AustLit

'The writing of this book review and the unusual form it ultimately took came about because of a variety of fortuitous coincidences. To begin with, I was asked if I was interested in writing a review of Indigenous children’s literature for this journal. I was interested, but as a non-Indigenous woman, I felt it would be a better, more accurate review if written by an Indigenous reviewer, so I gave the editors some potential names. The same week, the Ashgrove Children’s Literature Festival in Brisbane, Australia, contacted me and asked if I would like to run a workshop at a private secondary school during Literature Week. I have been involved for some time in the work of embedding Indigenous perspectives in curricula, so an opportunity to apply them to an “authentic” school-based workshop as part of a literary festival seemed too good an opportunity to forgo. The third coincidence: I was getting to know Chenoa Masters, an impressive young Indigenous pre-service teacher. And so this project came together. Chenoa and I decided that we would lead the workshop and review a new Indigenous-authored picture book, Aunty Joy Murphy and Lisa Kennedy’s Welcome to Country, together with the high-school students who took part in the workshop. In the process, we would all engage in what we expected would be an authentic book-reviewing workshop (authentic because it was to be published), with a genuine reason to embed Indigenous perspectives.' (Introduction)