Childhood Memories

Story_tiles

Originally uploaded by winsongreen

Recently, I was able to attend a SLAV PD at the National Gallery of Victoria. I had a great day there, attending interesting sessions and reconnecting with friends and colleagues from other school libraries. It was a fantastic day and such a great venue to hold such a conference. The theme was Seeing Things Differently, and several of the sessions I attended focussed on looking at the stories in artworks.

During the lunch break I was able to wander around the gallery, and it was during that time that I came across an exhibition, celebrating a milestone of the 250 years of Wedgwood’s history. I have loved Wedgwood for a long time. Their almost cameo applications on their pottery is lovely, and the blues, blacks and greens are gorgeous.

As I checked out the exhibition, I came across these story tiles. I’m a bit of a sucker for anything story related so these really caught my eye. As you can see, these ones depict Little Red Riding Hood, but it made me wonder if Wedgwood produced more of them. 

Here’s what the Gallery had to say about these tiles:

“Wedgewood began producing tiles in its creamware body in the eighteenth century, some time before 1767. Soon after 1800, however, Wedgewood discontinued the production of creamware tiles until 1870 when a fashion for decorated tiles had been established by Minton, and decorated creamware tiles started to be produced in sets.

Thomas Allen studied at the Stoke-on-Trent School of Design. He began to work for Minton, perhaps as early as 1845 but by 1876 had become frustrated by low wages and the domination of the art department by Leon Arnoux and M.L. Salon. He transferred to Wedgewood where he soon became supervisor of the Fine Art Studio, Chief Designer and Art Director. Allen designed a number of tableware patterns for Wedgewood, but is chiefly known for his figure subjects on vases. Allen designed a number of sets of pictorial tiles for Wedgewood, both printed in a single colour, and printed and enamelled. Possessed of a superb technique, he is widely regarded as the leading Staffordshire figure painter of the nineteenth century.”

I wonder if you, like me, are a series, or serious if you like, book collector? I had to laugh when I was sent the following link to Lifecycle of the Juvenile Series Book Collector. While I don’t quite make the Fanatic Collector level, I do see some traits of the Aficionado level.

So what series do I collect? Most would have to be Trixie Belden. I loved Trixie from the very first time I spotted, and bought a copy from a school fete, for a very small amount. It was Trixie Belden and Mystery in Arizona. Since then I went on to collect the whole series, and more recently have been collecting different versions of the books.

For those who don’t know Trixie, her adventures with best friends Honey and Jim, and her brothers Mart and Brian see her solving an amazing array of mysteries. By book 8 Dan has also become an integral part of the group. Great fun stories with real flawed characters. Trixie is not perfect, and she makes loads of mistakes along the way. The first 15 of these books were recently released by Random House and many of the earlier ones can still be readily found. The last 5, however, are a bit harder to find and many collectors are paying between $50 and $100 for each one.

If you’re a Trixie lover, then pop over to the Trixie Clubhouse at and have a browse at the forum there. I post as Kazzie. There has recently been a great Trixie resource site updated by Carmen, and well worth looking at. Head over to Carmen’s site .  If you’ve been a lover of Nancy Drew all your life, then give Trixie a go.

Another series I loved was Drina, whose books took her from a very young girl, who simply wanted to dance but whose Grandmother, and guardian, would not allow her lessons, and who in the final book, became a ballerina. The Drina series was written by Jean Estoril.  Most were published in the late 1950s to the mid 1960s, but the last one was written in the early 1990s, and really ended Drina’s story.  Again it is the final few books, especially the last 2, which bring the highest prices. 

Lastly, I still love many of the Whitman books.  There have been hundreds of Whitman books for children published over the years, and I loved them. They were fairly cheap to buy new, and could be bought through supermarkets.  Donna Parker, TV tie ins, Books for Girls, were all among those published by Whitman.  You can read more about the Donna Parker series here.

And there’s more on collecting the Whitman books here.

I have always been a huge fan of Anthony Browne, author and illustrator of children’s picture book. Many children would know his books Willy the Wimp and Piggybook.  One of my favourites of his is Voices in the Park, where the one story is told through the eyes of four different characters. As with many of his books, the characters in this book are depicted as gorillas.  Browne says in this Guardian podcast, with the main characters being anthromorphic children reading the book can identify more between the characters and their own families.  His characters are not depicting any particular culture.

I have said before that I have a real attraction to picture books and Browne’s are very sophisticated.  Browne includes many intertextual references, especially using well known art works, which children may or may not immediately understand.  It doesn’t matter to the story whether they “get it” or not, but they have been introduced to these images and when they do see the real artwork, they may recall that one of Browne’s books had an illustration of it.

Browne comments in this podcast that he would hope to bring an awareness to “looking”.  He doesn’t believe that we spend enough time looking at things, and perhaps he’s right.  Visual literacy is something that we need to help our students develop and poring over picture books, whatever their age, is a great way to get children looking, understanding and connecting.   

Anthony Browne’s books are a wonderful place to start exploring and “looking”.  I also love David Wiesner, Colin McNaughton, and Tohby Riddle.

I came across an article in an old magazine recently, with this poster, which advertises the 1907 “First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work” which was held at the Exhibition Buildings. I am fascinated at the thought of holding an exhibition devoted to work done by women.  The exhibition was to recognise the contribution women had made in so many different areas.  All sorts of articles were on display: illustrations and paintings, stencilled work on textiles, glass making, woodcarving and weaving among them.

The poster pictured was the winning entry in a poster competition, and was done by Helen L. Atkinson.  Her poster depicts the Exhibition Buildings in the background, and women from all the states of Australia in the foreground.  The border on their dresses shows which state they represent.

Some of the items displayed can be seen in the archives at the Castlemaine Art Gallery site.  They staged an exhibition in 2007, to celebrate the centenary of the original exhibition.

I recently spent some time wandering around the gorgeous Exhibition Buildings and the gardens here in Melbourne. I adore old architecture and we, here in Melbourne, have some wonderful old buildings – the Exhibition Buildings are just one that I love. 

Here’s another photo that I took of the fountain. I’ve walked past there many times, yet never really looked at the fountain. This one is a close up taken looking up to the top of the fountain. It’s quite whimsical in a way, with the platypus hanging on to the bowl and peering down towards the ground, and the crocodiles looking up.  I’d never noticed them before. Another thing about the top I’d never noticed is that the rim, just above the children, depicts lots of different technology advances.  In a close up you can see all sorts of items representing areas on display at the 1880 International Exhibition.  The areas are the arts, the sciences, commerce and trade, and industry.  It would have been fabulous to see the exhibition.

The Exhibitions Buildings have been host to so many exhibitions over the years. My parents used to take me to the caravan and camping shows, and the home shows, which used to be held there. These were always great fun, and we kids collected all manner of brochures to take home with us.

My mother has fond memories of the buildings as being the venue for many ballroom dancing competitions which she danced in.  I remember her telling me once that she never told her parents she competed in ballroom dancing.  One night though, at the Exhibition Buildings, she nearly had a fit when, in the middle of one of her dances, she spotted her mother and father, and young sister, sitting in the front row, beaming away at her.  My Grandfather, I can imagine, would have been enjoying the moment immensely.

Here’s a mosaic I created for Miss McAllister’s Ghost. I scanned the front cover and then selected the photo of the lady and the old stove from the cover as two images to use. I then decided to find a vegie garden (one child gets given the job of weeding the garden), a child churning butter (another gets to churn butter in the story) and hens (another has to tend to the hens). Other objects relate to different events in the story, and add to the mosaic. Using a piece of the cover may help students to recognise the book even if they haven’t read it.

I love Big Huge Labs, which is an image generator attached to Flickr.  You can do loads of fun things with the different applications.  Lots of things there lend themselves to library displays, but our Library team used the Mosaic Maker to create another competition for Book Week last year.

Our idea was to think of different objects which would be found throughout the book.  We came up with 12 objects for each book.  Since Heidi is one of my favourite books, examples of things in Heidi might include: goats, grandfather, a stool, a bed in a hayloft, wooden bowls, a picture of two of the Alps, and the meadows, perhaps an old fashioned wheelchair. 

Once the objects have been decided, I found pictures of them, and created a set in my Flickr account.  It’s then a very simple matter to put the URL for the Heidi set into the Mosaic Maker generator, and the tool puts the photos together in a mosaic.  These can then be printed out and laminated for display or other use.

Last year we had created around 10 of these mosaics.  We explained the task to the students and then allowed them to try to guess which mosaic belonged with each book.  We left clues around the Library, such as the book on display.  Some students found it a bit too hard and so we had another list of the titles, which we had jumbled.  The students needed to unjumble the title, then decide which book went with the mosaic.  They could use the OPAC to help them with this.

This could be a great “buddy” activity for Book Week.  Have your older students create these for picture books which the little ones would be familiar with.  The littlies then have to try to guess the titles.

Another in this category, but this time for the younger end of the older readers, is Miss McAllister’s Ghost, by Elizabeth Fensham. I loved this book which tells the story of the relationship between an old lady and three younger children. Miss McAllister has cut herself off from the world and still lives as she did before the war. The children discover her secrets when one of them mistakes the old lady for a ghost.

Kill The Possum, by James Moloney, is a really powerful look at a family in crisis, and at the mercy of bullying ex-husband. When the police cannot do anything, a teenaged boy gets involved.  Great book for the more mature older readers.  I heard James Moloney talking about this book, around last year’s Book Week, and he made mention that he was absolutely delighted with the cover of it, so make sure you have a good look.