I have been without the internet for a couple of days which is bad timing because so much has happened this week...the great children's fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones died on 26th March aged 77. She will be sadly missed by those children who revel in fantasy because together with Eva Ibbotson, who sadly also died last year they offered so much, long before J.K. Rowling was on the scene.
And the other news, Australian Shaun Tan won the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Award, so soon after also winning an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film for his 15-minute film The Lost Thing. He is the second Australian to win this award. Sonia Hartnett won it in 2008 and it has only been in existence for nine years. I think we should take this to mean that Australia does children's literature very well!!! The citation on Shaun's award said, "Shaun Tan has reinvented the picture book by creating visually spectacular pictorial narratives with a constant human presence."
And, Junko Morimoto turned 79. She is a favourite of mine because she lives locally and I have heard her talk about her life and seen her paint several times. She came to Australia in 1982 and began her career as a children's book author and illustrator. While I find My Hiroshima alarming and hard to share with children, having met Junko and knowing that she lived through this experience makes it all the more poignant and hard to share without emotion. The younger children I teach currently love her more recent titles The Two Bullies and Big Nuisance. You know how much young children like toilet humour when even a book like The Two Bullies reduces children to guffawing because 'the bully climbed out the toilet window!'
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