Great "School Magazine" podcast!

Art: Tohby Riddle.
Therin of Andor

The "School Magazine" is Australia's oldest literary magazine, in fact the oldest literary magazine for children anywhere in the world. Commencing in 1916 as a free publication for NSW primary school students, with the aim of presenting Australian writers for Australian children. I remember using the magazine as a student myself in the 60s, as a beginning teacher in the early 80s, and as a teacher-librarian and literacy teacher today!

Radio National ran a wonderful program yesterday, called "An older kind of magic: a history of the School Magazine", and presented some great anecdotes about its 94-year history. Included as interviewees were my friends and former colleagues, Jonathan Shaw and Cassandra Golds.

If you missed yesterday's broadcast, it is now available as a downloadable podcast here! A very worthwhile experience!

Thanks to writer, Geoffrey McSkimming, and artist, Tohby Riddle, I once featured in a "School Magazine" play ("Touchdown", Vol 87, No 10, Nov 2002, pp 341-346). The character of "Ian, the lost librarian", a Tarzan memorabilia fanatic (instead of "Star Trek", of course), appears in "Mr A at the Floor of Heaven, or, Not Quite Yeti".

"The misguided librarians are lost in the snow,
Dewey's their system, but snowy they go..."

Ian the librarian wears a spotted loincloth over his snow-pants, of course. He was joined by my real life SCIS workmates of the day, Anne (aka "Mrs Dowling"), Wendy and Deirdre.

CATch of the day...

Racing past the venerable, old Mitchell Wing of the State Library of New South Wales yesterday, I simply had to stop and take some snaps of "Matthew and Trim", featured characters in a great graphic novel I read to my Stage 2 students last term.