are the most influential and highly respected in Australia.
We All Sleep by Ezekiel Kwaymullina will be read aloud on a new episode of Play School for ABC Children’s TV to air later this year.
Representation matters, including in picture book illustrations. Perhaps especially in illustrations, because children are fluent in the language of art in a way that most adults are not. There is no aspect of an illustration that escapes the attention of a child, and this means that to create art for children is to speak to an audience more attuned to the nuances of representation than yourself. This is one of the reasons why the misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in illustration – or the misrepresentation of other diverse peoples, for that matter – should never be dismissed as being ‘only a picture book’.
Sally Morgan’s new book, Sister Heart, was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award today. Poignantly written from the child’s perspective, Sister Heart tells the story of a young Aboriginal girl’s experience as part of the Stolen Generations.
What difference does it make if the characters in young adult novels swear? From time to time, publishers are contacted by parents or schools who are concerned by the appearance in YA fiction of (to quote an editor of T. S. Eliot) words ending in ‘uck’ or ‘ugger’.
Artist and author Sally Morgan shares her highlights from the inaugural Spinifex Story Writing Camp. I spent the last week of June participating in workshops at Tjuntjuntjara Remote School with three amazing people – Karen and Tina from the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) and illustrator Ann James.
Children’s publisher Cate Sutherland discusses the trials and the triumphs of publishing children’s picture books. The most common misconception about picture books is that because they are short and written for children they must be easy to write.
Need a last-minute Anzac Day activity? Why not get your students to create and use semaphore flags? The semaphore signalling method was used to communicate important military information, home-front anxieties and, eventually, hopes for a more peaceful world.
Drawing on fascinating archival material, and interweaving fact with fiction, in this video award-winning author Dianne Wolfer deftly recreates the story of Fay Howe, the little girl from Breaksea Island. In doing so she depicts the hardships of those left at home during WWI — waiting, wondering and hoping.
Alice Nelson is a novelist who won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award and was named Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist in 2009. Here she talks about her latest book After This: Survivors of the Holocaust speak.
In a first for WA children’s books Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Caterpillar and Butterfly is one of two Indigenous titles turned into apps suitable for Android and iOS tablets.
Dropping In author Geoff Havel discusses why political correctness and children’s fiction shouldn’t always go hand in hand.