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Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo by Alison Lester

$20.00 inc. GST

Ernie says goodbye to his friends Rosie, Frank, Tessa, Nicky, Clive, and Celeste, and promises to write to them. He flies over the desert and crosses the floodplains and the East Alligator River to his new home in Arnhem Land in the Australian outback, where he will live for a year while his parents work in a hospital there.

Ernie writes to each friend about a different season — Kudjewk, Bangekerreng, Yekke, Wurrkeng, Kurrung, or Kurnumeleng — explaining what that time of year brings and revealing the exciting things that he and his new friends are doing. Back home, his six old friends share what they have learned and try some of the activities of the Australian outback.

Extraordinarily beautifully illustrated, this classic Australian children’s book came out of months spent by Alison in the remote community of Gunbalanya (Oenpelli) in Western Arnhem Land in 1996, at the invitation of the Community School.

HERE is Alison talking about Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo.

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Description

Alison Lester was born on November 17, 1952, in Foster, Victoria, Australia. She received a higher diploma in teaching at The Melbourne Teacher’s College, where she trained as a secondary arts and crafts teacher. Before she began writing and illustrating her own books, she worked as an art teacher and an illustrator. She is the author and illustrator over 25 picture books. Her first novel, The Quicksand Pony, won an Australian Young Readers Book Award and a Children’s Book Council of America (CBCA) Book of the Year Award. Her picture books Clive Eats Alligators and the Journey Home each won a CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award.

She was Australia’s Inaugural Children’s Laureate from 2011-2012. In 2016, she was awarded the Children’s Language and Literature Award from the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards and inducted into the Speech Pathology Australia’s Book of the Year Hall of Fame. She was awarded the 2016 Dromkeen Medal for her body of work and its contribution to the development of children’s literature in Australia.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000. Softcover, 32 pages.