Cirrus@Austlit

'What I Wish I’d Known is a regular series where we ask some of our favourite people in the book industry to reflect on their careers. In this instalment, authors share some of the unexpected and useful things they’ve learned along the way about writing for kids.'

'Each morning on her way to school Claudia passes the glassblower’s workshop and admires the animals in the window, especially the winged horses, prancing, galloping, rearing in battle. One day the glassblower calls Claudia inside and gives her a damaged horse. It is beautiful, but its wings are broken. And Claudia sees only its imperfection.

'When a terrible storm floods their home, Claudia and her family have to leave. The glass horse is packed away, all but forgotten. Until one night it comes to life. And takes Claudia flying through the night sky, back to her beloved Venice.

'Arnold Zable’s picture story book The Glass Horse of Venice, sumptuously illustrated by Anita Lester, is a tale of the power of imagination that will delight children young and not so young.' (Publication summary)

'RANGING from remote provinces in China and Cambodia to pre- and post-war Yiddish Poland, Kurdish Iraq and Iran, and Indigenous and present-day Melbourne, Arnold Zable’s quartet of stories depicts the ebbs and flows of trauma and healing, memory and forgetting, the ancient and the contemporary. And ever-recurring journeys in search of belonging.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'So it’s come to this. Sixty-seven years old and he labours on the docks. Cropped grey-white beard, ex-boxer’s pug nose, he is wiry, rotund and short. His strength is sensed rather than seen, belied by age and excess weight. Vigour is the word. Henry Nissen exudes vigour. His life force is strong. It animates his gestures, powers his determined little walk.

'HENRY Nissen was a champion boxer, the boy from Amess Street in working-class Carlton who fought his way up to beat some of the world’s best in the 1970s. Now, he works on the Melbourne docks, loading and unloading, taking shifts as they come up. But his real work is on the streets. He’s in and out of police stations and courts giving character statements and providing support, working to give the disaffected another chance. And all the while, in the background is the memory of another fighter, his mother—and her devastating decline into madness. The Fighter is a moving and poetic portrait of a compassionate man, but also a window onto the unnoticed recesses of Melbourne.' (Publication summary)

'The newest addition to the Text Classics is Herz Bergner’s Between Sky & Sea, a dark and compelling tale of a group of Jewish refugees on board a dilapidated freighter charting a course for Australia. Fleeing terrible scenes of destruction in Europe, they are bound by a deep sense of loss and the uncertainty of their fate. Arnold Zable’s introduction (extracted below) highlights the chilling parallels between Bergner’s tale and the sinking of the SIEVX off the Australian coast, giving the reader pause to reflect on the continuing plight of asylum seekers throughout history and across the globe.'  (Introduction)