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...

They say large overwhelming tasks are best tackled in small meaningful mouthfuls. I say this approach should also be applied in generous dollops to all things Christmas. From menu planning and execution to home decoration, from salutation spreading to the all-important gift selection, my recommendation is to go in well-armed with list-making materials and a calm uncluttered mind, perhaps accepting the odd recommendation or two to help the selection process. Throughout the month of December until Christmas Day, I will endeavour to deliver a new, tantalising and truncated sample of some highly recommended Christmas stocking stuffers – a la kids’ book style. And fret not if they don’t make it under the tree in time…these are gift ideas that can be shared any time of the year in my book. Nine Open Arms As the translator of this Dutch novel explains, Nine Open Arms is indeed a story built like a jigsaw and told in stages . Like a jigsaw puzzle one is compelled to move around from s...

To mark the 50 th Anniversary of the first Moon landing, several children’s books are now entering orbit. Here are two very different but equally compelling titles that are sure to take young readers on an awesome odyssey of their own.   Moonwalkers by Mark Greenwood and Terry Denton This timely picture book blasts into life from the opening end pages. Suffused with Denton’s trademark, light-hearted line drawings, we are immediately introduced to the Apollo 11 astronauts who crewed the first spaceflight to the moon in July 1969, a feat never done before. As they soared into space aboard the rocket launcher, Saturn V, half a planet away, Billy and his family watched in awe thanks to live beams from ‘The Dish’, one of the largest telescopes on Earth located in the town of Parkes, NSW Australia. Inspired by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins’s, daring space mission, Billy and his motley crew of space explorers, Buzz and Mickey, embark on their own ambiti...

I was chuffed as monkeys with brass bells on to have been invited along to the studios of ABC Radio Gold Coast to chat with Matt Webber. Matt Webber courtesy ABC Radio I was also six weeks into a bout of this season's awful flu onslaught and feeling less like a chipper little monkey ready to chatter as I did something someone might find in their kitty litter tray. But chat I had to so off I hauled myself to ABC's delightfully located Gold Coast studios. ABC Radio GC Headquarters, not quite beach front but a short amble from here My stories were not complete strangers to Matt's weekly Drive Time shows ; my digital narrative for Story City, The Chapel of Unlove being featured there back in 2016. This time I was able to discuss the inspirations and motivations behind my picture book, The Fix-It Man and its implications with death and dying, this being a segment series topic featuring regularly on Matt's Drive Time. I could not have asked for a better host...

In spite of my word faux pax, extreme convolutedness and tendency to hide behind mixed metaphors, I was okay at English as a kid. Actually better than okay. Then, on the morning of my Year 12 Matriculation Exams, an horrific backyard incident took place leaving me numb with shock and anger. The details are not important. What was important and even more tragic, was what I did with these raw emotions. I ripped out my heart and rammed it on my sleeve, alongside my anguish, and for the next three hours goaded and forced them to fit into the composition question of my English exam. It wasn't exactly an epic fail. But it did remove any chance of scoring the A+ I had in the bag 24 hours before hand. A lesson hard learnt. Zip forward a few decades... Five years ago I penned a picture book manuscript which I've been pushing around, in and out of competitions and past a few critical eyes. It is now foremost in my in-tray again, as my wonderful mentor, Dee White , and I...