Director of Mary Bailey House

Acknowledging Children’s Book Council of Australia Book Week (CBCA). This week, Mary Bailey House (MBH) acknowledged the CBCA Book Week theme Dreaming with eyes open… As the theme is associated with Aboriginal culture and the MBH team through our Aboriginal Reconciliation Action Plan is committed to raise awareness and respectfully educate our community about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, histories and ways of knowing and being, MBH teachers decided to use Aboriginal stories to explore it with the children.

In Lilly Pilly Gully, the story that was chosen was the Dreamtime story, Tiddalick the Frog. In Daintree Rainforest the books chosen were ‘Mad Magpie’ by Gregg Driese and ‘KooKoo Kookaburra’ by Gregg Driese.

Another book, ‘Why Bats Hang Upside Down’ was authored by the Traditional Custodians of Strathfield, the Wangal people of the Dharug language group and told by Uncle Lex Dadd. In the lead up to book week, the teachers read these stories to their children and spoke with them about the messages that each one expressed about kindness and how we should treat others. When the children were familiar with each of the stories, the teachers then invited them to select a character from one the stories and asked them to create a mask to represent the character. Then this week during book week, the children were invited to wear their masks while each of the stories were told to all in the MBH community on two days during
the week.

Jackie Baxter
Director of Mary Bailey House and OOSH