What possum?

Hush from "Possum magic" (left); and Hush turns invisible (right).

Hush the baby possum from "Possum magic", a children's picture book by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas. He stays visible only by regular intake of "people food" such as Vegemite sandwiches, pavlova and lamingtons.

Happy little Vegemites

Today, in my capacity as teacher-librarian - and the school's Possum Magic Book Rap coordinator - I was invited to observe our ESL (English as a Second Language) students making Vegemite sandwiches with their ESL teacher.

This activity was the practical part of a lesson about writing procedures, in this case a recipe, and a culminating activity of the students' work on the actual book rap. In the Mem Fox & Julie Vivas picture book, Hush the invisible possum was able to again turn (and stay) visible by eating Vegemite sandwiches, pavlova and lamingtons on her birthday.

There were plenty of laughs to be had as the ten- to twelve-year-old students grappled with the uniqueness that is Vegemite, not to mention their admirable manipulation of the English language, when their Australian experiences are so limited. I mean, it's hard enough to explain to Australian-born students why "knife" starts with a "k", let alone informing newly-arrived students that Vegemite yeast extract is a favourite food of Australian children, and that it's a by-product of the ggreat Aussie beer-brewing process.

The students are already demonstrating an Australian sense of humour. After being told that the steps of a procedure always begin with a verb, one student rejected Step 4 as "Eat Vegemite sandwich" in favour of her own Step 4: "Put Vegemite sandwich in bin." (That's "trash" for all you Americans reading this blog, by the way.)

At various Star Trek conventions over the years, we used to foist Vegemite upon the unsuspecting US guests of honour. Their usual response was "It looks like axle grease" - and science fiction author, David Gerrold, once said, "... and I believe you feed this to young children?"

The students did survive their Vegemite experience today, but only just. One had previously boasted he "ate all foods", but even he has now found one to cross off his list. I explained to the students that I may not accept their invitation to turn up next week, when they are planning to follow a procedure for making lamingtons. (I hate lamingtons! I've often postulated that my mother was once frightened by a rogue coconut while I was in the womb.)

A sense of place...

When the Possum Magic Book Rap I'm doing with my students ran the first time, in 2004, I mentioned on the accompanying Teacher Rap that I remembered an anecdote by Australian author, Libby Gleeson. Libby once said that one of the ways a writer can make a fiction story have an air of authority and uniqueness about it is to capture "a sense of place". For example, her charming children's picture book, "Big Dog", is set in the street where she and her family lived and - even though Armin Greder drew very different illustrations for the book - the story still carries an authenticity that the action occurs, not just on any residential street, but one particular street. Even with the economy of words needed by a picture book, or the briefest of production chats between author and editor, and then editor and illustrator.

For this Rap Point, where the possums of "Possum Magic" will visit the students' own town/suburb and have a new adventure, written by the students, it seemed to me that I really wanted the students to convey their "sense of place". That previous time, in our brainstorming session to write jointly about Penrith, I had the students describing orally, and in detail: the local car park, Penrith Plaza, Lemongrove Bridge, High Street and other (to them) instantly recognisable locales. The unique Penrith food that was found became obvious; if the students described Penrith clearly enough, the available local food is always going to be mentioned in their descriptions. I hoped. And I wasn't disappointed.

I wondered if this new batch of students would coincidentally delve into the same material - but they have surprised me yet again! We did our brainstorm in two sessions, last Friday and again (quite briefly) today. This time, the students had vivid oral descriptions of how to get to Penrith from the city - most of them would go by train, of course, not bicycle like the grandmother possum in the original picture book, so suddenly they have Grandma Poss at Circular Quay station, buying train tickets: for herself and the bike! (Hush is still invisible and doesn't need a ticket, of course.)

The students also settled on one particular takeaway food shop, gave great descriptions of it (including its unique smells!) and they are now really eager to do a joint construction of our first draft tomorrow.

Thanks again, Libby, I'll be forever grateful for your insistence that every book (and even a few paragraphs?) should have its own "sense of place".

A rapping good time

This month at school, I'm working with a little phalanx of six- and seven-year old book rappers in the library. A book rap is a carefully guided discussion about a book by email, designed to teach students about ICT (information and communication technologies).

We had to brainstormed an introductory message to the other classes (all over Australia), edited it and emailed it, and then refreshed our memories with a reading of the featured book, "Possum Magic" by Mem Fox.

Today, with the cooperation of the four home class teachers, we were able to squeeze in an extra session, so we tried to get on top of next week's Rap Point. Highlight of the session, though, was when the library telephone in the office started to ring. I hesitated about answering it, but it would have been annoying to let it keep ringing. I gave an audible sigh and raced off to answer the phone.

Still clustered around the brainstorm sheet, one little voice among the group of students chirped, "Don't worry, Mr McLean, we can handle this..."