Booktalkers at SLV

On 31 July at State Library of Victoria, the Booktalkers focus was Middle years reading (for students in Grade 5 to Year 8).  The first part of the evening Gabrielle Wang spoke about her Poppy books in Our Australian girl series  and how she came to write them.  Knowing that many year 7 students at my school were avidly reading this series it was timely to hear Gabrielle talk about using aspects of her family history and going back to China to a time before they came to settle in Victoria during the Gold Rush era.  This explained having a Chinese father for Poppy,  but Poppy’s mother was Aboriginal.  For this character Gabrielle explained how she  had to do a lot of research as the culture was so different from what she gre up with and new.  To make sure that she had it right, she spent many hours talking to Aboriginal elders before even starting to write this character into her books, and then towards the end of each book,  her draft was read by and Aboriginal elder to ensure that she had  the necessary details right.

Kate Constable author of Singer of songs and Crow country (short listed for CBCA 2012) spoke about how her early life in PNG and the books that she read whilst there,  influenced the type of settings in some of her books – more English landscape than Australian. In writing Crow country she has elements of Aboriginal life and culture.  She also consulted with Aboriginal elders as part of researching for this time slip story.  She felt this was a way of connecting with Australia and its Aboriginal Dreamtime and spirituality.

For the second part of the evening, Tom Taylor spoke about Graphic novels and how he came to write them and what is involved. He also spoke about some of the issues involved when creating graphic novels that are based on some of the well-known super heroes.  Loved to hear this as many students are really into Graphic novels and they are not my thing.

All in all an interesting evening.