29th July Sharon Creech (1945)

I need to tell you that it is Sharon Creech's birthday. She is one of my favourite authors. I just love Walk Two Moons, but unfortunately she does not write for the clientele of my library. There are no Sharon Creech novels in it at all. The children at the school I teach at have three libraries, and they need to be in the Junior School to access her books.

So as there are four birthdays tomorrow I plan to mention the two Australian illustrators that are celebrating their birthdays tomorrow now. Firstly, Peter Gouldthorpe who was born in 1954. He lives in Tasmania and does beautiful illustrations and landscape paintings. The books that he has illustrated show his love of place and landscape very clearly. He has illustrated books for many well-known children's authors - Gary Crew, Libby Hathorn, Colin Thiele, Paul Jennings and Corinne Fenton. I particularly like his illustrations for C.J. Dennis' poem Hist! and the children I teach like Queenie: One Elephant's Story and the idea that once you could ride on the elephant at the zoo.

Secondly, it is Anna Pignataro's birthday. She too has illustrated books for well-known authors, such as Colin Thompson, Natalie Jane Prior and Libby Hathorn, but in my library she is best known for books she has written as well as illustrated...the series about the make believe world of rabbits, Princess and Fairy and her gentle books about a bear called Oli and his patient and reassuring mother, in Always and Together.

S