Hello again…and again!

I promise if I didn’t have a life I’d keep this website and its hot news updated daily, rather than spasmodically.

But, astoundingly, there is a real world outside the internet in which people talk to each other face to face, again and again, and have good times and laughter, and learn a lot and listen well. Challenged to change the world they do change the world, in real situations with real people, often in difficult circumstances.

I meet these inspiring citizens constantly as I travel up and down the country and around the world babbling about the particular parenting style (bonding through reading aloud) that promotes happiness and literacy at the same time. I find myself in tiny country towns and big cities, in rhyming places worlds apart such as Hawaii and Mackay, in elegant buildings and draughty halls, talking to young parents and elders, and to people with tattoos on one night, and wearing pearls the next. It’s madly diverse and satisfying. I like the laughter, mainly. When you’re sitting alone writing a picture book there’s no laughter to be had from one week to another, just sighs and groans and rude words and the sound of scrunched-up paper hitting the inside of a wastepaper basket. I LOVE being away from my desk.

Talking of the world and being away from my desk, let’s start with Seattle and Minneapolis. Not that I’ve been to either city recently, because I haven’t. But the play based on the book that Judy Horacek and I created: WHERE IS THE GREEN SHEEP? has had a highly successful three week season in Minneapolis with an Australian cast, two thirds of whom happen to have been taught drama at Flinders University in Malcolm’s (my husband’s) classes, although the casting was nothing to do with him.

I love this show. It’s aimed at babies to four year olds. It makes your eyes water with laughter and heart-tugging emotion to see little kids’ faces light up with the wonder and delight of the music, colour and movement. Theatre at six months old! It doesn’t seem possible but it is.

Another much longer GREEN SHEEP season, with a new American cast, is happening right now at the Seattle Children’s Theatre from June 5th-August 31st. If you live in Seattle or you’re on the West Coast of the USA on vacation, try to see it. It really is adorable.

The GREEN SHEEP show was the sublime original idea and creation of Cate Fowler of the Windmill Performing Arts Company, based in Adelaide where I live, although it’s a national company. When Cate told me she wanted to devise a piece of theatre suitable for babies I thought she was mad. When she said she’d like to use WHERE IS THE GREEN SHEEP? I *knew* she was mad. I mean, where was the story? Where was the action? Anyway, her genius-like ideas and hard labour paid off brilliantly so let me take this chance to remove my Magic Hat for a moment and ‘dip me lid’ to her for the integrity of her work and her astonishing achievement. I wouldn’t have trusted my words to anyone else and she’s the only one I’d allow to direct the show.

My movement around Australia has been so constant and rapid that airports and being late for flights feature often in my nightmares, even though I adore the work, love meeting people and rarely miss flights. I do sometimes spin a little with the speed of it all.

Let me ‘dip my lid’ again, this time to the current Federal Government in Australia (an unusual compliment, coming from me), especially to Mal Brough, the Minister for Families and Community Services, who has provided millions of dollars for the creation of stronger families and communities in this country, particular in areas beset by disadvantage and isolation. I see with my own eyes how these funds are spent and know the good communities they’re forging, not only for present populations but also for the future of this wonderful nation that I love so much. If we don’t take good care of all of our children aged O-5 every one of us will end up living in a fractured, un-equal, scary, sad society. So good on you, Mal! And thank you.

More good news: A PARTICULAR COW (thanks for the pictures Terry Denton, and thanks to Penguin for its endless kindness to me) has been short-listed for best children’s picture book of the year by the Australian Book Industry. Big party in Sydney on Tuesday next week and a chance to dress up. I mean, who dresses up any more? I will.

And next week also, in Melbourne, I’m being given the Speech Pathology Australia award. In their words: “This is the most prestigious of our awards and is granted only when it deemed that there is an author who fits the criteria, rather than on an annual basis. Your contribution to Australian children’s literature is exceptional and spans across many years.” How kind.

I do know about the “spanning across many years” because I’m now decrepit enough to be signing copies of POSSUM MAGIC for people in their late twenties who have owned them since they were in Year Four. At a Canberra conference last weekend (the Australian Literacy Educators Association) I almost began to believe I was who I have become—if you get my meaning—so great was the excitement among the younger teachers at being able to speak to me face to face. As the person creating that excitement I can tell you it felt incredibly weird and it was exhausting but I’d be fibbing if I said I didn’t feel good about it.

So while I’m loving myself sick (and perhaps making you feel ill at the same time) let me share a compliment from a divine librarian in the USA when I was at the American Libraries Association convention in Washington DC a few weeks ago. “Oh,” she said, ” you can’t imagine how we love your books! The kids INHALE them.”

So yes, I have been out and about: three weeks away in June and July, beginning with work in Mackay in far north Australia (passionate read-aloud-ers), followed by six days holiday with Malcolm in France in lovely Evian-les-Bains where Evian water comes from, and hip-and-trendy Lyon; and Switzerland: Lucerne to be precise, and what a beauuuuuutiful old city! It was heaven to sleep and sleep and walk and walk, in clean air, in a different culture from our own. Europe is such a different experience after all the travel we have done in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. I am now old enough for Europe. Blissful bathrooms and breakfasts are my kind of thing.

From Europe to London, for less than a day, where I had the joy and privilege of meeting and having afternoon tea with Helen Oxenbury, whose feet I kiss, the renowned illustrator of so many classics and also of one of my own up-coming books: TEN LITTLE FINGERS AND TEN LITTLE TOES. I also met her equally famous and equally delightful husband John Burningham and their gorgeous daughter Emily. I felt I was in the presence of children’s book royalty and was almost daunted by the occasion. It was divine: heavenly people, all of them.

The very next day in Washington DC I met another of my illustrators for the first time: Vladimir Radunsky, whose brilliant art adorns my next book, due out in a couple of months: WHERE THE GIANT SLEEPS. Vladimir is an American who is very Russian who lives in Italy and in America and he’s fabulous. He roles plays who he is and he is over-the-top in that role-playing. “I am arrrrteest,” he intones mournfully, as if that explains everything. And it does. He reminds me of Eeyore. He met Malcolm and said in the same mournful Russian accent: “You have HANDSOOOM husband.” He’s right.

Lastly we went to Hawaii to the vibrant, folksy, glorious Read To Me International conference where I have spoken before. So it was like old home week meeting Lynne Waihee again and the many others who’d made such a happy impression on me seven years ago. I had no time outdoors, over three days, other than a lovely walk to the beach to paddle in the Pacific for a moment with a woman whose work I adore and admire to the ends of the earth: Rosemary Wells, of READ TO YOUR BUNNY fame, let alone Max and Ruby, Benjamin and Tulip and all her other bunny creations. Rosemary is perfectly in tune with children’s characters and calamities and is never sentimental: a huge achievement in a children’s writer. We had a terrific heart-to-heart conversation.

My last day in Hawaii was working for the Kamehameha Schools (hello Kathleen Cornelson-Smith, and thank you!) and it was a lovely revelation meeting so many native Hawaiian teachers and school assistants and principals. Hawaii is much more than sea, sun and cocktails. I think I’ve said before that what I love best about cultures that are new to me is the way they unsettle me and make me see with a different eye, from a different position, another person’s world view. All of us tend to think we are the centre of the world and that our ways of thinking and doing and being are the only ways possible: until we meet new ways.

I live in a city far away from the rest of the world, away from most of my colleagues in picture books, so this trip was extra special. Having Malcolm with me kept me entirely happy the entire time and for once I didn’t get ill or wheeze on planes. It was fantastic.

Chloe in the meantime, back home on the ranch, as it were, was being an achieving sort of politician, the kind who makes her parents almost faint with awe and pride. She has made a mark in the policy areas of education and climate change. I quote from a message left on my website: “But this comment is a bit off topic and is to note that your daughter isn’t another waste of Space MP. I noted with some surprise seeing her referred to at http://www.energybulletin.net/30903.html for a speech she gave about Peak Oil. Very few MP’s from any party have shown much awareness about this, even though it will be every bit as critical as global warming and will hit home first. So, way to go Chloe.”

One has to be so *political* as a Member of Parliament and has to tread so carefully and graciously, and work so hard at weird hours of the day and night and weekends, that I don’t know why any one would want the job, but someone has to rule us and if one of them happens to be Chloe, that’s more than fine by me.

Finally, let me flag an Australian event which will take place all over the country, in thousands of settings associated with children (especially libraries) on Thursday September 6th at 11am: a simultaneous reading aloud of my book: THE MAGIC HAT. It’s the middle of Literacy and Numeracy Week. I’m going to be at home that day, for once in my life so I hope I remember to read it to the dog! Actually I will be at my local library as well. Of course! (Thanks to Tricia Tusa for the lovely, lively, magic illustrations in MAGIC HAT, and to Scholastic in Australia and Harcourt in the USA for making the book so successful.)

If there are typos in this, and there will be, it’s because I’ve never learnt to type properly. I do have perfect spelling. I type with my two MIDDLE fingers and make a million mistakes. I am a terrible role model.

Time to eat. I’m starving!

Much love

Mem Fox xxx