‘Let the truth be told so healing can begin.’ These non-Indigenous storytellers, Mark Greenwood and Frané Lessac, have an impressive pedigree of telling stories which are fully representative of First Nations People. The acknowledgment of Country on the title page, as well as an extensive list of consulting organisations, and permissions given to the creators, affirm this.
Each double spread is a lush gouache painting in the naïve style which has established Lessac’s long career as an internationally recognised illustrator. Greenwood’s text is presented in three different typefaces and font sizes. These include a one sentence caption (always containing the phrase ‘our country’); a description of what is going on in the painting, and where; and, in the smallest print of all, a paragraph of facts and figures behind the historical event memorialised. This enables readers of all ages to access the story at their level, and for those sharing the book to choose how to share both words and illustrations.
The double spread captioned ‘In our country, we will remember them’ has people pictured clustering around a stone monument, holding each other for support, many with sad expressions. The monument sits atop a hill, on a cleared piece of ground lined with story stones; overlooking a treed landscape, against a sky that could be dawn or dusk. The description includes a call to action for the reader: ‘Learn about what happened when a frontier war was waged.’ Finally, the paragraph gives the details of the massacre of Wirrayaraay people at Myall Creek in 1838. Greenwood and Lessac have played with familiar phrasing and often repeated remembrance of conflicts to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions about the ‘long silence’ around violence closer to home. Lessac’s paintings can appear child-like. However in her compositions there are subtle depths which reward repeated viewings. The front endpapers present the key historical events and their dates as a combination timeline / table of contents and the back endpapers give brief cameos of other historical events and their locations not detailed in the book.
‘Our Country: Where History Happened’ is a Children’s Book Council of Australia 2024 Honour Book in the Eve Pownall award. It was also shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Book Award and the NSW Premier’s History Award.
Series title: Our Country
Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander Resource
