Alison Lester – January 10 2021

Alison is an award-winning author and illustrator. She has published over 25 children’s picture books as well as young adult novels. Alison was Australia’s inaugural Children’s Laureate from 2011 to 2013 with Boori Monty Pryor, and in 2013 she was Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and Patron of the Clean Oceans Foundation. Alison spends part of each year travelling to schools around Australia, helping students and teachers develop their own stories. She visited Arnhem Land in 1996 and 1997 as a guest of the Gunbalanya Community School with her friend and fellow author Liz Honey. Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo is based on a story the upper Primary students made about their lives, called We Love Gunbalanya. Her other picture books include Running With the Horses, based on the evacuation of the world-famous Lipizzaner horses from the Spanish Riding School in Vienna during WWII; Sophie Scott Goes South, about a little girl’s voyage to Antarctica; and Our Island, with Elizabeth Honey, in which the children of Mornington Island explore their home in words and pictures. All royalties from Our Island and one dollar from the sale of each copy will be donated to Mornington Island State School to fund art projects in the community.

Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000; ISBN 9780618104420
5-10 years
This sixth book in the Clive Eats Alligators series sees Ernie living in Arnhem Land for a year while his parents work in a hospital there. He flies above the desert for hours, travels over the floodplains, crosses the East Alligator River and arrives at his new home. Here are Ernie’s letters, describing the life he discovers with his new friends in their wild and beautiful land. A simple but vibrant introduction to Aboriginal life and the tropical seasons in the north of Australia, this book shows the activities that Ernie and his six Aboriginal friends like to do best during the very different seasons of the year – Kudjewk, Bangekerreng, Yekke, Wurrkeng, Kurrung, or Kurnumeleng.

One Small Island: The Story of Macquarie Island, with Coral Tulloch
Penguin Australia, 2011; ISBN 9780670072361
9-12 years
Macquarie Island lies in the Southern Ocean, between Antarctica and New Zealand. A speck of green in the vast, windswept sea, it is a haven for many creatures that live above and below the waves. One Small Island is about the possibility of hope and environmental preservation for this World Heritage listed site and for the world itself. Together Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch explore the island’s unique geological beginnings, discovery, degradation at the hands of humans, and the battle to restore it today.