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y separately published work icon The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley single work   picture book   children's  
Issue Details: First known date: 2005... 2005 The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This thought provoking but funny picture book will be thoroughly enjoyed by older students as they reflect on their own lives and see the contrast with the simple uncomplicated life of the sweet and endearing rat called Riley. Colin Thompson shows how Riley is born happy and is never anything else during his short life. He has enough to eat, a numerous and supportive family, all of whom are as beautiful as he is. His aspirations are always fulfilled as he is content with what he has and the way things are. Humans, however, want and think they need everything - they are never satisfied. The text presents the folly and shame of the way we live. The satire and gentle humour that the story is imbued with makes for a truly unusual picture book with many messages that are really lessons for life. Amy Lissiat's beautifully considered illustrations add a good deal to the interpretation of the text. They have been executed with a great deal of thought and add a further dimension to the story. Pupils will enjoy both the text and the illustrations and have a lot of fun talking and thinking about this sophisticated picture book that sets out so many things for consideration.' (Publication summary)

Teaching Resources

Teaching Resources

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Teacher's notes from publisher's website.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • South Melbourne, South Melbourne - Port Melbourne area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Lothian , 2005 .
      image of person or book cover 6259769438779172155.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Booktopia
      Extent: 29p.
      Description: col. illus.
      ISBN: 0734408064

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon Playing with Picturebooks : Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque Cherie Allan , Houndmills : Palgrave Macmillan , 2012 Z1909588 2012 single work criticism "Postmodernism has played a significant part in the development of playful and experimental picturebooks for children over the past 50 years. Playing with Picturebooks offers fresh insights into the continuing influence of postmodernism on picturebooks for children, covering a wide range of international picturebooks predominantly from the 1980s to the present. It represents a significant contribution to current debates centred on the decline of the effects of postmodernism on fiction and detects a shift from the postmodern to the postmodernesque. Playing with Picturebooks draws on a wide range of critical perspectives in examining postmodern approaches to narrative and illustration. Chapters discuss how metafictive devices enable different modes of representation, offer different perspectives to authorised version of history, and promote difference and ex-centricity over unity. Playing with Picturebooks is essential reading, not only for academics in the field of children's literature, but also for researchers, teachers and students." (Back cover)
Visual Identities : Australianness in Australian Picture Books Pam Macintyre , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 352-368)
‘The literature written for young people can be a vehicle for mediating change in mainstream attitudes, or it can confirm existing values. As with all literature, it carries ideologies. In this chapter, I will focus on the picture book, which constructs its meanings through dual visual and written texts. In particular, I will analyse selected, recent award-winning Australian picture books for their representations of ‘Australianness’.’ (From author’s introduction, p. 352)
y separately published work icon Playing With Picturebooks : Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque Cherie Allan , Kelvin Grove : 2010 Z1761205 2010 single work thesis

The thesis traces the influence of postmodernism on picturebooks. Through a review of current scholarship on both postmodernism and postmodern literature it examines the multiple ways in which picturebooks have responded to the influence of postmodernism. The thesis is predominantly located in the field of Cultural and Literary Studies, which informs the ways in which children's literature is positioned within contemporary culture and how it responds to the influences which shape its production and reception. Cultural and Literary Studies also offers a useful theoretical frame for analysing issues of textuality, ideology, and originality, as well as social and political comment in the focus texts.

The thesis makes a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of the place of the postmodern picturebook within the cultural context of postmodernism. It adds to the field of children's literature research through an awareness of the (continuing) evolution of the postmodern picturebook particularly as the current scholarship on the postmodernism picturebook does not engage with the changing form and significance of the postmodern picturebook to the same extent as this thesis.

The study is significant from a methodological perspective as it draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives across literary studies, visual semiotics, philosophy, cultural studies, and history to develop a tripartite methodological framework that utilises the methods of postclassical narratology, semiotics, and metafictive strategies to carry out the textual analysis of the focus texts.

Children's texts have a tradition of being both resistant and compliant. Its resistance has made a space for the development of the postmodern picturebook; its compliance is evident in its tendency to take a route around a truly radical or iconoclastic position. The thesis posits that children's postmodern picturebooks adopt what suits their form and purposes by drawing from and reflecting on some influences of postmodernism while disregarding those that seem irrelevant to its direction. Furthermore, the thesis identifies a shift in the focus of a number of postmodern picturebooks produced since the turn of the twenty-first century. This trend has seen a shift from texts which interrogate discourses of liberal humanism to those that engage with aspects of postmodernity. These texts, postmodernesque picturebooks, offer contradictory perspectives on aspects of society emanating from the rise in global trends mentioned above.

Picture Books Colin Thompson , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of The Children's Book Council of Australia , November vol. 50 no. 4 2006; (p. 6-7)
The Children's Book Council of Australia Judges' Report 2006 2006 single work column
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , August vol. 50 no. 3 2006; (p. 8-14)
Shorts: Children's Books Christopher Bantick , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 21 May 2005; (p. 17)

— Review of Run, Hare, Run! : The Story of a Drawing John Winch , 2005 single work picture book ; What the Sky Knows N. A. Bourke , 2005 single work picture book ; Jamie's Star Sue Lawson , Rebecca Wheeler , 2004 single work picture book ; The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley Colin Thompson , 2005 single work picture book ; So Shy Vicki Morrison , 2005 single work picture book
This Week's Selections Katharine England , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 25 June 2005; (p. 10)

— Review of The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley Colin Thompson , 2005 single work picture book
Beyond the Confines of Reality Stella Lees , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 275 2005; (p. 60-61)

— Review of Castles Allan Baillie , 2005 single work picture book ; Angel Breath Glenda Millard , 2005 single work picture book ; Unforeseen Circumstances Anne Ryan , 2005 single work picture book ; The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley Colin Thompson , 2005 single work picture book ; Run, Hare, Run! : The Story of a Drawing John Winch , 2005 single work picture book
Untitled Kevin Brophy , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , August vol. 49 no. 3 2005; (p. 34)

— Review of The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley Colin Thompson , 2005 single work picture book
Untitled Liz Derouet , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Magpies : Talking About Books for Children , July vol. 20 no. 3 2005; (p. 30)

— Review of The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley Colin Thompson , 2005 single work picture book
Author Happy to Share His Secret 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 19 August 2006; (p. 6)
The Children's Book Council of Australia Judges' Report 2006 2006 single work column
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , August vol. 50 no. 3 2006; (p. 8-14)
Picture Books Colin Thompson , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of The Children's Book Council of Australia , November vol. 50 no. 4 2006; (p. 6-7)
y separately published work icon Playing With Picturebooks : Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque Cherie Allan , Kelvin Grove : 2010 Z1761205 2010 single work thesis

The thesis traces the influence of postmodernism on picturebooks. Through a review of current scholarship on both postmodernism and postmodern literature it examines the multiple ways in which picturebooks have responded to the influence of postmodernism. The thesis is predominantly located in the field of Cultural and Literary Studies, which informs the ways in which children's literature is positioned within contemporary culture and how it responds to the influences which shape its production and reception. Cultural and Literary Studies also offers a useful theoretical frame for analysing issues of textuality, ideology, and originality, as well as social and political comment in the focus texts.

The thesis makes a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of the place of the postmodern picturebook within the cultural context of postmodernism. It adds to the field of children's literature research through an awareness of the (continuing) evolution of the postmodern picturebook particularly as the current scholarship on the postmodernism picturebook does not engage with the changing form and significance of the postmodern picturebook to the same extent as this thesis.

The study is significant from a methodological perspective as it draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives across literary studies, visual semiotics, philosophy, cultural studies, and history to develop a tripartite methodological framework that utilises the methods of postclassical narratology, semiotics, and metafictive strategies to carry out the textual analysis of the focus texts.

Children's texts have a tradition of being both resistant and compliant. Its resistance has made a space for the development of the postmodern picturebook; its compliance is evident in its tendency to take a route around a truly radical or iconoclastic position. The thesis posits that children's postmodern picturebooks adopt what suits their form and purposes by drawing from and reflecting on some influences of postmodernism while disregarding those that seem irrelevant to its direction. Furthermore, the thesis identifies a shift in the focus of a number of postmodern picturebooks produced since the turn of the twenty-first century. This trend has seen a shift from texts which interrogate discourses of liberal humanism to those that engage with aspects of postmodernity. These texts, postmodernesque picturebooks, offer contradictory perspectives on aspects of society emanating from the rise in global trends mentioned above.

Visual Identities : Australianness in Australian Picture Books Pam Macintyre , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian Literature : From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings 2011; (p. 352-368)
‘The literature written for young people can be a vehicle for mediating change in mainstream attitudes, or it can confirm existing values. As with all literature, it carries ideologies. In this chapter, I will focus on the picture book, which constructs its meanings through dual visual and written texts. In particular, I will analyse selected, recent award-winning Australian picture books for their representations of ‘Australianness’.’ (From author’s introduction, p. 352)
Last amended 7 Aug 2017 17:23:31
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