Right Book, Right Time, page 22
On the Mat ARCHIMEDE FUSILLO
Y/YA AUSTRALIA 2006
“So, you know much about wrestling, Big Fella?” the kid asked.
Let’s face it, sport is not for everyone. So it’s a very good thing that we have wrestling. It’s just choreographed acting between men in tights, isn’t it? Or is it? Claude is a boy who knows he will never win a gold medal but that doesn’t stop him trying. Not in running, in football, in anything. He’s too big, but he’s not too fast. So when Claude meets Mario, or Whitetail as Mario introduces himself, a new and mysterious world of sport is gradually revealed. Here, at last, is a game that might allow Claude to get the better of Tom De Silva, the school poster boy for sport. But Mario, named after the great Italo-Australian wrestler Mario Milano, has even bigger plans in mind. He has the scripts of past bouts, and of one mythical encounter that never took place. Now, with Claude renamed the Big Fella, Whitetail is ready to rise again. But what kind of sport is it that needs a script, Claude wonders.
In Mario, Archie Fusillo has created a lively, spirited character whose energy and optimism help to carry this entertaining story. For many years in Australia, wrestling occupied a place two rungs below soccer; it was the obscure but passionate pastime of migrants. On the Mat brings that strange, but hardly distant, world close to the reader. It’s a beguiling, touching and surprising story that younger readers should find highly enjoyable.
Shakespeare Bats Cleanup RON KOERTGE
Y/YA USA 2003
Man, a good double play is beautiful.
That’s mostly what I miss, being part of
something beautiful. I know, I know. Guys
don’t talk about stuff like that. But this is
between me and my journal.
To ‘bat cleanup’ you need to be calm under pressure. The cleanup batter is the team’s strongest hitter – the one relied on to bring home others who have made base. So when cleanup batter Kevin Boland goes down with ‘mono’ (glandular fever), his place in the team, and with his friends, takes a major dive. Kevin’s forced to rest, rest and rest. But those hours on the couch are not filled with daytime television. His dad is a writer and he gives Kevin a writing journal to help pass the time before he can get back to the baseball field. Shakespeare Bats Cleanup is an unusual verse novel, drawing on both the language of sport and the many and varied forms of poetry. Kevin records his recovery, his thoughts about his friends, including girlfriends, and memories of his late mother in a range of poetic forms, from haiku to sonnet, to ballad and pastoral. Ironically it’s Kevin’s illness that allows him to see life from the outside, even when that isn’t always a comfortable place to be. It is through poetry that Kevin meets Mira Hidalgo, who, while wary about baseball, shares Kevin’s love of words. Mira’s Spanish-language heritage offers a whole new slant on life and ultimately takes Kevin and the reader outside the diamond, to a wider, richer world. By turns thoughtful and playful, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup is all about grace under pressure. For a different kind of verse novel by Koertge see page 121.
lunchtime legends aussie sports series for younger readers
SPECKY MAGEE Felice Arena and Garry Lyon
The phenomenally successful series of five books (so far) charts the rise of Simon ‘Specky’ Magee and his teammates of Booyong High in pursuit of premiership glory and a future in the AFL big league.
THE TOBY JONES SERIES Michael Panckridge with Brett Lee
An old Wisden cricket almanac provides the doorway for a cricket-mad Melbourne boy’s journey back to the great cricket matches and moments. Australian fast bowler Brett Lee provides special comments.
LEGENDS and ANNIVERSARY LEGENDS Michael Panckridge
Two outstanding series spanning a wide range of sports, involving both boys and girls at Sandhurst School. Rivalries, friendship, fair play: Legends is sport as a noble pursuit. Includes, maps, quizzes and score tables.
LOTHIAN SPORTS FICTION various authors
Series for young readers covering a wide variety of sports from some unusual perspectives: netball, a girl playing footy, swimming, bodyboarding and wrestling.
ALL STARS various authors
Netball. Eight books in the series, but just seven players make the team of netball.
Surfing Goliath MICHAEL HYDE
Y/YA AUSTRALIA 2006
They watched the dark green waves, which rose sharply on an underwater ledge a hundred metres from shore. The waves quickly became fast left-handed breaks speeding towards the rocks, crashing and surging, then sucking back into the sea in a whirlpool of madness . . .
Boogie boarding or ‘bodyboarding’ may not have quite the cachet of surfing, but there is no question of its enormous appeal. When you are in the water, bodyboarding makes the same demands as surfing: you need to know the ocean and respect its dangers in order to thrive. Surfing Goliath pulls together a strong cast in a tightly written story about facing danger to live life to the full. Better still, it has the salty tang of authenticity. Seal (aka Sam) and his mates Nuts, Dolphin (a girl Seal is keen on) and Angelo are out to catch the big one. Angelo is crazy about fishing and wants to hook a big bronze-whaler shark. Seal, Nuts and Dolphin dream of the monster waves that seem to arrive in a three-yearly cycle. But the waves and the shark are destined to share the same reef – and the group’s courage and friendship are about to be tested to the max. Seal, the main character, is a grommet, pure and simple: he lives to surf. Nuts is instantly recognisable as one of those kids for whom danger is a meaningless notion. For Nuts it’s always a case of ‘act first, worry later’. Dolphin, like Seal, is here for the waves. But so too is a city TV film crew, which provides an oily town mayor with a chance to exploit, for financial gain, the town’s reputation. The kids just want to face their fears and surf. Surfing Goliath is an old fashioned adventure with a strongly modern feel. It should score with grommets, shark biscuits and speed humps everywhere.
Taj Burrow’s Book of Hot Surfing TAJ BURROW
YA/A AUSTRALIA 2003
I love surfing!. . . Yeah it’s my job, but even if it wasn’t I would do what I can to surf every day of my life. The only thing better than surfing is surfing well. And that’s what this book is all about.
There are a lot of books on surfing out there full of beautiful photos: pros shredding their way through impossibly large waves at remote and often secret locations. ‘Only a surfer knows the feeling’, the saying goes. All well and good, but what are the steps that a young surfer can take – what does he or she need to know – to be able even to think about riding those monsters?
Young West Australian surfer Taj Burrow has never won a world title but is highly regarded for his passionate and creative styling. It shines through on every page of his book. Taj succinctly shows how to pull off several key moves, from basic turns to backside floaters, roundhouse cutbacks and big big airs. The chances of being hurt when beginning are very small. ‘Water up your nose and sand in your tweeds is not pain,’ he says. In a chapter on how to wipeout the right way, Taj recalls being pile-driven, head-first into the North Point reef. Now that’s pain. But he shows how to surf safely too. The book is ingeniously designed, with detailed, precise layout. Every other page includes a very useful practical tip (with passing nods to cars and girls), and there’s a handy glossary too. Taj Burrow’s Book of Hot Surfing is a model of what a good book about sport can be. Read, look, learn and enjoy.
more action from the edge
action from the edge
BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE Aron Ralston USA 2004
When rock climbing all went wrong for Ralston, he was faced with a horrible choice: die in the desert or cut off his own arm with his Swiss army knife. Hmmm. Extreme enough for you?
THE GIRLS’ GUIDE TO SURFING Andrea McCloud USA 2005
Smart advice, cool design. There’s something no-fuss about the surfing smarts here – just what’s needed when you’re learning to handle the ocean. Big brothers could learn something here, too.
INSIDER’S GUIDE TO ACTION SPORTS Matt Higgins USA 2006
You’ve always wanted to try a no-handed air on your motorbike, right? Find out how in this crash course on the wild world of extreme sports, including skateboarding, surfing, motocross and snowboarding.
SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME: 50 YEARS OF STREET CULTURE James Davis and Skin Phillips USA 2004
This book features the key people and key moments in the history of American skateboarding. It’s a well-packaged document, backed up with sensational photographs. Twelve million skaters can’t be wrong.
TOUCHING THE VOID Joe Simpson USA 1988
21 000 feet up a mountain in the Andes is a bad place for things to go wrong. Joe Simpson’s climbing partner was forced to leave him for dead, but miraculously Simpson survived.
Valentino Rossi: Legend FILIPPO FALSAPERLA
YA/A ITALY 2006
Valentino was always special, but just how special nobody knew back in 1997. The lanky boy with the long blond hair was just another promising kid.
Ten times in his first GP season Valentino Rossi hit the tarmac. What does it take to get back on the bike and become a world champion? The 26-year-old, seven-times world champion is truly something else, winning in all classes from 125cc to Moto GP. Valentino is a hero to millions and is one of the world’s top ten earners as an athlete, banking around US$30 million annually. His achievements are suitably reflected in this lavish visual documentary. It is exactly the kind of book that the difficult-to-reach teenage reader may just find irresistible. Why? For starters, Rossi has the look of a Year Nine boy who has just skipped double science and is on his way to do something far more exciting. An air of boyish fun surrounds him, but his peerless success is built upon outrageous skills. The 450 pages of colour-saturated photography are alive with action, tracing Valentino’s rise, season by season, from childhood go-kart races to his first podium finish (when he was scarcely shaving) through the myriad of Grand Prix wins on a vast array of extremely fast machines. There is an extensive visual catalogue of all Rossi’s bikes and racing leathers. And then there is the sequence of hilarious post-race celebratory dress-ups. This level of detail is a rev-head’s dream. Valentino Rossi: Legend is a long and loving look at an athlete and a world that most people rarely even glimpse.
Why Dick Fosbury Flopped and answers
to other big sporting questions
DAMIAN FARROW AND JUSTIN KEMP
YA/A AUSTRALIA 2006
Approaching the crease at 6 metres per second or approximately 21 km/h, a fast bowler generates an average force of seven times his own body weight every time his front foot contacts the pitch at the point of delivery . . . Cricket may be considered a non-contact sport, but try telling that to the body of a fast bowler.
How is it that a ball kicked from thirty metres can travel smoothly on one path only to dip and swerve beyond the fingertips of the goalkeeper’s outstretched arm? How do you bend it like Beckham? It’s simple physics, Kemp and Farrow explain. The art is to make that ball slow down exactly where you want it to as it moves towards the net. As regular presenters of Melbourne radio station 3RRR’s Run Like You Stole Something, Kemp and Farrow share the city’s love of all things sporting. But as leading professional sports scientists they also have extraordinary knowledge and the curiosity to fuel their obsession.
Why Dick Fosbury Flopped provides an entertaining, quirky and rewarding look at a wide range of issues and milestone moments. Tightly organised chapters cover the evolution of techniques, the science of sporting projectiles, changes to equipment, body types, drug cheats and testing, and how research is shaping sports. The authors shine a light on issues like ‘chucking’ in cricket, why drug cheats are so hard to detect, and how a winged keel works. This is sports science with the passion, wonder and humour left in. IT’S TRUE! SPORT STINKS covers much of the same material for younger readers.
And why did high-jumper Dick Fosbury flop? It’s all to do with moving the centre of gravity outside the body in the leap. The discovery was enough for Fosbury to clinch an Olympic gold medal and revolutionise the high jump. Ah, sweet science!
Wondrous Oblivion PAUL MORRISON
Y/YA UK 2004
He lobbed a slow ball. David curled his body up and then unleashed an almighty swipe. Judy ducked as David’s follow-through narrowly missed her head. The ball rolled gently onto the stumps, and the bails toppled to the ground.
Wondrous Oblivion is a story of family, friendship, racism and hope played out on a strip of grass 22 yards long. When Britain opened its doors to post-war West Indian migrants, they brought with them not just low-wage labour, but their enormous passion for cricket. It was one of the few things the two countries both held dear but England hardly embraced them for it. Wondrous Oblivion, set in south London in 1960, uses this historical moment to tell the story of David Wiseman, an eleven-year-old boy obsessed with cricket. David can hardly hold a bat let alone a catch, but he dreams brightly of one day making a name for himself as a cricketer. But good fortune is at hand when his new neighbours turn out to be cricket-loving migrants from Jamaica. And David has plenty of time on his hands: his father works long days as the owner of fabric shop so David spends many hours in the neighbour’s backyard cricket net.
The arrival of new neighbours brings out an ugly and potentially violent racism in the suburbs. For David’s family the growing tension carries with it memories of another past, when as Jewish refugees they fled from Nazi Germany. And of course there is a ready comparison today with the treatment of other refugees. But Wondrous Oblivion also fixes on young David’s friendship with the young Jamaican girl Judi and the conflict with his own schoolmates from the grammar school.
war & conflicts
Stories of war and national and international conflicts continue to inspire writers. They include world wars and the horrors of the Holocaust, as well as conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, in other Middle-Eastern countries, and in other parts of the world. Such conflicts are generated by struggles between groups and nations, caused by religious, ethnic and racial differences and the cycle of hardship and cruelty in the name of revolution. Great writers and illustrators can transform such hot and heavy topics into enthralling stories that, when finely crafted and imagined, never go out of date.
Aleutian Sparrow KAREN HESSE
Y/YA/A USA 2003
THE JAPANESE
They weren’t always our enemy. There was a time when the Japanese sailed in and their crews played baseball with our Aleut teams.
ATTACK
Alfred’s family was preparing to leave for their summer fish camp.
I was going with them, leaving Pari, leaving my mother to stay in Kashega and watch over Solomon’s store But in the endless light of June The Japanese stung from the sky
SIMPLE QUESTION
The Japanese have been defeated on Attu,
They have retreated from Kiska,
We Americans have retaken the Aleutians as our own again.
May our people go home now?
ON THE ISLAND OF UNALASKA
The flowers have closed their mouths and begun their
descent into winter sleep.
Snow comforts the shoulders of Mount Newhall,
A brown jumble of chest-high grasses rasps and scrapes in the
williwaw winds.
Seven months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese invaded Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The Aleutians were United States citizens, yet they were abused, hounded, herded and their numbers decimated over a period of time.
In tiny, spare, telling fragments Karen Hesse reveals a proud people struggling first to survive, then to maintain their heritage and communities. Below are a few other headings that, together with a few lines of verse for each, paint heartrending word pictures of children, parents, shopkeepers, the landscape and events, and the fight to keep going and keep up spirits:
Evacuation
attack
blanket
houses
keeping clean
finding work
rusting
seal
kill
fever
left behind
resettlment officer
growing wings
Angels of Kokoda DAVID MULLIGAN
Y/YA AUSTRALIA 2006
Everybody was in a terrible condition. Everybody was permanently tired – exhausted. Every day more Diggers came down with malaria. Nobody could wash and nearly everybody had some kind of disgusting skin disease.
There was no dry ground. There was only mud.
These were the conditions along the infamous Kokoda Track in New Guinea during World War II. Derek’s father is a missionary doctor, his mother a teacher. They are strict and stern and their son Derek is alienated and unhappy. When the Japanese attack, all women and children are sent back to Australia. Derek refuses to go to boarding school and is determined to stay with his Papuan blood brother, Morso (their joint initiation is a fascinating vignette), so together they disappear into the jungle. As the situation deteriorates, the twelve-year-olds become indispensable, looking after artillery, the sick and the dead, and manning the radio. Forced to work together, Derek’s relationship with his father improves, too.
