BARRY AND THE FAIRIES OF MILLER STREET - Barry Dickins & Jenny Lee (Hardie Grant Books)

A strange mix of memoir come fantasy come boys own adventure, this book really shouldn’t work but somehow it does. Starting out as a simple enough tale, it’s 1957 and a boy is sent off to stay with his grandparents in West Preston, things soon take a twist with the introduction of fairies in the backyard, bodgies and villains causing strife, evil intentions all around and six year old Barry and his Nan banding together to take the villains on. It’s like Enid Blyton meets Dan Dare, the Magic Faraway Tree set in down town Preston Victoria with a touch of small town corruption thrown in but strangely it all works. At first I admit I was waiting for it all to be imagination, a young lad’s way of coping with his loneliness but soon enough I no longer cared what the reality was, I was drawn in, I was coaxed on by the boy within me who remembered his own fantasy life as a child, roaming the forests of country SA, looking for evil to conquer and maidens to rescue. With Jenny Lee’s wonderfully detailed and magical illustrations adding another layer to the adventure I succumbed to my inner child and cheered Barry and his Nan and the fairies on to victory. Beautifully crafted and put together, the voice of young Barry rings true throughout and when the fairies are introduced so simply and logically you soon just accept that they are there, that they are part of the story and not a figment of his or his Nan’s imaginations. It’s in the details Dickins provides, the little moments of eggs on toast, of Pop’s shed and kicking the footy in the yard, the simple pleasures of making a newspaper kite, it’s these touches, these simple things, all adding to the story, to the aura of authenticity that Barry’s voice as narrator provides. I’m still not sure who the actual market is for this book, a boys own adventure that features a fairy queen, a bunch of evil crows, crooked property developers and shrinking Nannas but even without vampires and zombies, I’m sure kids will love it, if they can just put their ipods and phones down long enough to let themselves slip into Barry’s world. And adults of a certain age will find themselves, as I did, remembering their youth, the adventures and the freedom of childhood.

The Testimony – Halina Wagowska (Hardie Grant Books)

With The Testimony 81 year old Holocaust survivor and humanitarian Halina has put a human face, a personal touch to one of the world’s greatest shames taking us in to her world, a world shattered by war and ignorance and hate.
Halina claims early in the book that she is not a ‘writer’ but let me tell you, she is one hell of a story teller as harrowing as those stories may be. With a simple straightforward style Halina brings you into her world, a world that as a child turned horrendous when her family was interned first into the Polish ghettos and then the concentration camps of Stutthof and Birkenhau, a world where her parents did not survive but she did. It’s that personal touch, the ‘colloquial style’ that make the stories resonate even more and though at times the stories are harrowing, making you wonder at the validity of the word humanity when it comes to our own species these are stories that need to be told, that we need to remember.

This is not simply a book about the holocaust though, yes it is a book about what people can do to each other, in the name of ignorance and fear but it is also a book about hope, about freedom and survival. The second half of the book consists of snapshots and stories of new friends, like the Reads, who helped her settle here in Australia and who, four generations later, still consider her family, of her battles here confronting a different world, a different way of living and sadly, a different sort of prejudice, not perhaps as evil but still all intrusive. Being a ‘refo’, an outsider, Halina found more battles to fight but instead of shrinking away she has spent her life educating, tackling ignorance, raising issues and making waves. She will not go quietly and nor should she. Hers is a story that can’t be forgotten, that shouldn’t be forgotten but with the headline grabs, the sound bites, the celebrity endorsements, the gossip, I fear it’s a story that may well get lost. Our esteemed political leaders should be reading this book instead of scoring points with human lives because ignorance, well that is no longer an excuse.