Walter McVitty

Margaret Balderson’s When Jays Fly to Barbmo (Oxford): There has never been a worthier Book of the Year winner than this, and it was runner up for the Carnegie Medal in Britain too. It is an outstanding novel which, if taken up by the adult market at the time, would have been a best seller-and elevated its author to a position she deserves. This first novel is set in Norway during World War II a ... (read more)

David Burke, former journalist and author of books about railways, has written Darknight (Methuen pb.), a mystery story about a cadet reporter sent to an isolated, closed community to cover a story about some lost bush walkers. Come Midnight Monday (Methuen) is an equally exciting read. Nan Chauncy, more than anyone else, provided the incentive and precedent for the boom in high-quality contempor ... (read more)

I often think that the worst fate which can befall a writer is to have his works prescribed for use in schools – a sure kiss of death if it is not attended by a close first hand knowledge and genuine enthusiastic response on the part of the teachers, who, for good or ill, act as literary brokers. Teachers who are ignorant of the real nature of the books to which they sentence the captives in the ... (read more)

Australian children’s literature has its own established heavies, writers whose work is well enough known both here and abroad, frequently in translation, and whose names would be well up in the Public Lending Right cheque lists. Some are so much in demand these days, that the time taken in preparing and giving speeches at conferences of librarians and others leaves them little time for the actu ... (read more)