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Janine M. Fraser
Children’s Author and Poet
Janine will be a featured poet at the Mildura Writers' Festival Thursday 20 to Sunday 23 July, 2006. See www.mwaf.com.au/html/mainnav/writers.html for more information about the festival.
Janine lives in Riddells Creek on the outskirts of Melbourne, Victoria with her husband. In 1995, Angus & Robertson (HarperCollins) published Fair Go, a skinny book about a boy who enters a school beauty contest in order to win the prize, a set of superb coloured pencils. So he won’t be laughed at, he convinces the other boys to support him in the name of “equal opportunity”! In 1996 HarperCollins published Abdullah’s Butterfly, a beautifully written short novel introducing children to the cultural/family environment of a young boy who lives in an Asian rainforest area. Sally Mcinerney in The Sydney Morning Herald noted: “a charming story ... gently illustrated by (Kim) Gamble’s pictures.” Abdullah has been sold to the Spanish, Japanese and Korean markets. Knit Wit, an Addison Wesley Longman Sooper Dupa, was published in 1997, as was Birthday Blues, a Macmillan ‘Crackers’ about a child who is upset by grandparents’ bickering at birthday time. The Waterslide was published in 1998, also as part of the Macmillan ‘Crackers’ Series. In this humorous story for beginner readers, a mother overcomes her fear of heights to save the younger sibling of the narrator from the top of the water slide. In the end the mother spends the rest of the day enjoying the water slide!
Look out for Janine’s most recent novel for children, Sarindi and the Lucky Bird, published by HarperCollins in April 2001. It was short listed for the 2002 “Children's Book of the Year Awards” in the Younger Readers category. It was also awarded a “Highly Commended Award” in the Younger Readers Category in the Australian Family Therapists Book Awards, as well as being short listed in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for 2002. This touching tale is set in Indonesia. “Sarindi thinks that luck is like a mischievous monkey, playing hide-and-seek, and it seems to be hiding from Sarindi and his family. When Sarindi’s father has an accident and loses his job as a becak driver, he says they must go to the bird market and buy a Lucky Bird. Then perhaps their luck will change. So does the magical song of the Lucky Bird change their luck? ...Or do they make their own luck in the end?” (...from the cover)
Janine also writes poetry. Her poems have appeared in Antipodes, A North American Journal of Australian Literature.
GOLVAN ARTS MANAGEMENT • PO Box 766, Kew, Victoria 3101 Australia • golvan@ozemail.com.au