Sneak Peek: Helping Little Star, by Sally Morgan and Blaze Kwaymullina

 When Little Star falls off the edge of Night Sky, he meets Python, Dingo and Kangaroo. Will his new friends be able to help him get home?

From an award-winning mother and son team.

Blaze Jake Kwaymullina loves writing children's books and hearing kid's opinions of books. He also enjoys working in the area of oral history and helping people get their stories told. He currently works as a lecturer.

Sally Morgan is both a writer and a visual artist. Sally loves animals and is passionate about the Australian bush. Sally has written books for both children and adults. Her autobiography, My Place, is an Australian classic. It has been published in a special children's edition called Sally's Story. Together with her adult children, Sally wrote the Stopwatch series. Sally is a respected visual artist whose work has won international acclaim. She is represented in galleries in Australia, US and elsewhere. Sally is a descendant of the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of northwest Western Australia.

 

Learn more about Helping Little Star here.

Bob Graham Talks About "A Bus Called Heaven"

This month, Bob Graham’s latest award-winning picture book, A Bus Called Heaven, is out in paperback. Here, Bob tells us a bit about where the book came from; next week, we’ll have a post on how he got started with picture books.

  

Where did A Bus Called Heaven come from?

There's a bus with “Heaven” on it, which I had noticed on the way to pick up my grandchildren, as I do every Thursday afternoon. It's parked alongside the road. I passed that for about three weeks, became increasingly interested in it, and I asked my granddaughter Rosie about it, because it was parked right opposite her best friend Olive's house. And she said "Oh yes, we've had a look inside."

 

I said "Oh, really?"

"Yeah."

"Well, what was inside?"

She said, "Oh, a lot of candles burning in there."

And right then, the thing that interested me most of all, was not so much the bus itself or what was inside, but the image of the small child, on tiptoe, trying to peer into the windows of a bus with “Heaven” written across it.

And that was the thing that I came home and put into my notebook and that was really the starting point of the book.

And it kind of … it went on from there.

How does it continue on?

I mean it's - the process is one that I guess, as with most people writing stories, I mean you sit down there and you have a beginning, and I ask myself what happens next, what happened before, what happened afterwards, how does it, how does the whole thing sort of travel and in that, as I often say, there's a lot of looking out the window over the houses opposite and filling in the story with words, sometimes with pictures, and patching them together pretty much...I work it out as a I go along. I have a lovely old time, I do.

You make it sound like a perfect daydream.

Well, it's kind of my hobby, I love doing it, I enjoy it. And can't think whatever else I could do now.

Read more about A Bus Called Heaven here.

A Day in the Life of Author-Illustrator Jedda Robaard

Author-illustrator Jedda Robaard walks us through her day. Learn more about Jedda's marvellous Tom and Tilly here.

Spotlight: James Foley On What You Should Never Feed A Lion

Western Australian author/illustrator James Foley is always on the go, presenting at schools and libraries and running fun workshops at bookshops in WA. Here's a sneak peek inside his studio, along with a few very important Top 5s. 

1. Top 5 Things You Should Definitely Not Feed A Lion: 

• a house
• a bomb 
• the principal 
• the Eiffel Tower 
• a toilet 

2. Top 5 things children tell me I definitely should feed a lion: 

• a house 
• a bomb 
•  the principal 
• the Eiffel Tower 
• a toilet 

Top 5 Things you definitely should not feed small children or lions: 

• Well you should never feed small children to lions, and you should never feed lions to small children.
• BUT, you can try feeding larger children to lions (it's more of a satisfying meal) and you can try feeding a single small lion to a group of children (I don't think they'd be able to polish off more than one lion but it depends on the size of the group and the size of the children).
• Small children and lions should also never eat chewing gum, or anything else that will stick to their hair or their mane - or their parents' hair or mane.
• Small children and lions should never eat anything they find down the back of the couch.
• Small children and lions should never eat tuna mornay. (It just tastes really gross).
  
  

3 Things every hungry lion should have: 

• good table manners 
• a large supply of digestive biscuits 
• a well-stocked litter tray 

Learn more about James, lions, and little boys who are handy with a toothbrush here.