Dry to Dry: The Seasons of Kakadu
Pamela Freeman (Illust: Liz Anelli)
| Publisher: | Walker Books Australia |
| ISBN: | 9781760650285 |
| Awards Year: | 2021 |
| Category: | Eve Pownall Award |
The publisher says...
This Nature Storybook follow-up to the award-winning Desert Lake is a stunningly illustrated and extraordinary story of the yearly weather cycle and attendant changing wildlife of Kakadu National Park, from the Dry to the Wet to the Dry again.
In the tropical wetlands and escarpments of Kakadu National Park, the seasons move from dry to wet to dry again. Those seasons have shaped the astonishing variety of plants, animals, birds, insects ... migratory birds by the thousands, grasshoppers and owls, lizards and turtles, fruit bats and spear grass. And, gliding past them all in the rivers and waterholes, the long, sinuous shapes of crocodiles...
The illustrator says...
Share with us what being Shortlisted for the 2020 CBCA Book of the Year Awards means to you?
I am hugely proud and happy that Dry to Dry is Shortlisted in the 2021 CBCA Book of the Year Awards. Making these non-fiction picture books takes a whole team of us, not just Pamela and myself but all the wonderful people at Walker Books who direct, support and cajole us into reaching deeper into ourselves to make the book the best it can be. I am particularly indebted to my art director, Sarah Davis who kept me going through the many months of hard work. Most picture books have a main character, human or otherwise that carry the story arc. Here the focus is the yearly cycle of an environment with its myriad of species and types of weather. Even with two research trips it was hard work to make the thing flow
Tell us what inspired you to write your Shortlisted book?
Pamela and I spent a happy day in my Newcastle studio abut 4 years ago, talking over the possible places we could make a book about. She came up with ideas and I jotted down drawings. It went from there.
Share with us your favourite illustration/page:
The opening spread. Even in The Dry Season it feels pretty hot and humid to a NSW traveller like myself. I love that in this spread I could make the picture tense and stormy, with crocodiles sun baking, steely cold looking clouds building and dust storms kicking up in the distance on one side of the page and on the other, a sense of bulging skies, stuffy tourist utes but the expectation of an exciting journey about to begin.
The CBCA judges say...
This book explores the changing seasons of Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory. Offering parallel texts of narrative and factual information, the book is poetic and engaging. The language used transports readers to Kakadu and keeps them engaged through the change in font, size and direction of text, making the words to jump out at the reader. Additional information at the end of the book, as well as a discussion on the seasons that the Indigenous people of Kakadu recognise, highlight the importance of Kakadu to traditional owners, adding to the overall high-quality production of this book.
The Reading Time reviewers say...
Click here to read the Reading Time review.
Teaching Notes for this book...
The publisher has generously made teaching notes available for this book. Click on the icon below to view these resources.
