I read a great article over the summer by Brian Johns in the Sydney Morning Herald: Our great stories need a place in the classroom (January 20, 2015) in which a case was built for the promotion of Australian literature in the school curriculum.
With concern that Australian literature had become ‘forgotten’ a team of people got together to create resources for teachers to bring Australian stories back into the classroom. New classics such as Oscar-winner Shaun Tan’s The Arrival and Jeannie Baker’s Mirror, as well as old favourites such as Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career and Ruth Park’s Playing Beatie Bow are among the many books that have been included.
An impressive list of titles, for which interesting and challenging Teacher Resources have been developed, has been selected by the Australian Society of Authors’ (ASA) Council. The aim of this project is best summed up on the Reading Australia website:
The ASA’s Council were asked to select works they thought students and others should encounter, to give a view of Australia’s rich cultural identity: works that would tell Australia’s history and also how we are currently developing as a nation. The ASA Council are adamant that this list should be merely the beginning, and it should be built upon with other works that have already been published, as well as the great new works that continue to be published in Australia.
Aiming to inspire interest in both Australian schools and schools worldwide, it is well worth spending some time checking out these books and resources on Reading Australia.
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