Happy new adventures

The Earth has moved around the Sun for another whole year.
May 2014 be full of new adventures for you.

From the page to the stage

What children’s books have you seen adapted to the stage?

There have been plenty of classics such as The Magic Pudding or The Water Babies, but what about shorter picture books. What does it take to make the leap from bedtime story to stage show?

The English production of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt recently toured Melbourne. The popular story can be read in a few minutes, but on stage it becomes a raucous, physical journey that is helped by crowd interaction and fun songs that keep it romping along at a good pace. A simple story perfectly reworked for the theatre, there should be more of it.

What other picture books would you like to see on stage?

Yarn Bombing

The street art movement of yarn bombing has spread worldwide in the last few years. Recently it filtered through to the school around the corner. The local kids may not knit or crochet, but they made up for that with imagination and flair as they stormed their school with wool.

Book Champion: Mattia

Mattia is seven years old and lives in London. He speaks English, Cantonese and Italian and his favourite book is Twist of Gold by Michael Morpurgo.

Baker Smith: Can you tell us what the book is about?
Mattia: It’s about these two children and their mum and there’s a potato famine in Ireland where they live and their dying mum has to stay behind. Then they travel to America on a boat and life is really hard and loads of people want to help and two of them die trying to help them.
BS: What’s a potato famine?
M: It’s when there’s not much food around.
BS: So they decided moving to America was a better option?
M: Yes.
BS: Tell us more about what happens when they arrive in America?
M: They can’t find the house that their Dad made for them because he went before they went. Then finally they go to this woman and she knew where their Dad’s house was and she told them it’s got the biggest chimney of all. So they were able to find the house.
BS: Did they all live together in the house after that?
M: Yes. But the dog who went with the Dad died two weeks before the children came.
BS: Oh, it sounds like a bit of a sad story? Did it make you cry?
M: No! Except the last bit. It was a hard life.
BS: How long ago was the story set?
M: It’s just a story, it’s not something real.
BS: Do you have a favourite character in the book?
M: Well not really. Because there’s hardly any characters in the book. There’s only two main characters.
BS: Do you remember their names?
M: Sean and Annie.
BS: They sound like very Irish names.
M: Yes, they’re Irish.
BS: Do you think you’d like to go on a boat from Ireland to America?
M: No way! They hardly had any food or water.
BS: Sounds very hard. Would you prefer to fly in a plane from Ireland to America.
M: Yes!
BS: And would you recommend this book to other children to read?
M: Yes. I think about 9-10 years old kids should read it.
BS: Sounds like a long book. How many pages does it have?
M: 300 pages.
BS: 300 pages! That’s phenomenal. Well done.

The Preschooler School of Modern Art

Smith studied the 20th century Avant Garde at design school. Meanwhile Baker steadily amassed a personal collection of paintings to rival Peggy Guggenheim. We are both fans of sorts, so let’s get one thing straight: The old ‘my child could have done that’ cliché has no place here, all those crazy paintings are fine by us.

However, while looking through a box full of artwork by our prolific young girls the other day, I couldn’t help but notice that some images recalled the signature styles of certain modern masters.

So for bit of fun, here is the artist paired with their soul buddy plucked straight from the overflow of our fridge door gallery.

Dubuffet

Rothko

Warhol

Matisse

Klee

Twombly

Stella

Schlemmer

Cooking up a story

An exhibition at the Museum of Sydney has engaging displays about our relationship food culture through the ages. My favourite bit is a wall inviting people to ‘share thoughts, fondest food memories or a favourite recipe’. Drawings of cupcakes and declarations of love for one recipe or another sit side by side. There are shout outs for mum and there is disappointment at not being able to replicate a taste as experienced in the note writer’s land of their youth. Rich memories, the ingredients for cooking up a tale. What’s your favourite food story?

Book Champion: Oliver

This week it is Oliver’s turn to be a Book Champion (his twin brother was featured last week). Oliver has chosen Dragonology by Dr. Ernest Drake.

What have you learnt about dragons from Dragonology?
How they share their gems, how big they are, different types and how dragons breath fire, how they hatch out of their eggs and how they become friends.

What does a dragon look like? Do they make good pets?
Pets for humans?! They’re not alive right now – but will be in the future.

What would you do if one came to visit you?
If it was a Chinese Lung I’d give it chicken then a hug then it would swim away.

What other types of dragons are there?
This book only has a few types.

What is your favourite?
My favourite flying type is the arctic frost dragon because my favourite power is ice.
I love the Asian Lung, their poo is called dung. It’s true!

What do you need to catch a dragon?
A net, a cannon and a thing-a-ma-jig …

What sort of things can they do?
The frost dragon can – he is the only one who can and he can breath ice.
They can swoop double loop-de-loops!

What do they eat?
They can eat anything except humans. They can even eat gems – that’s how they get their power.

How do you stop a dragon breathing fire?
You put water in it’s mouth and voila!

What is your favourite bit of Dragonology?
Chapter iii (that’s roman numerals). It’s about dragon biology and physiology.

What ages would like the book? Would you recommend it?
My age – 6 or 7. it’s a very cool book with lots of fold-outs.

Do any dragons live in Canberra?
They used to. Dragons are still alive… the good types.

Happy Dad’s Day

Today is Father’s Day in Australia.
So here’s to you all, everywhere.

We’re off to see the wizard … again!

Each morning, after I ponder what shirt to wear for the day (10 seconds) and what to eat for breakfast (0 seconds) my attention turns to a more pressing problem – how many productions of The Wizard of Oz are being staged at any given moment? I began to wonder recently after attending an impressive production by a grammar school that takes music and drama seriously. Our six-year-old reminded me she had already played a witch, last Christmas (tick that one off) and got to throw apples at the only little boy in the ballet performance (that’ll teach him). Yesterday, I asked a father what he was doing that evening, ‘Off to see the wizard … Xavier has a part as one of nine scarecrows’. I pondered how many munchkins this might equate to as I drove past yet another primary school with boards displaying a stage production of the famous yellow brick road for ‘Four Nights Only!’

A friend recently remarked, ‘I never could understand why Dorothy bothered going back to Kansas’. Well, if he had bothered to read book six in L. Frank Baum’s 26 book series just like I hadn’t he would know that Dorothy did return to Oz, along with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, escaping the old dustbowl and Almira Gulch, the cranky windbag after the tornado left them mortgaged to the eyeballs. They were economic refugees, compassionately granted residency status in Oz by Princess Ozma and confronted new characters such as the paranoid Flutterbudgets and the anthropomorphic pastries of Bunbury. But I digress, the next time, like me, you wake up wondering exactly where the Land of Oz is geographically located, remember that’s it’s probably not somewhere over a rainbow – it’s somewhere around the corner.

A twisty tale

Neighbours used to pop next door and deliver one another home baked goods and the like, not so much anymore. Who bakes these days? What with all the food allergies floating about it’s hardly worth it. We’re lucky. Our friendly neighbour runs across the road and gives us balloons twisted into the shape of a snowman, or twisted into an oversized bracelet sculpted as an illuminated alien. I’ll take these offerings over surplus yo yo cookies any day. It does leave me wondering what kooky idea she will twist out of thin air next. Can’t wait to see it, better find out. Watch this space.