Reviewed by Dianne Bates
The idea of board books for babies such as this, Puffin says,
is to raise a reader. Illustrated in black and white, the story is a series of
sentences which begin, ‘As today’s sun yawned/stretched/thawed’ and so on. It
is told in first-person, but it is difficult to know who the ‘I’ is. For
example, one double-page spread reads, ‘As today’s sun cooled, I played
hide-and-see like a camouflaged tawny.’ It is accompanied with a stylised
picture of a tawny frogmouth owl and two babies on a branch with a stylised border
of Aboriginal prints and a sun.
All the twelve pages of this small book are illustrated in artwork
that one recognises as Indigenous, a great way to introduce small children to
Australian animals and illustrations. There are six sentences altogether, with
some vocabulary alien to the youngest readers. This means, of course, the book
will need to be read – and explained – to youngsters by adult readers.
With regards to the illustrator, it is interesting to note
that the Kamilaroi were an Aboriginal group located in New
South Wales along the Barwon, Bundarra, Balonne, and upper Hunter rivers and in
the Liverpool plains. They are now nearly extinct and only a small number
remain.
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