Window : An Australian Outlook
Sydney
:
Royal Botanic Gardens, (Sydney, N.S.W.)
,
1991
Z998034
1991
anthology
criticism
From May 1991- August 1992 an exhibtion on Jeannie Baker's picture book Windows travelled to seven Australian cities and towns. The exhibition of fourteen collages was accompanied at all venues by this resource guide and a picture book of the collages published by Julia MacRae books.
Belonging
Jeannie Baker
(illustrator),
London
:
Walker Books [London]
,
2004
Z1134871
2004
single work
picture book
children's
(taught in 1 units)
'An alienating city street gradually becomes a place to call home. Little by little, baby Tracy grows. She and her neighbours begin to rescue their street. Together, children and adults plant grass and trees and bushes in the empty spaces. They paint murals over old graffiti. They stop the cars. Everything begins to blossom. Belonging explores the re-greening of the city: the role of community, the empowerment of people and the significance of children, family and neighbourhood in changing their urban environment. The streets gradually become places for safe children's play, and community activity and places for nature and wonder.'
(Source: Author's website, http://www.jeanniebaker.com/picture_books_index.htm)
'Jeannie Baker uses mixed materials, including real plants, to illustrate relationships between nature, humans and suburban and urban development in her textless collage picturebooks Window (1991) and Belonging (2004). These popular texts are read and studied in the classroom to raise environmental awareness and explore themes of sustainable development and community action. How can a reading of these two books through the lens of Indigenous writer and academic Ambelin Kwaymullina’s verse manifesto, Living on Stolen Land, reveal and disturb the mechanisms of settler-colonialism as they appear in Baker’s work? Placing these texts in juxtaposition with each other generates new understandings and new narrative possibilities.' (Publication abstract)
