The arrival – Shaun Tan

The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time.

A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages.

With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope.

Whale rider – Witi Ihimaera

Eight-year-old Kahu, a member of the Maori tribe of Whangara, New Zealand, fights to prove her love, her leadership, and her destiny. Her people claim descent from Kahutia Te Rangi, the legendary “whale rider.” In every generation since Kahutia, a male heir has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir, and the aging chief is desperate to find a successor. Kahu is his only great-grandchild–and Maori tradition has no use for a girl. But when hundreds of whales beach themselves and threaten the future of the Maori tribe, it is Kahu who saves the tribe when she reveals that she has the whale rider’s ancient gift of communicating with whales.

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Fantastic Fiction

Rabbit proof fence (movie)

Boy overboard – Morris Gleitzman

Jamal loves playing football, which isn’t easy is your goalie only has one leg

and you keep having to dodge landmines to get your ball back.

Jamal’s stubborn little sister, Bibi, is even better at football than Jamal.

But girls playing football is against the law in Afghanistan.

When it is discovered that Jamal’s mother has been secretly running a school,

the family must leave their home immediately and begin a long and dangerous journey to Australia.

The children survive separation from their parents, hunger, and violent smugglers

only to find that Australia isn’t as welcoming as they had thought but, even though they face an uncertain future,

Jamal, Bibi and their parents know that as long as they are together, that is all that matters.

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I am Malala – Malala Yousafzai

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala’s miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls’ education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

I AM MALALA will make you believe in the power of one person’s voice to inspire change in the world.

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Hachette

They’re a weird mob – Nino Culotta

Giovanni ‘Nino’ Culotta is an Italian immigrant, who comes to Australia as a journalist, employed by an Italian publishing house, to write articles about Australians and their way of life for those Italians that might want to emigrate to Australia.

In order to learn about real Australians, Nino takes a job as a brickie’s labourer (a labourer to a bricklayer) with a man named Joe Kennedy.

The comedy of the novel revolves around his attempts to understand English as it was spoken in Australia, by the working classes, in the 1950s and 1960s; Nino had previously only learned ‘good’ English from a textbook.
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Monash University

Parvana – Deborah Ellis

There are many types of battle in Afghanistan. Imagine living in a country where women and girls are not allowed to leave the house without a man. Imagine having to wear clothes that cover every part of your body, including your face. This is the life of Parvana, a young girl growing up in Afghanistan under the control of an extreme religious military group.

When soldiers burst into her home and drag her father off to prison, Parvana is forced to take responsibility for her whole family, dressing as a boy to make a living in the marketplace of Kabul, risking her life in the dangerous and volatile city.

latrobe.edu.au