A book launch! I hear you exclaim. Where? When? What? Um, well, I regret to inform that you have missed that particular book party boat - the official book launching IRL event hoo-ha for Oswald Messweathertook place in April. But wait! The good ship YouTube is still floating mine and Ozzie's boat and YOU can enjoy just about every riveting moment of the day right there, right now! Hurrah!
Brian Falkner with Dim and Ozzie
Dimity Powell … seems to have the ability to touch on subjects that in other hands would seem worthy or didactic, and to make them heartbreakingly real and emotional, in a way that is accessible to both children and adults. It is beautifully illustrated by Siobhan McVey. Brian Falkner, children’s author, interview
With very little professional help (the hubster filmed it all on his phone, phew!), a lot of excellent support by Yvonne Mes and the crew at The Mad Hatters Bookshop in Manly (thanks Laura and Isabel!) a brilliant creative cast of on-set extras (all of you who crammed in with masks in place to join in the jubilations, thank you!) and the tireless paper boat engineering expertise supplied by my gracious parents (couldn't have done that without you!), this was a truly memorable day. Watch it now! Just click on the clip below.
Boats were made, ideas exchanged. Stories were read and epiphanies revealed. It was a morning of casual creativity and informal information sharing. And Oswald, aka Ozzie, never once felt the urge to jiggle or jitter or count his crayons. A momentous first step forward in spreading awareness and appreciation of young children laboring under the yoke of OCD. We can always do better to make more of a difference and provide more support but I hope picture books like Oswald Messweather are a positive springboard from where these discussions can fly.
Twelve-year-old Matthew Corbin is your regular pre-teen boy living in an unspectacular cul-de-sac deep in British suburbia. The major difference between him and the other inhabitants of Chestnut Close however is the state of his red-raw hands and tortured mind and the fact that he barely steps outside his terraced-home second story bedroom. Matthew is afflicted with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD and can barely function as a result. From his fishbowl vantage point, Matthew keeps track of his neighbours, dutifully recording their every movement, their comings and goings, and their habitual rituals in his notebooks. In this way we are introduced to the residents and their characteristic irks and quirks from the get go in a way that is both intriguing and comical. Matthew’s observations allude to his condition; he is both analytical and detailed in his approach. The orderliness of his notations suggest a mind used to repetition and accuracy, an intense desire to ‘get things r...
Tristan Bancks signed my copy of Detention with a note hoping it kept me turning pages . This book lived up to that promise and then some. Packed with page-turning tension and relentless drama, this is one middle grade novel that may cause a few kids to miss their dinner call. Yet despite the raw gritty urgency that suffuses nearly every page and the elevated sense of dread and desperation that keeps your heart in top gear, the pace is never too manic nor too hectic to enjoy the energising mix of edgy excitement and sincere emotion Bancks does so well. Dan is an inner suburban boy living on the outer perimeters of life. He’s classified as trailer park trash because of his permanent residence at the social-economically deprived Midgenba caravan park. It’s a title that comes with an ineradicable smear of hopeless. Deep down though, Dan’s a good kid, a caring kid. The type of kid who’ll risk his own face to save a vicious dying dog, which he does one day after finding Rosco tied ...
Almost a decade of moons ago, I made a serendipitous discovery that forever altered the spin of my world. Falling pregnant after so many years of waiting and yearning was nothing short of miraculous (for me) and a life event definitely worth waxing lyrical about. But did I? Sadly, not as much I as wanted to. There are those who find it hard to exist without sharing the contents of their dinner plates with the rest of the world, then there are others who worry that a beautifully executed birthday cake photo shared on social media will somehow demean the starving populations of the world. I oscillate between the two but tend towards the latter, always fretting over how others will take good news in light of their own current situations and struggles, thus resorting to a severe downplaying of my own good fortune. The pregnancy of my first child should have been a joyous occasion - it was a joyous pregnancy after all - but I was acutely conscious at the time of another family me...
Comments