Dim's Write Stuff

Today's delightful double-whammy comes loaded with well-meaning flavour, colour and fun. These two picture book gems would make great Easter basket additions but are standalone, any time reads, as well.  Hatch and Match  I'm normally wary of seek and find books that use rhyme as a vehicle for treasure hunting, but this inadvertent Easter-suitable title is pure delight. Bunnies are quickly dispensed with as we focus on a tree chockas with chooks, that's chickens to the uninitiated. And what colourful chooks they are, each sporting a unique colour scheme and pattern.  Our sleeping hens are awakened by the dutiful rooster and immediately set out to locate their eggs. Where could they be? Well it's simple if you follow the match and hatch pattern prompts! Spry lyrical narrative and pages and pages filled with eye-popping rainbow colours transforms the reading experience into the best egg hunt, ever ! All tied together with a satisfying reflection on differences and sames. A...

Full confession: I adore the writing style of Susanne Gervay. Her picture books resound with lilting emotion. Her junior novels entertain and engross. Her young adult fiction, gripping and gritty. So, while I’m being upfront and honest, her latest YA , The Edge of Limits was a more exacting reading experience than expected. In Susanne’s own words this novel, delves into adolescent relationships and consent looking into the complexities of boys as they confront sexuality, power, and relationships. Teenage boys are not a species I admit to understanding in great measures. I have never lived with their unique drives, language and emotional tropes, their male ‘smells’. So, reading about 17-year-old Sam and his testosterone imbued school mates as they plough their way through self-actualisation and a school survival camp, was not the proverbial walk through the park. The park was the confronting physical and mental terrain of the Aussie bush. The walk, a challenging journey of re...

Ripping up roots can cause wilt; in saplings at least and, as it turns out, in young human beings like Queenie Jean Anderson. Queenie is a girl with a passion to rock and roll. At least, she plays a mean guitar but what she has in raw talent, she lacks in confidence. Stricken with stage fright and the belief that her ex-bestie, Sparrow, will out best her every time, Queenie chooses to flee at every given opportunity rather than face the possibility of abject failure. Leaving, exit stage left, is one thing but when she and her mother are forced to move from their rented ramshackle home, aka Peachy, things take on a more desperate and tension-filled tone. Salvation comes in the form of temporary refuge in Queenie’s mum’s place of work, the Diamond Sands Seniors Village. Adaptation is the key to survival and Queenie soon becomes the oldies’ favourite but the situation is short-lived and so begins a hopscotch journey from one place of abode to another. Throughout this pell mell of movi...

Katrina Nannestad has well and truly cemented her position as one of Australia’s most accomplished historical fiction writers with her latest novel, Silver Linings . Most of us are aware that clouds have them, silver linings that is, but what exactly do they mean and do they really exist? Nettie Sweeney sure thinks so. Nettie’s story, set in the 1950s, reads as a middle grade novel yet champions Nettie Sweeney as the young protagonist who has just started primary school. Nettie’s tender years, beguiling naivety and childlike foibles are neatly offset however by the fact that she is the fourth daughter of a farming family with the ability to write and think beyond her years. Couple this with the assured determination of a person set on visiting the moon and you’ve got a character exploding with charm, wit and wonder. In short, Nettie is larger-than-life adorbs! Nettie’s singular desire is for a mother to love and cuddle having lost hers at birth. Her dreams come true in the shape o...

Family. Always there. Usually supportive. Supremely significant. And, forever changing. A shift in family dynamics may be as inconsequential as a new goldfish or as disturbing as moving house. It might be easily accepted and temporary in nature like a visiting relative or as permanently disruptive as a new addition to the family. Double that turmoil when not one new sibling but two appear and you've got twice the potential for trouble. Imagine the confusion and disorder a young child might feel, how these emotions might galvnize into feelings of displacement, resentment and pure fury when faced with a pair of cute but persistent attention hoggers.  Now pretend you are a young pigeon with the whole world before you, keen to keep on exploring its wonders and your capabilities only to have your dreams curtailed by two very small, very noisy, extremely annoying baby brothers. This is what our favourite feathered friend, Pippa encounters following the arrival of Pepi and Penn, her new...

As the year rolls on, I am once again involved in the hugely gratifying task of presenting specially curated creative and higher thinking workshops to gifted and talented students throughout SE QLD. The programs are facilitated by G.A.T.E WAYS Education who stipulate a new fresh outlook on a plethora of subjects designed to take students deeper and more decisively into the worlds of language, science, maths, technology and more. For presenters, this is an all-consuming challenge but one that helps stimulate the creative verve and expand knowledge borders. And my latest, adventure? Well, it’s exploring the overlapping territories of lurvvve. Love. What it is. How it affects us. Why it’s the essence of art, history, humanity … life . And, its implications for hook-you-in-never-let-you-go storytelling. This week’s (very belated) list of Book Bites therefore naturally revolves around this omnipresent, omnipotent emotion – love. All in the name of ‘research’, you understand. 😊 This Is ...

I'm not super great at make vids. I still can't sing in tune. Colouring in between the lines is the extent of my illustrative prowess but ... I do know a thing or two about pigeons. So when the youngsters at many of the schools I visit wanted to know more too and specifically, know what Pippa's next adventure was, well I had to do something. So ... have I got news for you!  If you have been craving to find out what ever happened to that pertinacious pigeon, Pippa well wonder no more. Pippa is back! and ready to soar to new heights but two little weights keep dragging her down – her troublesome twin brothers! Pippa longs to take off on more adventures but the two new noisy additions to her family continually thwart plans and divert attention. Sound familiar? She loves her brothers, Pepi and Penn but their constant mess and cries for attention are driving her batty! How can she be a good big sister and still have fun? Find out by joining our feisty pigeon on her latest feath...

I’ve recently been examining the notion of friendship; what ignites it, how enduring it is, why it is simultaneously strong yet exquisitely fragile. Friendship cannot exist exclusively but is enriched with kindness and compassion, understanding and infinite patience. Friendship is, I guess, love. And love encompasses the best bits of friendship. This small handful of picture books encapsulates this notion in better ways than I could ever explain. I invite you to get better acquainted … Old Fellow Liz Anelli’s homely and divinely detailed drawings are the perfect accompaniment to Christopher Cheng’s touching tale about two old fellows; an affable elderly man and his furry black dog. They share their days together wondering the suburban streets of their neighbourhood and ambling through the local parks. Life around them is a riot of colour and action. They walk, muse, rest, and remember when they used to play ball and dash after birds. Now is more of a time of simply sitting and smelli...

The alluring title and intricate cover design of this novel provides instant grab but it’s the immediate saturation of raw authentic atmosphere that really pulls you into Salama’s story. Debut author Zoulfa Katouh pours her heart and soul into Salama but does so with enough measured restraint and humour to ensure this exposé of Syria’s present day atrocities appeals not only to adult readers but also its intended YA audience. And, it’s an allure that lingers all the way to the heart touching end. Salama is a young Syrian girl living in Homs, a city located on the Orontes River in western Syria. A city razed to the ground by Syria’s ugly ongoing Civil war. She lives amongst the destruction surviving on less than nothing, enduring nerves more frayed than the fabric of any remaining normality. Every ounce of energy is directed into maintaining the welfare of others, namely those brought into the local hospital in which she works to be cobbled back together again. She mends, stitches, s...

The invisible fabric of friendship can hide many warps and weaves. What may at first appear beautiful and enduring, can quickly unravel when subjected to unprecedented change. All The Best Liars is contemporary psychological thriller that tests the strength of such a fabric between childhood besties, Syd, Rain and Brie with devastating results. Inseparable at the age of nine years old, the trio share a comradery that shields them from the harsh relentless glare of poverty under an even more ruthless Californian desert climate. They all reside in a cul de sac high in a mountainous suburb whose main feature is desolate nothingness. But the girls play and exist with scant regard for the more affluent communities downhill from them, that is until the day Brie and her widowed belligerent father leave for richer prospects. This turn of change ignites a loathing in Rain towards Brie, an abject rejection of her perceived pseudo existence and popular-girl clique mentally, simultaneously push...

I read What We All Saw some months ago and what I can’t remember of the storyline is better ingrained in the intense feeling of creepy spinechilling awe that distilled to pure enjoyment. So much so, I want to re-read it and have recommended it as Book Club read. Mike Lucas is no stranger to books and curating stories however this, his first foray into YA, is astonishing. Swift moving narrative is gilt with historic horror, suspense-filled seesawing moments and just enough humour to keep the whole thing real. References for this tale involving four tweens embarking on a nightmarish summer of terror and its resemblances to The Body (Stand By M e) and IT are many but I honestly didn’t make these initial comparisons because Lucas’ writing is so assured and vivid, I was never not in the cul de sac or by Hags Drop with Sam and his mates. In fact, for me, there are more imbued elements of Yann Mantel’s, Life Of Pi in terms of surreal reality. There is no mistaking the premise of this ...

God love our mums. I know, I know; it’s no longer Mother’s Day. But that’s not quite true is it? Each and every day is a testament, or should be, to the stoic, tireless, selfless, fatigue-hazed, love-filled actions of mothers – everywhere. They walk with their hearts exposed, vulnerable, fierce, at times, uncertain. Always there, which is the crux of this unique picture book on motherhood, A Mother Is a House . Rather like a kangaroo nursing her joey in her pouch, safe, contained and snug, I cherished pregnancy, mourning the day when bub would eventually want out. But how does a baby perceive this perplexing first coming of age? What do they make of their mother? Sustainer of life. Guardian. Advisor. Mountain. House? A Mother Is a House affords readers a baby’s fascinating view point of this relationship from moments before their birth to their first tentative steps some 12 months later. Brief descriptive declarations carry reader and baby through the day to day activities baby’...