Don't Forget, Matilda by Ronda and David Armitage

“It was a rainy sort of morning. Mother had gone to work and Father was doing the dishes.”

 

With those eighteen words, my worldview changed. Eighteen words and a picture of a dad, shown only from behind, apron around his waist, at the sink, scrubbing the dirty saucepans and plates. Mother had gone to work. Father was doing the dishes. Don’t ever underestimate the role picture books play in shaping a child’s mind. When I was a little boy, the above passage shaped mine. I’m forever thankful that it did.

 

If you haven’t heard of Don’t Forget, Matilda, don’t worry, you’re in the majority. It was written in 1978 and has long been out of print and difficult to find. There is even a copy on Ebay listed for the farcical price of $193.82. The author is Ronda Armitage, the illustrator her husband David; if you have heard of the Armitages, it’s likely because of their best-known book The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch, and its sequels. Don’t Forget, Matilda is, ironically, largely forgotten. But not by me.

 

I grew up in a small town in rural Victoria, where most families functioned with dad as the breadwinner and mum looking after the children. Not, to borrow a line from Jerry Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s fine if that’s who you are. I had a wonderful, caring mother, who had worked as a primary teacher in her youth but stayed at home once she had kids. Dad was a dairy farmer; it was hard work but because we lived on the farm, he was always around. I saw loads more of him than many kids whose dad worked in an office. I had a terrific childhood.

 

Still, I thought I had a pretty clear view of how the world worked, no doubt moulded in part by television, books, and the examples of other families I knew. Fathers went to work in the morning and mothers looked after the kids. And then I came across Don’t Forget, Matilda, where the mother worked and the father stayed at home looking after little Matilda. And I had an epiphany. I remember it vividly. I thought to myself, if I ever have kids, I’d like to stay at home and look after them. Matilda’s father does it, maybe I could too.

 

Thirty-odd years later, at least a few days a week, I do exactly that. These days, lots of men do. There are plenty more who would if they could, but for whom it is just not a realistic option. I get that. I am acutely aware that I’m in a very fortunate employment situation. But I know also that some men (and I suspect more men than society cares to admit) would still baulk at stepping back from their careers to stay at home with the kids, while they think nothing of their wife or partner doing so. It's a sad reflection of the fact that raising the next generation, while invaluable work, remains widely undervalued.

 

It’s also a shame, because they’re missing out on one of life’s great opportunities – and so are their children. Don’t get me wrong, looking after Heidi and Fletcher is not all smiles and swings at the park. Toddlers are emotionally complex and tantrums frequent. Then there are the endless nappies, loads of washing, meals, faces and hands and tables everythings to clean. Juggling two kids aged three and under is challenging, tiring work. But it’s also priceless, hugely rewarding, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m sure Matilda’s father would say something similar.

 

Don’t Forget, Matilda is a day in the life of a little koala named Matilda Elizabeth Bear. Throughout her day, everyone seems to forget something. Father forgets the pushchair when they catch the bus to the shops, Grandad pretends to forget Matilda’s name when she visits for lunch, Matilda forgets to take her handkerchief and can’t stop sniffing, and Granny forgets to put Matilda’s shoes on when they go to the park. The next day, Father and Matilda miss the bus to the beach, but realise that in any case Father had forgotten to pack their lunch.

 

Mother appears only on a single page, nicely dressed, picking Matilda up from Granny’s house on the way home from work. Father seems to be the primary carer, with help from Matilda’s grandparents. That may not be especially remarkable today, but remember that this book was published in the late 1970s, when most picture books reflected a society still tethered to the traditional roles of men and women. And what strikes me now, looking back as an adult, is how normal the Armitages make the situation appear. Importantly, it is not presented as a novelty.

 

I wondered why the Armitages – Ronda is a New Zealander and David from Tasmania, though they have lived in England since the 1970s – chose to make Matilda’s father the primary carer. And so I asked them.

 

“The book was based mainly on our early years in the UK,” Ronda Armitage says. “With our two young kids we left New Zealand to continue with some travelling for a couple of years but once our first book, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch, now 41 years old, was published, our original publisher wasn’t keen on our being 12,000 miles away. So we drifted into remaining here.

 

“Don’t Forget, Matilda was based on our daughter Kate, who was looked after by either one of us before she went to school ... David is still slightly upset that when, as the only male, he took Kate to playgroup, the mothers would immediately stop chatting and sort of draw together. They never spoke to him, although a woman once picked him up when he and Kate were walking home in the rain. So sometimes we shared the care of the kids and sometimes either one of us would work full-time.

 

“We fell foul of a Swedish publisher for the opposite reasons with the Lighthouse Keeper books. Not only was Mr Grinling (the lighthouse keeper) too ugly but they were also a very traditional couple. The male looked after the lighthouse and the female did the cooking. But David certainly valued the time with his kids, just as we both have with our one grandchild, whom we looked after regularly until he went to school.”

 

The Armitages might now be grandparents, but what of the inclusion of grandparents in the childcare arrangements in Don’t Forget, Matilda, back in the 1970s? With one set of grandparents in New Zealand and the others in Tasmania, that was based less on Ronda and David’s reality as UK-based parents than Ronda’s experience as a child. Born during World War II, she spent the first three years of her life being raised by her mother and grandparents in the small New Zealand town of Kaikoura while her father was overseas in the Air Force.

 

Ronda recalls that living on a farm in rural New Zealand, getting hold of enough books to read was a problem. The first book she remembers loving was Horton Hatches the Egg, an early Dr Seuss book published in 1940. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the basis of that story is a male elephant looking after an egg – child-rearing, essentially – albeit because he was tricked into it by the bird who laid it. All these years later, Ronda still remembers the book’s famous line: “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, an elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent!”

 

I repeat, don’t ever underestimate the role picture books play in shaping a child’s mind. Ronda remembers Horton with fondness; I remember Matilda in the same way. I still have my childhood copy of the book, which three-year-old Heidi enjoys nearly as much as I did when I was little. If you ever see a copy, buy it (though not from that outrageous price-gouging listing on Ebay).

 

“I’m delighted that you would like to feature Matilda,” Ronda says. “We have more queries from parents about the possibility of getting hold of a copy of that book than for any of our other titles. It was a great favourite, particularly in Australia.”

 

Ronda is delighted that DadReads is featuring Don’t Forget, Matilda; DadReads is pleased to hear that the book is still a nostalgic favourite among parents even these days. Aside from the underlying theme of the father staying at home, it is a fun book that is brought to life by David Armitage’s colourful artwork. He brings a caring touch to Father, dignity to Mother, wisdom to the grandparents and the full and genuine range of toddler emotions to little Matilda. It is no surprise that he remains to this day a well-respected painter in Britain.

 

Anyway. I have to go. It’s a rainy sort of a morning. Heidi and Fletcher’s mother has gone to work, and their father has dishes to do.

 

 

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas

Mem Fox is not on the official list of Australia’s National Living Treasures. That is plain wrong. It’s even more wrong given that Clive Palmer is on the list. Clive is large and full of money, but that’s the only way he could be considered a treasure. If we define the word as something precious and cherished, Mem Fox fits the bill. Possum Magic is the definitive Australian picture-story book, and probably only Graeme Base can rival her popularity over more than 30 years. Today we look at another Mem Fox classic: Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge.

Wilfrid was published in 1984, the year after Possum Magic. They are the first two books Mem Fox had published, and they were both illustrated by Julie Vivas, whose style is unique and instantly recognisable – she too is an icon of Australian children’s literature. If Possum Magic was their blockbuster, Wilfrid was their sleeper hit. That’s because where Possum Magic is a fun, whimsical fantasy, Wilfrid is poignant and truly resonates.

On its surface, it’s about a young boy who lives next door to a nursing home and befriends the residents. Deeper down, it’s about the fundamental truth that people are the same whether they’re 6 or 96. And usually, sadly, it’s only the six-year-olds and 96-year-olds who seem to understand that. The rest of us are stuck in the middle, too old to be innocent, too young to be wise, and too caught up in our day-to-day lives to give it much thought anyway.

Wilfrid’s favourite friend at the nursing home is Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, because she has four names just like him. One day, his parents call her a “poor old thing” because she’s lost her memory. Wilfrid wants to help her find it. He starts by asking the other residents at the home what a memory is. Old Mrs Jordan says it’s “something warm”. Mr Hosking says it’s “something from long ago”. Mr Tippett says it’s “something that makes you cry”. And so on.

Taking this literally, as small children do, Wilfrid goes home to find some “memories” for Miss Nancy that fit the descriptions. And his little collection sparks her memory. The warm egg he brings reminds her of being a little girl and finding speckled blue eggs in a bird’s nest in her aunt’s garden. His grandfather’s medal reminds her of the brother she loved who went to the war and never returned. She marvels at how such a young boy could have brought these memories back.

Heidi and Fletcher are fortunate that all four of their grandparents are still alive, and luckier still that they have two living great-grandmothers. One, who we call Grandma Millie, is 94, and just like Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper, lives in a nursing home. When we visit, it makes Grandma Millie’s day to see the kids. More than that, it brightens the day of every other resident who sees them. At a nursing home, little children are like a drug – the residents can’t get enough of them.

Besides Grandma Millie, there’s old Jeannie from Northern Ireland, who was a high-school teacher and Skypes with her family back in the old country. She loves to say hello to the kids. There’s Alwyn, who always takes a grandfatherly interest. And Joyce, who likes to keep an eye out for Heidi too. And of course there are those who one day just weren’t there anymore. What must life be like in a nursing home? You have lived a long, eventful life, but you know this is the last stop.

I remember, when I was five or six, my older sister Lindy would visit an elderly lady at Sunnyside House, the local nursing home. I would sometimes tag along, and without realising it at the time, I helped cheer them up in the same way. I remember one old man giving me a present of a big, men’s sized hankie, and a packet of Steam Rollers that fair dinkum knocked my socks off. I had a concept that these people were old, but it was still abstract. As far as I was concerned, everyone who wasn’t in school was old.

And that’s the thing about Heidi, or Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge. They treat the elderly like they would treat anyone. They treat them like people, like equals. Not feeling sorry for them, not wondering if this is the last time you’ll see them. The rest of us are coloured by what we think we know. “Poor old thing”, we think, and we act accordingly. Any visitors at a nursing home are welcome, but I wonder if kids are especially loved because they are so unaffected.

A word here about Julie Vivas. Her style is so distinctive and her characters so expressive that they sometimes border on caricature, but in children’s books that can sometimes be a good thing. In Wilfrid it has the effect of bringing these old people to life, giving the sense of youth that is such an important message of the book. Yes, they are hunched over and frail, but they also have a recognisable spark. They are individuals, each with a story. And that’s the truth of a nursing home.

I’ve been told countless times that you never feel any different as you age – not deep down inside. It should be obvious that Grandma Millie at 94 is the same person she was at 74, or 34, or 14. But too often we fail to think that way. We mentally group all old people together in one category. They’re not like us. We’ll never be like that. Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge helps to remind us that we’re all the same. Old people have been young like us and we – hopefully – will grow old like them.

If you have kids, and you have an elderly relative, it’s impossible to read this book and not feel inspired to pop around for a visit. So just do it. I guarantee you’ll make their day – and probably your own as well.

John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat by Jenny Wagner & Ron Brooks

I loved this book when I was little, but had I known what it was really about I’d have been seriously freaked out. To five-year-old me, it was a nice story about a gorgeous Old English Sheepdog, a sleek black cat, and an old lady who reminded me of my grandmother. A couple of outdoor scenes in the dark of night were a bit spooky, but everything was all right because the story had a happy ending.

Or so I thought.

Little did I know that the old widow, Rose, was tired of life. Little did I know that the Midnight Cat represents death, and that it was highly symbolic that John Brown the protective dog refused to allow the cat inside. Little did I know that the final stages – when Rose is sick in bed and John Brown opens the door to the Midnight Cat, the only thing that can make Rose “better” – are very final.

But you know what? Learning about the hidden meaning has only made me love the book even more. It takes remarkable skill to create a work with such layers, as author Jenny Wagner and illustrator Ron Brooks have done here. In fact, the Midnight Cat As Death is just one of multiple possible subtexts to this book.

Perhaps a short summary here would help. Rose is an elderly woman whose husband died long ago. For many years she has passed the time with her dog, John Brown. One night, Rose looks out the window and sees a black cat. John Brown refuses to look, but when Rose has gone to bed, he goes outside and threatens the cat to stay away.

But Rose keeps seeing the cat, and John Brown keeps ignoring it. “You don’t need a cat,” he says. “You’ve got me”. One morning, Rose remains in bed, and tells John Brown she is sick. John Brown spends the day thinking, and in the evening asks Rose if the Midnight Cat will make her better. “Oh yes!” she says. “That’s just what I want.” Reluctantly, John Brown lets the cat inside.

On the second-last page, the three are all sitting in the living room, Rose gazing lovingly at The Midnight Cat, a portrait of her late husband staring down on them from above the fireplace. “Then Rose got up and sat by the fire, for a while.” As illustrator Ron Brooks writes in his memoir Drawn from the Heart:

Note, and think about, that comma.

The comma makes you pause. It makes you wonder what happened after the “for a while”.

And the final sentence is split across the last two pages: “And the midnight cat sat on the arm of the chair ... and purred.” A close-up of the black cat ends the book.

I don’t think I’ll be able to read this to Heidi without choking up just a little, now that I know its true meaning. For me, the most poignant pages are the double-page spread on which John Brown, in close-up and filling almost the whole space, cuddles one of Rose’s slippers while thinking about her lying sick in bed. You can almost see that he is mourning, realising that it’s time to let her go.

This was not the first collaboration between Wagner and Brooks. They had earlier teamed up to produce The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek, which also had layers of meaning, though perhaps less subtly than John Brown. Again, Brooks’ cross-hatching and line-work brings such texture to the book. He is at his best when creating a dark night-time atmosphere, yet not so dark that we cannot see the action.

And Wagner skilfully imbues her words with many possible meanings. When we read this to Heidi, the first subtext that my wife Zoe picked up on was that John Brown might represent an eldest child, struggling with the jealousy that can arise from the impending arrival of a new baby. Whichever way an adult interprets the meaning, a child will still enjoy the surface-level story, which is charming.

Ron Brooks in his memoir mentions that the Waiting for Death reading of the story was the one Wagner mentioned most often, but he entertainingly (and a little mischievously) sums up the other possible interpretations:

The English (ever democratic) reviews of John Brown pointed out endless possibilities in the book, story and pictures. Among the more interesting was Margery Fisher’s observation that Queen Victoria also had a friend called John Brown, and that the relationship there was very similar indeed.

The Germans (who take their children’s books very seriously) suggested that John Brown was a sensitive study of the problems sometimes involved with a first child coming to terms with the impending arrival of a second, and that ‘parents in this situation may well find the book helpful’.

The Americans, on whom one can always count for – shall we say – a certain clarity of vision, seemed mostly to think John Brown was ‘a lovely book about an old woman, a dog, and a cat’.

So perhaps Zoe is German and five-year-old me was American. But five-year-old me lived on an Australian farm and recognised much that was familiar in the illustrations: Rose feeding the chooks; the windmill behind the house; the garage housing an old car that looks like it hasn’t been driven for years; Rose’s stockings down around her ankles, like my own grandmother.

It is notable that John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat won Australia’s Picture Book of the Year award in 1978. The judges were unanimous and described the book as having universal themes but many distinctly Australian touches, and that it “comes as close to the perfect picture book as Australia has yet produced”.

Of course, classics such as Possum Magic and Animalia were yet to be published, but in my opinion John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat holds its own against anything that has come since.

Grug Plays Cricket by Ted Prior

Grug 2 for 0 (Grug 0, Cara 2-0) tied with Cara 2 for 0 (Cara 0, Grug 2-0)

Not since the One-Legged XI played the One-Armed XI in England in 1848 has cricket seen anything remotely like this. On a green pitch indistinguishable from the outfield, a snake named Cara, overcoming the significant obstacle of having no arms and no legs, held Grug to a remarkable scoreless tie that left the cricket world stunned.

As the host, and thus most familiar with the conditions, it was a humiliating result for Grug, who had invited Cara to play expecting an easy win. But over the previous few years Grug had spent his time cycling, swimming, gardening, painting, and engaging in all sorts of other irrelevant activities that that left him ill-prepared for a major cricket match.

Although nobody really knows what Grug is, he indisputably has two arms and two legs, and thus a natural advantage over Cara. It is not out of the question that anti-corruption authorities could inspect the betting markets around this match, but the likelihood is that Grug simply succumbed to hubris.

Sending Cara in to bat, Grug began with a delivery that beat Cara’s paltry defences and rattled the middle and leg stumps. Cara had batted with a grip rarely seen in elite cricket, holding the bat in her mouth, but she made a game swing at the ball, and in fact looked more likely to score than former New Zealand No.11 Chris Martin.

Cara was more at ease when bowling. Gripping the ball under her chin (do snakes have chins?) she formed herself into an imposing S shape and then flung the ball down the pitch. Her unconventional action may have looked suspect but was in fact perfectly legal; the ICC bans "chuckers" whose elbow extension exceeds 15 degrees. Cara's complete lack of elbows made the rule redundant.

Cara resembled nothing so much as former speedster Jeff Thomson, rolling up and going "whang", and Grug, who had spent far too little time in the nets ahead of this game, was slow to react. In the words of commentator Ted Prior: "Grug swung the bat and missed. The ball hit him on the nose!" It was an apt description, and typical of Prior's concise commentary style.

Though shaken by the incident, Grug passed the mandatory concussion tests and batted on, driving the next delivery hard and straight back towards the bowler. Cara showed her remarkable reflexes by catching the ball in her mouth, which brought back memories of Shahid Afridi chewing on a ball during a one-day international.

It meant that neither Cara nor Grug had scored in their first innings, and Cara was soon to complete an ignominious king pair when she again swung hard but lost her middle stump. This left her needing to once again dismiss Grug without scoring in order to emerge from the match with a tie.

Things looked grim for Cara when Grug smashed the next delivery high into the air through the region of extra cover, which appeared to be vacant, but a pelican unexpectedly flew past at an opportune moment and Grug was caught. Not since Gary Pratt ran out Ricky Ponting in the 2005 Ashes had a substitute fielder had a more significant impact.

The match had been tied, and although both players finished the game with smiles on their faces, it was easy to see through Grug’s façade. Indeed, Grug failed to appear at the post-match press conference, and is believed to be considering immediate retirement from the game. 

The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek by Jenny Wagner and Ron Brooks

You can thank nostalgia for my choice of book this time. It is an Australian classic, though not one I recall from my childhood. My nostalgia was not for The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek, but for another Australian icon: Play School. The show is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. What memories: John Hamblin, Benita Collings, Noni Hazelhurst, Don Spencer, John Waters. My favourite was Alister Smart, a moustachioed Aussie bloke who reminded me of my Dad.

I don’t know what five-year-old me would have made of Tim Minchin. We didn’t get many men who looked like him in a dairy-farming town in the 1980s. Then again, I was obsessed with Carlton and he has long hair like Tommy Alvin and the beard of Robert Walls, so I’d probably have liked him. What I can say with certainty is that Heidi and I enjoyed having Tim read us The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek on Play School Celebrity Covers recently.

Just a few weeks earlier I had read the story to Heidi, and found myself rather indifferent to it. I got the message, but felt detached from it. But sometimes it’s in the way you tell them, and Tim told it perfectly: a little brooding, a lot of empathy, a certain amount of gravitas. That is one of the delights of Play School’s story time: every storyteller has their own unique style. The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek is a story of self-discovery, of not being confined by the perceptions of others. In other words, perfect for Tim Minchin.

To summarise: a creature emerges from the black mud of a creek. As it scrapes off the mud it asks itself: “What am I?” As quick as Cary Young buzzing in to answer the same question of Tony Barber, a platypus answers: “You are a bunyip”. The bunyip goes around asking other animals what he looks like. “Horrible,” says a wallaby. “Horrible,” says an emu.

The bunyip finds a man, a scientist of sorts, who tells him that bunyips don’t look like anything because bunyips simply don’t exist. At first the man doesn’t even look up from his notebook, where a bunyip is existing right there in front of him. But like a typical stubborn human being, the man knows what he knows, and won’t be told otherwise.

But the bunyip remains cheerfully optimistic. He goes off someplace quiet where he can be as handsome as he likes, on his own, away from those who will only bring him down. He looks at himself with a little mirror – an obvious metaphor for finding oneself instead of relying on the opinions of others – and seems happy enough. He’s even happier when a lady bunyip emerges from the swamp, and he shares his mirror with her.

Though it wasn’t familiar to me, The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek was a collaboration between the same author and illustrator who created one of my childhood favourites: John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat. Author Jenny Wagner wrote the story, with all its existential angst, and illustrator Ron Brooks added his earthy style, creating an atmosphere distinctly Australian but not clichéd. As a result, the book feels timeless.

And yet it was very much of a time. Published in 1973, Bunyip came out shortly after the progressive Gough Whitlam was elected Australia’s new prime minister, ending 23 years of conservative rule. The bunyip’s “What am I?” refrain struck a chord with Brooks, who sensed the entire country collectively asking a similar question. As a result, the tall and imposing Whitlam was one of the models Brooks used to design his bunyip.

The other was a fascinating individual named Haworth Bartram. You’re unlikely to have heard of Haworth Bartram, so let me fill you in. His name was familiar to me from researching an upcoming blog entry on a curious Australian book called Monty Mouse Looks for Adventure. What makes it so peculiar is that the illustrations are not drawings but photographs – photographs of a taxidermied mouse posed in various ways to fit the story.

Haworth Bartram was the photographer. Not only that, he was the publisher. A very wealthy former importer who never married and lived with his elderly mother in Heidelberg, Bartram was a keen photographer who believed that illustrating books with drawings was old-fashioned, and photos were the way of the future. So he started a photography studio/publishing company called Childerset, more or less to produce his own work.

And Jenny Wagner worked for him as project director. So when Wagner wrote The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek and took it to Bartram, he realised photographs wouldn’t work. Bunyips, despite the message of Wagner’s text, do not exist. So Brooks was brought in, but struggled at first to work out how his bunyip should look. Eventually he modelled it on Bartram. And here is how Brooks, in his fascinating memoir Drawn from the Heart, described Bartram:

Well over six feet tall, with a large equatorial circumference, he resembled nothing so much as a balloon, one of those pear-shaped water balloons you drop from the verandah roof onto some unsuspecting little brother or sister ... Not much neck to speak of ... And because he had no waist, he wore braces – over the shoulders, crossed at the back and clipped to his pants to hold them up.

Haworth Bartram sounds like a very odd individual indeed – Brooks describes the way he rarely saw Bartram consume anything other than Arnott’s Scotch Finger biscuits and bottles of orange Fanta. And much as I would like to see a photo of him, the only one I can find online is a grainy digitised newspaper picture of him as a young boy. Further googling reveals that he died in 1985 at the age of 62.

But Brooks’ description of him sounds very much like the bunyip star of our book – although because Brooks was nervous about making his bunyip too much like Bartram, he threw in a little bit of Whitlam as well. In any case, the end result was a character that has charmed generations of Australian children.

As an illustrator, Brooks certainly has a characteristic style, featuring lots of cross-hatching and linework to create the appearance of texture. And as an author, Wagner too is distinctive, dealing with questions of existence, identity and prejudice, and layering her work with symbolism that adults might understand, while children will just enjoy a good story.

Symbolism features heavily in John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat, which will also appear on DadReads in the future. It remains a childhood favourite of mine – like Play School. For me, The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek is in a different category, but I can understand why those who read it as children may love it. And I’m prepared to have it on medium rotation for Heidi’s story time.

A personal post-script to finish: my mother-in-law (Heidi’s grandmother Margaret) knew Ron Brooks back in the 1970s, when they lived near each other in Warrandyte in Melbourne’s outer north-east. Margaret was a Prep teacher at Warrandyte Primary School and had in her class Ron’s step-daughter Miche; Ron would often come in for story-time with the children. Here is the inscription from a copy of The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek gifted to Margaret by Ron, 41 years ago.

Animalia by Graeme Base

I always knew Graeme Base was good, but it was a touch of divine inspiration that really made me praise him. Tucked away in the bottom right corner of Animalia’s D page, just below a dachshund, you can see the corner of a piece of paper. Most of it runs off the page, but you can read “1 Thou shalt have no”. Clearly it’s the beginning of the Ten Commandments. Why is it on the D page? Because the Ten Commandments are also known as the Decalogue.

Disappointed as I was that baby Heidi failed to appreciate this nuance – she didn’t seem to pick the dodecahedron either, but then Maggie Simpson struggled with that one too – I had to admire Graeme Base. It is so rare to find a picture book that has something for everyone, but he achieves it. On that page alone, little kids can point to a dog or a dragon, older children can pick out dynamite or Doctor Who, and adults can feel smug at identifying the hard stuff.

Like the Decalogue. Or the crab (decapod, get it?). Or the inscription of 6th June, 1944 (D-Day, you with me?). Or the framed picture of a man looking nervously up at a sword hovering above his head. Alphabet books are a dime a dozen – hey, this D game is easy – but usually this page would feature a dog or a duck, or another dull cliché. But a depiction of Damocles in an alphabet book for kids? Now you’ve got my vote.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. As a kid, I spent hour upon hour poring over another Base classic, The Eleventh Hour. Even after I knew whodunit I was still searching for the rest of the hidden clues that pointed to the culprit who ate all the food for Horace the Elephant’s birthday party. It’s possible that Graeme Base contributed more to my lifelong love of crime and mystery novels than any other author. He himself was inspired by Agatha Christie.

The Eleventh Hour was full of puzzles, codes, hints, riddles, poetry and games, all wrapped up in the guise of a children’s book. And there was even a cricket match. What was not to love? Most of all, it was a work of art, like all of Graeme Base’s books. To call him merely an author is a bit like calling Paul McCartney just a singer. True, his words brilliantly add to the atmosphere, but his trademarks are those rich, dense, colourful illustrations.

So much time goes into them. Years, in some cases. In fact, you know what else he could have drawn on Animalia’s D page? Daniel Day-Lewis, an artist of similarly complete immersion. Typically, several years pass between Daniel Day-Lewis roles, because he chooses carefully and researches thoroughly. That’s how I think of Graeme Base. He might only release one book every three or four years, but it will always be quality. (Enid Blyton spat out 33 books in 1949 alone, just saying).

Animalia was first published in 1986, three years before The Eleventh Hour. But I spent far less time with Animalia as a kid, mostly because we didn’t own a copy. I recall it from school, or borrowing it from the library, but I remembered only the essence of the book, not the detail. And what detail there is. Each page has a few alliterative words to describe the illustration – “Diabolical dragons daintily devouring delicious delicacies” – but there is so much more to the pictures.

In his introductory poem, Base challenges the reader:

“For many things are ‘of a kind’

And those with keenest eyes will find

A thousand things, or maybe more –

It’s up to you to keep the score”

I haven’t counted, but a thousand wouldn’t surprise me. And on every page, there is something for everyone. Including a hidden picture of the author himself as a boy – it’s like a Where’s Wally in a book that’s already full of challenges. Kids can turn browsing Animalia into a competition. Who can identify the most things? And with references from mythology, mathematics, music, and minutiae of all kinds, it is a trivia lover’s dream.

There is barely a blank space in Animalia. I flashed back to Mr Scally’s classic time-filler during art class when I was in Prep. When we were drawing, he told us we could leave no white space at all. I used to use my yellow crayon to colour in any blank space behind my house or tree or whatever, and said I was drawing "air". If only I’d had Graeme Base’s imagination. And talent.

I read an interview with Base in which he described his love of problem solving. How am I going to create this picture so it is appealing but also conveys this information? He does so by providing illustrations that are truly luxurious, giving more bang for your buck than almost any other author. You can come back to Animalia time after time after time and always spot something new.

His approach to “X” is particularly praiseworthy. Xylophones are the ultimate cliché in children’s alphabet books. You won’t find one in Animalia; it is so conspicuously absent that it seems as though Base decided a xylophone was too easy (though there is a glockenspiel on the G page). Instead you will find the semaphore and sign language symbols for X, and the words – “Rex Fox Fixing Six Saxophones” – are ingeniously depicted in a mirror so the X comes first.

As an aside, Base in the same interview also described his own inquisitive nature. This quote did not surprise me at all, given his obvious attention to detail:

“If the toaster breaks here, I don’t buy another toaster; I take it apart and find out what’s wrong with it. How can I fix it? It’s not being cheap. It’s just wanting to know. I think I have an enquiring mind.”

He said his ideal dinner party guests would be Bill Bryson, Stephen Hawking, and someone else whose name escapes me but who apparently was dead in any case. Bill Bryson is my all-time favourite writer, Stephen Hawking the world’s finest brain, and Graeme Base in a league of his own as a children’s author and illustrator. Can I please have the fourth place at that table?

Share Said the Rooster by Pamela Allen

I remember the 1980s. Back before libraries used computers, back when borrowing cards still existed, when our primary school librarian Miss Hyde would stamp the due date inside the back cover.

Back when a story about a naked man sharing his bath with a goat, a wombat and a kangaroo rang no alarm bells.

The book in question, Mr Archimedes’ Bath, is a children’s classic in Australia. I remember liking it when I was little. But with the benefit of hindsight, it’s also ... a bit weird.

So it was with interest that I chose a newer book by the same author, Pamela Allen, for tonight’s bedtime story: Share Said the Rooster.

This is a story with a moral. Billy and Ben are the two characters who throughout the narrative refuse to share, despite the refrain of “Share said the rooster, share said the hen”.

They won’t share a pink sticky bun, they won’t share boots painted blue, they won’t share an apple up a tree, they won’t share an umbrella.

Their final problem is whether to share a boat out on the water. Aha, you think. Here comes the lesson. They’ll both get in the boat, the kiddies will learn the importance of sharing, and everyone will live happily ever after.

But no. Pamela Allen has other ideas.

She kills them.

Billy and Ben refuse to share the boat, and on the last page are shown sinking towards the bottom of the sea, presumably to their cold, watery graves.

The last line is chilling. “Goodbye Billy. Goodbye Ben.”

I did not see that coming. It was a twist worthy of Agatha Christie. In fact, I’ve read crime novels that have disturbed me less than this did.

It feels like a dark sequel to another Pamela Allen classic, Who Sank the Boat? At least in that one, everyone walks away unharmed.

This is a harsh lesson for kids to learn. Share Said the Rooster. OR ELSE YOU’LL DIE.