The job of colouring in
Sharing the books you read as a child with your own children is an incomparable literary pleasure. But an even rarer pleasure is to share a writer who spans the generations. I read Graeme Base as a child and after three decades he is still publishing new books that my own children are now reading. So you can imagine my delight when I heard that he’d be at Paperchain in conversation with Canberra dynamo Tania McCartney.
Graeme’s second book, Animalia, holds a special place in my childhood. In my memory it is somehow bound up with moving from England to Australia, a place that was brash and colourful and unfamiliar. The world of Animalia, pushed into my hands some time after I arrived, was also a book of discovery. Of strange words that thrilled the mouth. (Diabolical. Ingenious. Jovial.) Of intricate illustrations full of riotous colour, as potent as the new country I found myself in.
Animalia is the book that made Graeme’s career and has now sold almost three million copies around the world. At the time he thought it was ‘a stupid idea’ but he’s grateful that the publisher didn’t insist on editing any of the language, and wondered aloud if the same would be true in today’s climate. He thought not, and I suspect he’s right. So often children are underestimated. The truth is, kids are big thinkers and their vocabulary can only grow if they’re challenged. Books (and publishers) that fail to recognise this irritate me. But Graeme never does that.