The back cover blurb of ‘Purinina’ indicates why the front cover illustration is a mysterious teaser: whose tail is it? The blurb assures readers that if you follow the journey of one of these creatures right to the end, 'Perhaps, just perhaps, you will learn to love them too.' Purinina is a Tasmanian Devil and this is her life story. So the book deals with the turn-off factor head on. (Or tail on.)
It's significant that the blurb acknowledges a kind of 'marketing problem' in offering the story to readers. Tasmanian Devils are not cute and cuddly like koalas, or likely to take food from your hand like kangaroos at some petting zoo. They're not chunky or comical like wombats. Tasmanian Devils are carnivores with sharp teeth, jaws like a steel trap, and they seem to do a lot of screaming - although the text assures us that this is mostly in fun and is widely misunderstood. Nevertheless, this unique Australian marsupial has been in grave danger from the lethal Devil Facial Tumour Disease, and until 2020 had been extinct on the mainland. So Christina Booth's project is to engage her readers' interest in the hope of ensuring a brighter future for the Tasmanian Devil.
A prefatory note on the imprint page acknowledges a further risk factor in this publication: the author has sought permission to use the word 'purinina' from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. palawa kani (rendered lower case, like the name of the protagonist) is an exciting example of a recovered Australian language. Like the Tasmanian Devil it was threatened with extinction from the experience of invasion, and its survival today has been hard-won. The determination to keep it that way is evident in the protocols that are in place to protect now the people's ownership of their language.
The story of Purinina's epic journey from the protection of her mother's pouch to the challenging world outside the family's cave is further framed with three pages of information at the end of the book, much of it intended to dispel misunderstanding, and make these creatures less frightening by the use of this author's characteristic humour. Booth teaches her readers how to speak 'devilish', for example, and she closes the book with a transcribed farewell: 'H f f f f!' (Translation: 'Hi, I'm not food. I'm a devil.')
Another strategy the text employs to dispel any possible antipathy is the use of poetic language and rhythms. And Booth integrates these with constantly shifting perspectives in both the illustration and the design. She slows the rhythm down and elevates the narrative with mythic tropes: 'She suckles. She sleeps. She grows.' Zooming in and out of close-ups, linking the hairy fringe of the mother's pouch metaphorically with the fringe of tall trees in the forest, and making playful decisions with typesetting and composition make the reading process unusually interactive, as young readers turn the page one way or another to follow the progress of the story. The metaphorical linking also inscribes in the story the ultimately indivisible link between such beings as Purinina and their natural environment.
The narrative also repositions its readers as if they were Purinina's siblings, trying to understand why their mother fails to wake or move when she finally returns to the cave from the vast world outside. It never really explains the role of the alien two-legged being that enters the cave, and says, 'She's over here, poor old girl; I think we are too late.' It sounds like a benevolent expression of regret, but is it only regret for having arrived too late to rescue Purinina's mother, or is it regret for some other action? From Purinina's point of view, there's nothing at all benevolent in the two-legged alien's decision to take her mother's body 'Away'. That word is repeated five times in a single spread.
‘Purinina’ leaves its readers thoughtful about both the fate of Australia's native species and our own role in their journey. There are three pages of factual information at the close of the book. If it is an early work by this author (her first) occasionally lacking the consistency of her later work in the powerful and outstanding ‘One Careless Night’ (2019), it demonstrates abundantly why she is regarded as one of the most exciting members of a new generation of talented creators in Tasmania.
Picture Books for Older Readers
