Friday Recap: Week 5

Each Friday, I’ll be posting a recap of the week’s events in case you missed them and invite you to tell us what you’re reading. If you’d like a recommendation for new books to read, send a comment telling us what sorts of books you like and other readers may be able to give you some suggestions.

It's been an animal-filled week here at Reading for Australia with a few villains on the side for extra punch.

On Monday,  Anthony Eaton put dog lovers through an emotional wringer in his post on "On Killing Your Characters" .  I think "Spot" spoke for a lot of us in the comment, "I see your point, but I like it best when you think the dog is dead, then it turns out the dog is NOT dead."

This was a very popular post in our household - which has me a little worried about the literary (but not literal) welfare of our pet pooch, Sunny.

Tuesday brought more animals, namely mice, cats, pigs and dogs in Adrienne Doig's review of her favourite graphic book, 'Maus' which raises interesting discussion points on both children's literature dealing with the Holocaust and on the artform of graphic novels (also called picture books or illustrated books - not necessarily written for children) - or, as in the case with Maus and Margaret Wild's 'Fox', on both these subjects.

Why I Love the Baddies, Jacqueline Harvey's post on Wednesday gave us an opportunity to think about how important bad guys are to many, many stories.  I like Jacqueline's observation that baddies often have lots of admirable qualities (like being fiendishly clever, determined and able to inspire loyalty) - "if only they would use their talents for good instead of evil".

I also enjoy a good villain and, in keeping with this week's animal theme, one of my all-time favourite bad guys is Tigerclaw from the Warriors series by Erin Hunter.   I've listed my top 5 villains in the comments section of Jacqueline's post.  Have a look and add your own.

Meredith Costain shared her writing trip to the Pilbara region in north-west WA with us on Thursday and, again, dogs feature in Meredith's story about the trip and in the stories she created with the children of the Warralong community.  I love the photo of the dog keeping cool in the red crate!  

Check out the great list of books and links (to more books!) written by indigenous authors or containing indigenous themes at the end of Meredith's post.

By sheer chance, rather than by grand design, today's book reviews, here and here, review books which were also discussed in Monday's post.  The books both feature dog characters, that's all I'll say...

Have a look at the left sidebar for the list of books reviewed by kids on this site and check out the "Kids' Contributions" tab under the header if you'd like to review a book for us.

If you are new to this blog, once you've looked at this week's events, have a look at the previous Friday recaps, Week 4, Week 3, Week 2 and Week 1 to see what else is going on here at Reading for Australia and feel free to add your comments to any of those discussions.

And, finally, if you can think of a new name for our blog, go here - it's your chance to win a book!

Have a great weekend, everyone!