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Checkout the latest recommended resources from the SLANSW Review Team

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  • 22 Aug 2024 5:27 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Title: Yellamundie: Voices and Faces of First Nations People in Sydney

    Author: Michelle McGrath

    Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

    Audience: Secondary Students

    "Keep an open heart. Learn some of our strengths. Don't step on eggshells, get in there and meet people. Together, we have to take this to the next level. Our culture isn't meant to be just ours - our culture is meant to be all of ours to share. You can belong to these thousands of years as well" (P 90) 


    In the Dharug language, "Yellamundie" means storyteller.

    This wonderful collection of stories from 30 of Sydney's Indigenous people reflects upon their past and shows how they embrace the future, which is strongly embedded in their culture. Although confronting and sad at a times, their stories give them a strong voice in informing readers of the traditions of their people and their process of healing so that we may move into the future together. 

    Recommended for Secondary Students as a quality text by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors

  • 22 Aug 2024 5:15 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Title: Catch your Death

    Author: Ravena Guron

    Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

    Audience: Secondary Students

    "If I'd been more sensible, I would have turned round and driven on my merry way, risking freezing to death in the snow. But I was too obsessed with the thought of a nice hot chocolate. And at that point, I had no idea that I was driving straight into a horror story -

    you know the ones I am talking about, where people like me die first because we're too busy looking the other way to run from the danger - " (P160)

    Three girls are stranded by a snowstorm at the wealthy Bramble Estate. As Devi, Lizzie and Jayne wait for the storm to blow out, the wealthy matriarch of the family, Emily Vanforte, dies in the middle of family dinner. With secret passageways, knives under floorboards, missing guns and many lies, as the girls going to be able to save themselves...? 

    Relevant to Secondary Students Wide Reading Program

  • 22 Aug 2024 5:02 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Title: What's Murder Between Friends

    Author: Meg Gatland-Veness

    Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

    Audience: Older Readers (coarse language)

    "Without Ms Lovelace, what will they do?" Dimitri asks. Will they cancel the show?" Penny adds. "And what about our drama class?" Dorothy says. "She is the only drama teacher in the school. Will we have to choose another elective? Dear god, please don't make me take engineering," I say. (P15) 

    " The las thing we expect to find on the scavenger hunt is a dead body". Thus begins the story of Hallie and the other Year 12 Drama students who were at school on Saturday morning for their usual Scavenger Hunt. This was always organised by their Drama teacher, Ms Lovelace as a warm-up to their musical rehearsal. Instead of clues. the Year 12 students find their Drama teacher lying in a pool of blood outside the drama rooms. In this small country town with no police station, everyone becomes a suspect, including the Drama students. With the school musical still going ahead, exams coming up and romance in the air, the Year 12 students must discover whodunnit before another murder occurs.  A story with many twists and suspects, a sprinkling of drama, romance and murder.

    Relevant to Stages 5 & 6 Wide Reading Program

  • 22 Aug 2024 4:46 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Title: Father of the Lost Boys

    Author: Yout A. Alaak

    Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

    Audience: Secondary School Readers*

    "It's June 1988. Scantly covered in rags, malnourished boys roam the landscape, searching for scraps to eat. Thousands more lie under trees, naked and starving. Many will never wake up to see a new day. War has brought me to a land far from my own. All I've ever known is left behind. I am in the midst of sixteen thousand unaccompanied minors. I call them my dear brothers, but the world calls them the Lost Boys of Sudan". (P46)

    Yout A. Alaak has written a moving and emotional memoir about his father, Mecak Ajang Alaak, who saved 20,000 young South Sudanese boys from certain death, including his own son, Yout. During the second Sudanese civil war, many displaced and orphaned boys were trained to be soldiers. In 2989, Mecak led these boys on a four-year journey from Sudan to Ethiopia and finally Kenya. Most were aged between 7 and 12 years. This is the incredible story of survival.

    * A younger reader's adaptation

    Relevant to 7-12 English Syllabus Representation of Life Experiences, Cultural Diversity and Cultural Identity

  • 20 Aug 2024 10:53 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Title: Write Cut Rewrite

    Author: Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon

    Reviewer: Fabian Amuso

    Audience: Stage 5 & 6



    “Cutting and pasting often happens within a single work, moving a verse, a stanza, a sentence, a paragraph or even a chapter to another place.” (Page 151)

    Authors Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon explore how writers not only have to write but also cut and rewrite their works before publication.

    Featured are actual extracts from manuscripts held by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. The reader will explore and be guided through how and why changes were made to their works, whether by the writer or the publisher. Questions will be asked as one reads through - What if the change had not been made, and how would that have impacted the storyline or its meaning? Would sticking to a particular word, phrase, or sentence in an earlier draft have enhanced the work, or was the final product the perfect outcome?

    Being a history teacher and a teacher librarian, along with my interest in literature and media, I applied a “never judge a book by its cover” approach to reading this book. The cover did appear exciting when initially seeing it, but once opened and began to read through Hulle and Nixon’s outline of the editing processes involved in literary and poetic works, along with its supporting extracts from manuscripts, I was left amazed at what great writers had done to master their written works, which would go onto make history themselves. By the end, I had taken a “behind the scenes” tour of the production of great literature.

    In the classroom, this book is best suited to students undertaking Stage 5 and Stage 6 English as it provides useful insights into the writing process. For the leisure reader, it is recommended for those who wish to gain insight into the process of producing literary works, but also for those who would enjoy gaining an insight into how authors have composed their works in recent centuries.


  • 25 Jul 2024 1:46 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Title: It's the sound of a thing

    Author: Maxine Beneba Clarke

    Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

    Audience: young people and adults





    TEXT SHRUG : a found poem

    lol, omg,

    srsly

    icymi : idgas

    rofl! (P 99)


    CONFISCATED

    I really need my phone back

    Dad doesn't understand

    how my fingers start a-twitching

    when it isn't in my hand

    I don't know where my mates are

    I can't Snapchat-track their moves

    I've really started panicking

    I'm feeling kind of blue

    (P 142)

    Maxine Beneba Clarke has written 100 poems about everyday life, childhood, growing up, sounds of the neighbourhood, messy rooms, grandfather's fading memory, alliteration, screen time and 22 reasons I can't sleep. a collection of poems, from haikus to limericks, sonnets to concrete poems, free verse to rhyming couplets.  The poems are also listed by Poetic Form and encompasses a wonderful range of thoughts and ideas.

    *Relevant to the Year 7-10 English Syllabus Wide Reading Program

  • 25 Jul 2024 1:27 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Title: Don't even think about it

    Author: Sarah Mlynowski

    Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

    Audience: Older Readers (contains some graphic language)

    "She's hearing voices," Isabelle's mom told her, her voice trembling. Dr Coven thought Isabelle was either on drugs or having a psychotic episode, and instructed her mother to take her to the ER immediately. The two of them took a taxi to St Luke's emergency room. While her mom was filling out paperwork, Isabelle texted her friend Jordana: At hospital. Losing my mind. (P 91) 

    What would you do if everyone could hear your thoughts? 10B are just your average, ordinary, high school class until they get their flu vaccinations. Then, complications occur - the students can hear everyone else's thoughts and everyone in the class can hear each other's thoughts... As secrets get spilled, friends became enemies, breakups and romances occur, and exam answers get easier if you sit near the right person, will it be the best or worst year of their high school life?

    A highly entertaining novel about High School just becoming a bit more complicated than expected.

    *Relevant to the Year 7-10 English Syllabus Wide Reading Program

  • 25 Jul 2024 12:00 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Title: Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop

    Author: Alba Donati

    Translated by Elena Pala

    Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

    "That's how the idea to open a bookshop in a village in Northern Tuscany, on top of a hill, overlooking the Apuan Alps.  I got the idea so a mother from Salerno could gift her daughter two boxes full of Emily Dickson" (P8)

    Alba left her fulfilling, hectic life as a book publicist in Florence and went home to Lucignana, a little village of 180 souls, in the hills of Tuscany, Italy. Alba had always dreamed of opening a bookshop and so she did. Alba's new venture survived fire and COVID restrictions but, surprisingly became well-known and has become a beacon and shrine for readers all over the world.

    A warm, quirky and delightful book, containing a celebration of words, people, determination and resilience. Recommended for readers who would like a taste of another world. 

  • 25 Jul 2024 11:39 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Title: 2024 Australasian Sky Guide

    Author: Dr Nick Lomb

    Reviewer: Rhonda Bruce

    Audience: Stags 4 & 5

    "The stars for Euahlayi in this Universe inform us of a great number of stories that our people connect with in life and in death" (P8) Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson 

    Recommended for viewers of the night sky, whether using backyard telescopes or on camping trips, this guide to the nigh sky has been updated annually since 1991. It contains updated information on the rising and setting times for the Sun and Moon, Tide Tables for Sydney and Highlights of the Night Sky for 2024, including when meteor showers will occur. 

    Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson provides an overview of "The Stars and Euahlayi Law".

    *relevant to the Year 7-10 English Syllabus Wide Reading Program

  • 25 Jul 2024 11:33 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)


    Title: Ships in the Field

    Author: Susanne Gervay

    Illustrator: Anna Pignataro

    Reviewer: Emily Basham

    “Ma used to be a teacher before she came here. Now she makes dresses all day long. Pa used to be a farmer before he came here. Now he works at the car factory all day long”. (p. 5-6.)

    Ships in the Field details one family’s experience of migration as seen through the eyes of a child, addressing the struggles and hardships that accompany living in a new and foreign country. Despite the trepidatious past and the unknown future ahead, this family is a happy one-though a new family addition would make our child narrator even more joyous.

    Inspired by both the author and illustrator’s family immigration journey, this heartfelt picture book captures the realities of war in a real and genuine way. Whilst it includes more mature themes of war, immigrants, and other social justice issues, the subtle use of humour and delicate artwork sparks a feeling of hope for both the characters, and the reader.

    This book has the simplicity to cater to Years K-2, whilst having the depth and underlying themes to address a more mature age group. Similar books include ‘My Two Blankets’, ‘The Day War Came’

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