One nice thing about Ben’s work on the Real Pigeons series (Book 4 is out now) is that he and I now notice pigeons much more than we used to. There are lots of different pigeons in America, too – the little brown torcazas, with their feathers like scales,...
My reading last year was shaped by my travels – in Japan and Korea in April and May, and South America in the second half of the year. I was surprised at the paucity of titles on Japan and Korea in English – reflecting, I suppose, white Australians’ indifference...
Some artists include their effort in their finished work, and we value it, in part, because it was hard to do. Some artists ask a lot of their audience, and we value their work because it’s hard to understand. Some – especially in forms, like books for children,...
The Wattle Tree has been in shops for a fortnight now, and to celebrate Ben Wood and I launched it at Shearer’s Bookshop in Leichhardt. We could not have asked for a better night. There were friends and family, champagne and scones, and lots of children from the...
For the past week or so, the illustrator Ben Wood and I have been doing a series of creative exercises to celebrate the publication of our book The Wattle Tree. Each day we spent half an hour responding to a theme; I’ve been posting the results here on the site....
