alison lester the journey home

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The journey home

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The Journey Home Unknown Binding – 1 June 2009

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• Print length 32 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Lothian Children's Books
• Publication date 1 June 2009
• Dimensions 20 x 14 x 4 cm
• ISBN-10 0734411049
• ISBN-13 978-0734411044
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lothian Children's Books; 1st edition (1 June 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Unknown Binding ‏ : ‎ 32 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0734411049
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0734411044
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 20 x 14 x 4 cm
• 158 in Picture Dictionaries
• 5,656 in Children's Books

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Alison lester.

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The Journey Home

Alison lester, allison lester. houghton mifflin harcourt (hmh), $14.95 (32pp) isbn 978-0-395-53355-0.

Reviewed on: 04/01/1991

Genre: Children's

Paperback - 978-0-395-74517-5

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Alison Lester

The journey home.

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Fiction , Picture books

• Paperback Jun 1, 2009 | 9780734411044 | RRP $16.99 Buy Now

Alison Lester s classic story about two children s magical journey home.

One day Wild and Woolly dug such a big hole in their sandpit, that when they fell into it, they came out at the North Pole. Immediately they set out on the journey home... visiting the houses of the most interesting characters along the way.

More books by Alison Lester

Isabella's Bed

Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo

Celeste Sails to Spain

Rosie Sips Spiders

When Frank Was Four

Clive Eats Alligators

Tessa Snaps Snakes

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Alison Lester: ‘This is what I want to do. I want to be in charge of the whole thing’

The prolific children’s book author walks along her magic beach and reflects on the moment she had her life’s calling

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T he rain has been pelting down for hours. It’s still bucketing as we set out along a South Gippsland beach, but Alison Lester is intrepid. “I do love walking,” she says. “I love overnight hiking. I just think it’s the best thing. But I didn’t discover it until I was quite old. When I was younger I never had the right gear and I probably took too many things, but now … I just enjoy heading off for a few days and having everything with me.”

The prolific children’s author grew up on a farm near the Victorian town of Foster, not far from here. The views of the sea nestled between hills, instantly recognisable in her 1992 picture book My Farm, were a fixture of Lester’s early years. She still owns a small piece of that farm, about 150 acres, and splits her time between it, her home in Nar Nar Goon and the tiny town of Fish Creek, where she has a shop.

Today, she’s my guide along the nearby beach from Waratah to Walkerville as the tide slowly creeps out and the rain eases. We’re here for what I will now always think of as Magic Beach – a nook in the coastline at Walkerville South, on which Lester’s classic 1990 picture book of the same name is based.

All through Lester’s life, summers have been spent at Walkerville. One year, her editor came to stay, and suggested Lester turn the beach of her childhood into a book. The original concept, Lester says, was focused on one child’s imagination.

“There’s a little cave that we always take the kids to, you can only get to it at low tide,” Lester says. “It’s called the mermaid’s cave, and it’s got a little doorway and windows. Anyway, I made up a story about a little girl who had been taken out to see the mermaid’s cave and really believed there was a mermaid on her beach.”

Her editor asked if she could make the story broader, and so evolved the collective, poetic voice that welcomes the reader to “our beach, our magic beach”.

Lester was a published illustrator before she was a published writer, and an art teacher before that. She got her first illustrating gig by making a cold call to Oxford University Press, after looking the company up in the phone book. That was in 1979. Her first foray as a writer-illustrator in her own right, Clive Eats Alligators, came out in 1984. “Once I did that one on my own, I thought, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to be in charge of the whole thing’,” she says.

Lester has been writing and illustrating children’s books my entire life – she’s published about 50 of them. The week before our walk, my mother dutifully dug out our small collection: along with My Farm, there’s When Frank Was Four (1994), The Journey Home (1993), Tessa Snaps Snakes (1990), and a particularly well-loved copy of Imagine (1989), its spine cracked, the pages held together by decades-old pieces of disintegrating sticky tape.

Almost all of them had been signed at one of the innumerable talks Lester has done at libraries and primary schools around the country over the years; She still spends much of her time on tour. Her work is so popular and widely loved that in 2011 she was appointed Australia’s first children’s laureate.

Imagine is the book that seems most central to her ethos. Two children (and their possibly reluctant cat) play at making other worlds out of everyday items: a draught-stopper becomes a snake coiled around a jungle branch; a kitchen strainer is a deep-sea fishing net. Over the page, their imaginary world appears in full colour – they are riding dolphins, cuddling leopards, leading huskies across the ice.

Lester’s artistic style is disarming: cheerful watercolours and simple lines, through which shines a keen eye for expression, detail and the joyful mess in the daily life of children and animals. She was an outdoorsy child herself, and credits long days rambling around with her pony as the wellspring of her own creative freedom. She wonders how children now find the space to let their creativity unfurl.

“Part of it is having time just to daydream,” Lester says. “It’s important to get off the screens for long enough to let that happen. If every minute of every day is filled with a game or watching something or doing something, there’s no time to let your mind wander, no time to just be in the world.”

She says this thoughtfully, without judgement. She has her own time-sucking habits; sometimes, she says, she spends hours just scrolling through real estate listings, looking at houses she has no interest in or ability to buy.

In the post-rain quiet, our boots crunch across mounds of tiny shells washed up out of a now-tempered surf – a treasure trove of delicate, discarded remnants of underwater life. I pluck a small starfish out of one of these and Lester tells me I’ve just discovered “high-value beach currency”: “That’s a biscuit star. Keep that one. When you wash the sand off it, it will be exquisite. It might stink for a little while but it will be really beautiful.”

Lester’s adventurousness extends beyond being a tenacious hiker. She’s been to Antarctica multiple times, beginning with an arts fellowship in 2005, the success of which led to opportunities as a resident artist on tourist ships, inspiring her to create the picture books Sophie Scott Goes South (2012) and One Small Island (2011, with Coral Tulloch).

Lester’s current project is also about Antarctica – another collaboration with Coral Tulloch that brings together poetry, prose and drawings.

“I don’t think about Antarctica all the time but I don’t think I’ll ever stop being inspired by it,” she says. “I think living so close to it, it always felt incredible, and I just love those adventure stories about it.”

She stops to exclaim at the beauty of the sea – flat like glass, reflecting the steely colour of the clouds, and everything but us and the occasional forest bird utterly still.

We approach Walkerville South, where old lime kilns loom over a flat sandy beach, crumbling stone and brick giants of another century, the bush encroaching on them, trees growing up through the ruins. Lester points to a piece of wood sticking vertically out of the sand – the last remnant of the huge jetty that was part of the lime works.

As we get closer, Lester points out her “spot”, the place she likes to sit under the shadow of the rock. Superb fairywrens flit about under the boulders.

Last summer, they put the youngest baby, Lester’s granddaughter Goldie, down for a nap under one of the bushes, “and the wrens would all hop around her while she was sleeping,” Lester says. “It’s a really lovely place.”

In the serene aftermath of the storms, the beach stretching out before us, it truly feels like a place of wonder and enchantment.

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Why anything is possible in children's author Alison Lester's imaginary worlds

WHEN children's author and illustrator Alison Lester wrote the picture book, Sophie Scott Goes South , inspired by an expedition to the Antarctic she almost hit an iceberg.

The award-winning author and Australia's Inaugural Children's Laureate from 2011 to 2013 was inspired to write the book after travelling on the Aurora Australis as an Antarctic Arts Fellow in 2005. It tells the story of nine-year-old Sophie who goes on a month-long voyage to the Antarctic, with her dad, the captain of an icebreaker.

"I remember someone at the Antartic Division saying, 'but a little girl can't travel on the Aurora Australis - it would never happen'," said Lester, who lives and works from her rural property in Victoria's West Gippsland.

But for Lester, who has written and illustrated more than 30 books over more than three decades, children can do anything - especially in books where the power of imagination means everything is possible.

From her first picture book Clive Eats Alligators and best-seller Imagine to The Journey Home where two friends, Wild and Woolly, dig such a big hole in their sandpit that they come out at the North Pole, Lester's delightful books mix imaginary worlds with everyday life, encouraging children to believe in themselves and celebrate the differences that make them special.

And this is the message Lester takes with her when she travels out to remote Australian communities - armed with her books and stacks of art materials - as an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF).

Visiting schools around the country, Lester uses her books to help children and adults write and draw about their own lives.

"I feel like it's an incredible priviledge and it's always thrilling to go out and see the children and watch what they create with these beautiful art supplies. They are so confident and want to tell their stories and it's so important that these children have their own lives and communities reflected in their books."

This September 2 is Indigenous Literacy Day, and to celebrate Lester will be joining other ambassadors including singer Jessica Mauboy and special guest Archie Roach, along with children from Jilkminggan and the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory for a special YouTube live event.

Lester got in touch with the ILF after years of visiting schools in remote communites. One of the first places she visited about 20 years ago as an artist in residence was Gunbalanya, an Aboriginal community in west Arnhem Land where the main language spoken is Kunwinjku.

"It was the start of a lovely relationship - we made books, painted murals, did plays. It was a really lovely connection," she said.

"Then other schools asked if I could go and visit them and I've been doing so ever since. It's wonderful travelling and meeting people. I've had to learn to shut up and listen. I'm always learning more than I teach others."

While COVID-19 has put any travel plans on hold for now, Lester is still keeping in touch with fans, answering questions online posted by readers of The Guardian and sending videos on drawing and art techniques to communities in the Tiwi Islands.

"I get asked a lot where I get my ideas from. I'm very fortunate, I had a lovely childhood growing up on a farm and that section of my childhood has stayed with me," she said.

She also has a deep love for the Aussie bush and animals, from the horses she grew up with to her pet dogs. "There's even a mangy wombat living in my barn that I'm keeping an eye on right now."

A highlight of her writing career, she said, was when her book Are We There Yet? was chosen as the first book to be given to an Australian child from Dolly Parton's Imagination Reading Library - a community based initiative that provides children with free books each month from birth to age five.

"I was really chuffed when my book was chosen and I actually got to meet Dolly too, because she was out here for a concert," said Lester.

She said while stage four lockdown has meant she's had to temporarily shut her shop and gallery in Fish Creek, it has meant there is more time to catch up on unfinished projects.

In her Clive Eats Alligators 'series' - started in 1985 - the six books follow a group of seven fictional children (Clive, Rosie, Frank, Tessa, Ernie, Celeste and Nicky) celebrating their different interests and quirks.

"Years ago I wrote Nicky Catches Koalas , but never got round to illustrating it. She is the only character that still doesn't have her own book. So that's what I'm going to work on next," she said.

As a passionate lover of wildlife, it won't be the first of Lester's books that touches on Australian animals and environmental issues.

One Small Island , co-written with Coral Tulloch and inspired by her Antarctic voyage, tells the story of Macquarie Island's unique geological history and the impact of humans on the environment.

"I get so upset about the loss of wildlife. It is so important to look after our world," she said.

Find out more about Alison Lester at alisonlester.com

International Literacy Day

Catch Alison Lester and other Indigenous Literacy Foundation ambassadors online on September 2 for the first Indigenous Literacy Day (ILD) Youtube event.

In past years, this event has taken place at Sydney Opera House with children from remote communities and local schools but this year, due to COVID-19, it is open for the first time to everyone Australia-wide.

The Indigenous Literary Foundation gifts thousands of new culturally appropriate books - with a focus on early literacy and first language - to children around Australia, and also runs programs to inspire communities to tell and publish their own stories.

The ILF has have supplied over 440,000 books to over 400 communities, 40 per cent by Indigenous authors and illustrators.

Through its Community Literacy Projects, the ILF has worked with and published books in many Aboriginal languages from Walmajarri in the Kimberley region, to Arabana in South Australia, to Kriol in the Katherine region.

For more information on the not-for-profit Indigenous Literacy Foundation, and how to help, go to i ndigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au

Geraldine Cardozo

Features Editor at The Senior.

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The Journey Home

Isabelle Holland

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1972

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Little House on the Prairie 's Alison Arngrim Says It Was 'Hard' Being 'Very Famous' as a Child Actor (Exclusive)

The actress also tells PEOPLE how she learned to "embrace" the vitriol once aimed at her because of her iconic character

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When Alison Arngrim was 12 years old, she became one of the most famous young girls in America starring as Melissa Gilbert ’s onscreen arch nemesis on Little House on the Prairie . But for the child actress, fame proved to be a double-edged sword.

The actress, 62, opened up to PEOPLE at the Little House on the Prairie   50th Anniversary Cast Reunion and Festival in March about her experiences on the show. When the cameras weren't rolling, Arngrim says she and Gilbert were "like sisters," even going as far as choreographing their fight scenes together from the first year they began working together in 1973. "It's so completely bonkers," Arngrim jokes, adding, "Here's Melissa Gilbert and I playing mortal enemies, beating each other senseless all week. And then on the weekends, we'd go to each other's house for a slumber party, and we were hanging out."

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But being a child actor on a popular show like Little House also presented unique challenges many of her non-celebrity contemporaries would never have to deal with.  

“When you look at what an adult goes through — going into show business, sudden loss of privacy, becoming very famous, stalkers, craziness — think about that happening when you're nine,” she explains. “You're still learning. Imagine you haven't gotten to long division yet. You're learning basic math and learning to read, and you now need to deal with what the National Enquirer thinks about you.”

When Arngrim departed Little House at 19 after seven seasons, she found it wasn't so easy to leave her role behind. The “bad girl” character had become so lodged in the cultural zeitgeist that many weren’t able to separate fiction from reality.

"People hated me. They hated me, hated me," the actress says, adding, “When the show ended, as a young actress, I like most normal actors was like, well, now the show's done. We'll go on with our lives and everyone will talk about something else. That didn’t happen. Because then the show did have cable … and then there were DVDs, and then there was nostalgia, and it got bigger and bigger and bigger .”

Someone once threw a cup of orange soda in Arngirm’s face while at a Christmas parade, which she took with good humor.  (“I was a moving target, and they hit me, so I’m kind of impressed,” she says.) Another time, a woman confronted the actress at a Little House fan event and simply said, “I forgive you,” before walking out.

While it would have been easy for her to merely internalize all the vitriol, she “embraced” it and turned it into something more meaningful. Arngrim published a bestselling memoir in 2011 entitled Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated . She also embarked on comedy tours in the U.S. and France, poking fun at her life.

With the gift of time, many viewers have come to see Nellie (and now Arngrim) in a new light, and the actress is now one of the most celebrated Little House cast members. At the show's 50th Anniversary Cast Reunion and Festival in March, fans waited hours in line for a photo with her, which was “mind-blowing.”

“I don't get it myself, but all I know is somehow it has worked out that now being on Little House and having been Nellie Oleson works for me as opposed to being a curse, a burden. It's now something that has helped me in my life,” she says, adding, “I must be doing something right.”

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All   nine   seasons of  Little House on the Prairie  can be streamed on Prime Video and Peacock.

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