‘Budburra’ is an Aboriginal word for an echidna. Budburra features throughout this engaging and interactive story. Each double page spread features four different healthy foods all of a single colour, for example, red or yellow. The four foods are each described with an adjective. Often these adjectives are alliterative, such as a ‘bendy banana’, ‘crunchy carrot’ and ‘wriggly witchetty grubs’. These add to the read aloud fun. The page design is clever, following a pattern where there is an eager youngster on the left, four coloured foods in the middle panels, and a final panel on the right, where Budburra asks, ‘Which orange (or other colour) food did Sammy eat?’, followed by an action verb, such as ‘nibble’, ‘crunch’ and ‘gobble’. The perfect ending comes when Budburra, holding a hose that spouts rainbow-coloured water into a waiting ‘colour-full’ wheelbarrow, shows an overflowing collection of fruits and vegetables. The exuberant, joyful illustrations, created by the Cherbourg Community Children, offer many humorous details, which add immensely to the reading experience.
The final pages of the book are sure to engage children and prompt classroom and home activities. Bush tucker is described, such as witchetty grubs and lilli pilly berries. The ‘Colour Yourself Healthy’ pages offer advice on healthy foods including discussion points and activities such as creating a vegetable garden. A final two pages offer recipes, with ingredients and directions to make fruit smoothies, fruit salad, rollup wraps and more.
Cherbourg, an Aboriginal community town, some 250km northwest of Brisbane, is on the Barambah Creek. It is located in Wakka Wakka tribal boundaries, near the border of Gubbi Gubbi territory. Budburra Books is a not-for-profit organisation, which engages local children and the community in producing books, art and films, with the aim of encouraging a love of learning and literacy and cultivating pride in the local Indigenous culture.
Series: Strong and Smart Early Years Literacy Project
Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander Resource
