#anna fienberg

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Borrowed Light by Anna Fienberg (1999)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onJul 26

[mpare5]

‘What I Wish for Every Child’ by Authors and Illustrators who presented at the Celebrate Reading National Conference, The Literature Centre, Fremantle, WA.

Before presenters shared their ‘Wish List’, Australian Children’s Laureate, 2016 to 2017, Leigh Hobbs read a letter from Glenda Millard. She wished all, ‘a wonderful time drenched… in the solace… and joy’ of inspirational creatives.

3 Photos courtesy Google Images

Glenda Millard

*photos of Glenda Millard images courtesy of Google.

Leigh Hobbs wished for every school to have a library with a librarian because ‘every school kid deserves one’. For children to be given ‘time’ to create, write, draw and read, free from the ‘pressure of tests and ranking’. His bolshie characters, Old Tom, Mr Chicken and Horrible Harriet continue to befriend kids in libraries, bookstores and throughout the stratosphere.

Meg McKinlay wished for ‘spaces of nothingness’ to allow children ‘dreaming time and creative time’. For children to know that away from the digital world ‘being bored’ was a chance to use their imagination — to think what else could they do. Meg’s fondest childhood memories were jumping on their bikes, exploring the bush and discovering the unexpected.

Gus Gordan wished for ‘all’ kids to have access to books. Books allowed children the chance to see ‘what’s outside themselves, outside their community, outside in the world’ with all its possibilities.

Mark Wilson wished for kids to grow-up into a world he had as a kid. A world with nature’s greatest places, ‘with things called forests and… beaches’. A place where turtles could nest safe from hotel lights. He wanted that sort of world for kids.

Jeannie Baker wished for every ‘single’ child ‘to love and be loved’. For children to have a supportive home, a peaceful environment and ‘to be creative and not be criticised’. To go to school with time to ‘exercise their curiosity… use their imagination’ and find and make things. Jeannie wanted children to think for themselves, play outside and engage with nature with feelings of awe and wonder. Some children experience a fear of nature – ‘Nature deficit syndrome’. ‘What one fears, one destroys. What one loves, one defends.’

Anna Fienberg wished every child to ‘find a friend in a book – in a character’. To have a friend early-on allowed them ‘to feel validated and not so alone’. Access to books allowed children to enjoy the pleasure of reading and to discover where a book could take them.

Kyle Hughes-Odgers wished children ‘time’ to experience creative freedom and a sense of place. To have time in their day with ‘no judgement’ to make whatever they wanted to make using their hands. This ‘promotes creative thinking which promotes critical thinking’ and helps push individual thought. Having ‘time’ to express opinions and views was important as it allowed a sense of validation and that you mattered. All this is away from digital distractions.

Deborah Abela wished for ‘every single child to feel equal, included and accepted’. Regardless of where they came from, gender, size or shape, intelligence, sexuality, disability or ‘a million other things that make us different’. As a kid she was called ‘a wog and a daygo’ and had rocks thrown at her on the way home from school. In her student workshops, kids know they count, are noticed, fit in and that ‘being different really counted’ especially ones who had ‘really good sword fights’.

Literature Centre Education Officer and Conference MC, Sasha Burbridge made a wish for teachers — ‘Time’ in their day to allow kids to ‘enjoy the beauty of Australian books… and appreciate reading for reading sake’. Away from constrictions of the curriculum or whether children have eaten before coming to school.

Congratulations Lesley Reece AM, Director of The Literature Centre, Fremantle. The sold out 2017 Celebrate Reading National Conference was a credit to you and your amazingly formidable team.

Thank you from Jenny Stubbs, Story Arts Festival Ipswich (SAFI) co-ordinator and Vice President Book Links (Qld) Inc. And Maria Parenti-Baldey, primary teacher, writer, blogger at www.bigsisterblogs.com.

Leslee Reece AM and Maria

Jenny, Mark and Shirley

Conference MC, Sasha

Creatives’ Wish for Every Child ‘What I Wish for Every Child’ by Authors and Illustrators who presented at the Celebrate Reading National Conference, The Literature Centre, Fremantle, WA.

[bookshelvesfordays]

"Of course, there were a few surprises, as life rarely turns out exactly as we imagine."

[kerfluffle]

Witches, warlocks, gremlins, orgres - they're just words,labels. Haven't you noticed that when people are labelled, their faces disappear  —Anna Fienberg

[schoolmagazine]

Sally Morgan, an Aboriginal writer, has written a book about her life. She called it My Place. In it she examines the place of Aborigines in white society - she traces the lives of her mother, her grandmother and uncle. And she finds pools of sadness along the way... As a little girl, Sally learnt to hide her Aboriginality. She was taught that it was something shameful: that it mean she was inferior. She remembers: "The kids at school had... begun asking us what country we came from. This puzzled me because, up until then, I'd thought we were the same as them. If we insisted that we came from Australia, they'd reply, 'Yeah, but what about ya parents, but they didn't come from Australia.' One day, I tackled Mum about it as she washed the dishes. 'What do you mean, "Where do we come from?'" 'I mean, what country. The kids at school want to know what country we come from. They reckon we're not Aussies. Are we Aussies, mum?' Mum was silent. Nan grunted in a cross sort of way, then got up from the table and walked outside. 'Come on, Mum, what are we?' 'What do the kids at school say?' 'Anything. Italian, Greek, Indian.' 'Tell them you're Indian.' I got really excited, then. 'Are we really? Indian!' It sounded so exotic. 'When did we come here?' I added. 'A long time ago,' mum replied. 'Now, no more questions. You just tell them you're Indian.' It was good to finally have an answer and it satisfied our playmates. They could quite believe we were Indian, they just didn't want us pretending we were Aussies when we weren't." Being Aboriginal in white society was so painful that Sally's mother had tried to forget her own past, and that of her children. But it was just this mystery that urged Sally, years later, to investigate her origins. Lying under so much sadness and confusion were the threads that tied her own family together. In her book, Sally researched and recorded her uncle Arthur's story (1893 - 1950): "My name is Arthur Corunna. I can't tell you how old I am exactly, because I don't know... The early years of my life were spent on the Corunna Downs Station in the Pulbara, that's in the north of Western Australia... I remember seein' native people all chained up around the neck and hands, walkin' behind a policeman. They often passed the station that way. I used to think, what have they done to be treated like that. Made me want to cry, just watchin'. Sometimes, we'd hear about white men goin' shooting blackfellas for sport, just like we was some kind of animal. We'd all get scared, then. We didn't want that to happen to us." ...Arthur was taken from his home and placed in a mission. Missions and reserves were institutions set up by the Church and the government in order to teach Aborigines the "white people's ways". Aborigines were uprooted from their families and told to forget their own culture, their mothers and their fathers... Arthur remembers his last day: "They told my other and the others we'd be back soon. We wouldn't be gone for long, they said. People were callin', 'Bring us back a shirt, bring us this, bring us that.' They didn't realise they wouldn't be seein' us no more. I thought they wanted us educated so we could help run the station some day, I was wrong. When they came to get me, I clung to my mother and tried to sing* them. I wanted them to die. I was too young, I didn't know how to sing them properly. I cried and cried, calling to my mother, 'I don't want to go, I don't want to go!' She was my favourite. I loved her. I called, 'I want to stop with you, I want to stop with you!' I never saw her again."

- Growing Up in Australia, Anna Fienberg and Sally Morgan, Touchdown: School Magazine, The New South Wales Department of Education, Number 8, Volume 73, 1988

[pabloestaqui]

Se solo si potesse vivere tra parentesi, si potrebbe prendere chi vuoi dentro con te, e il resto del mondo aspetterebbe fuori… a guardare educatamente dall’altra parte. Se si sbucasse fuori dalla parentesi, la vita continuerebbe come prima. Non ci sarebbero conseguenze e per una volta i muri si troverebbero dove vuoi tu. Se solo fosse possibile. Ma le parentesi esistono solo nei libri. E il mondo gira di conseguenza.

Anna Fienberg, Di luce riflessa

[duplicitousbitch]

"...when the sky is dark and the moon is full, the witch will come creeping." Leo has heard the stories since he was a baby. "Don't go near the lake, little ones -- she waits there, under the water," mothers say. Countless children and adults have mysteriously disappeared, and the legends of the witch's powers have grown. Only one person has ever seen the witch -- Leo's grandfather -- and he was forever changed.

This is the book that got me hooked into reading fantasy novels. I was 12 when i first read it and i found it at the school library. I was the only person to loan it out for 2 years till i got my own copy. well i didnt give other people a chance to loan it out. I still read it regularly and it is a must read for anyone. 

[the-word-is-regret]

"A planet represents a balance between the gravitational force that seeks to collapse it and the electromagnetic force that props up its molecules. It sounds like an awfully delicate balance. A struggle that makes you shiver. If you added just a little more gravity, a planet could light up and become a star. A slightly different amount and it would collapse."

Borrowed Light by Anna Fienberg