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Which novels are Australian high school English students studying?
This list is collected from online chats about children’s books studied in Australian high schools. Comments are from teachers who have used these books in class in 2020. Australian states and territories set quotas for the minimum amount of Australian content. In Victoria, for example, it’s a third. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas…
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Bravado by William Trevor Short Story Analysis
If you think you’re too old to write about contemporary young characters, take your cue from Irish short story master William Trevor, who wrote “Bravado”, about young people and night-clubbing culture, at almost 80 years of age.
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In A Dark, Dark Room And Other Scary Stories
In A Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories written by Alvin Schwartz was first published in 1971 for emergent readers ready for scary… but not too scary. I recently looked closely at a modern picture book called Creepy Carrots, another excellent example of a ‘scary’ story perfectly pitched at 4-6 year olds. This collection…
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Creating A Fairytale World
To a modern audience, what makes a setting feel ‘fairytale’? What is it about the tone, style and plot? I argue here that what makes a fairytale setting feel ‘fairytale’ is mostly the ‘fairytale logic’. Just as we know, almost intuitively, that a particular narrative is a fairy tale when we read it, it seems…
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Childhood Horror: Why are kid things so scary?
Here’s the thing about horror: It can so easily turn into accidental comedy. Watch the original 1960s Twilight Zone series and what was once genuinely scary now offers a family-night laugh. An inverse is also true: What we once considered fun, innocent, cosy and child-friendly will morph over time into something sinister. In the second…
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Tight Times by Shook Hazen and Schart Hyman Analysis
Tight Times (1979) is an American picture book written by Barbara Shook Hazen and illustrated in graphite pencil by Trina Schart Hyman. Tight Times also happens to be the first ever picture book read by LeVar Burton on America’s Reading Rainbow series back in 1983. I can see why they chose it. This short picture…
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Ty’s One-Man Band by Pitts Walter and Tomes Analysis
Ty’s One-Man Band (1980) is a picture book written by Mildred Pitts Walter and illustrated by Margot Tomes. This is a good mentor text if you’re writing a picture book with plenty of rhythmic onomatopoeia. If reading to modern kids, they might find this slow, quiet picture book a bit more exciting if encouraged to…
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Little House On The Prairie Analysis
Should parents expose our modern kids to Little House On The Prairie, given the uncomfortable realities?
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Old Mother Frost Fairy Tale Analysis
Old Mother Frost” is a German fairy tale also known as “Mother Holle”, “Mother Hulda” and “Frau Holle”.
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Rich As Stink by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
Rich as Stink is a short story by Canadian writer Alice Munro included in the 1998 collection The Love Of A Good Woman. Gaslighting, parentification, spousification, self-objectification, coercive control… People living in 1974 did not have ready access to the language of psychology and found it difficult to describe emotionally abusive relationships, let alone talk…
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Gingerbread Girl by Stephen King Short Story Analysis
“The Gingerbread Girl” by Stephen King is a long short story by American writer Stephen King. Find it in Just After Sunset (2008).
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Meal One by Cutler and Oxenbury Analysis
Meal One is a picture book written by Ivor Cutler, Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, first published 1971.
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Emotion In Storytelling: Kindness and Pathos
How does a storyteller create pathos in an audience? It’s not done by making a character sad. Nor is it done by simply killing a character off. Characters extending kindness to others is a far more reliable trick.
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The Cat In The Hat by Dr Seuss: Archetypal Carnivalesque
The Cat in the Hat is a 1957 children’s book written and illustrated by the American author Theodor Geisel, using the pen name Dr. Seuss. I keep mentioning this book as an archetypal example of the carnivalesque story subgenre in children’s literature but I’ve never actually broken that down, until now! THE REVOLUTIONARY POWER OF…
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Magic Words and Spells
In children’s fantasy, enchanted realism and magical realism, there is often an arc word (leitwort) which enters popular lexicon, or sticks in the mind long after the reader leaves the story. These magic words sometimes become a part of the child’s own imaginative play, an improvised version of early childhood fan fiction. Where Do Magic…