20 Apr Book Reviews: for Anzac Day
Here are a few excellent books for school or family libraries, as we remember all those who have fought for our freedom especially at this point in time and on special days like Anzac Day.
Books are available on line or through you local library.
When The War Is Over
by Jackie French & illustrated by Anne Spudvilas. (Angus & Robertson/ HarperCollins Children’s Books, hardback, RRP$24.99) Age Group 8+ years
This is an outstanding book to remind us all of the good and bad of humanity and should be read often.
Created as a ballad about the learning and yearning conflicts cause, each page has a stanza annotated (and illustrated) by a theme related to a particular war from WWI to the current world Peacekeepers. Each page is illustrated by Anne Spudvilas with a mixture of materials including collage and charcoal. The simple drawing of the Vietnamese father handing his small child to a army ‘digger’ with dark outlines of helicopters in the background is outstanding.
‘The crying and the pleading
As the final chapters rose
The helpless and the bleeding —
At war’s bitter, bloody close.’
This magnificently illustrated picture book is not for littlies but highly recommended for all ages as a reminder of how hard won peace is. A book to keep and cherish.
Jackie French reads this book here
One Minute’s Silence
by David Metzenthen & illustrated by Michael Camilleri (Allen & Unwin, paperback, RRP$15.25) Age Group 8+ years
A moving and powerful story about the meaning of Remembrance Day, drawing on the Australian and Turkish battle at Gallipoli.
The beautiful prose brings to mind things to think about during a minute’s silence for a classroom of kids on Remembrance Day; the thoughts of those on the battlefront in a boat landing at Gallipoli or what they thought about as they buried their dead during a break in the fighting
WINNER: 2015 Prime Minister’s Literary Award, Children’s Fiction WINNER: CBCA Book of the Year, Crichton Award for New Illustrators, 2015 HONOUR BOOK: CBCA Picture Book of the Year, 2015
The Great Gallipoli Escape
by Jackie French (Angus & Robertson/HarperCollins Children’s Books RRP$19.99) Age Group 8+ years
Another wonderful, semi non-fiction historical story from Jackie French. A book she claims not have wanted to write but was persuaded to…and we are all the better for it. The book comes to life through first hand accounts from the soldiers there in Gallipoli (November 1915) who told their stories to the Australian and New Zealand RSL oral history project.
Based on these first hand accounts young Nipper, Spud, Bluey and Wallaby Joe tell their stories. Interwoven cleverly into their stories are rhymes from ‘Another Attempt at an Anzac Alphabet’; ‘The Anzac Book 1915’, as well as excerpts of other written material, which work brilliantly to cover the bits of history that we may not remember. This is the ‘untold’ story of how 150,000 men, horses and equipment were evacuated over three nights by small waiting ships, without a single life lost.
