"This is a story about a boy called Pender and a kangaroo called Brindabella, about how they became friends, and all the things that happened to them because of it."
Ursula's novel, illustrated by Andrew Joyner, was inspired by the landscape and homestead of Bundanon and is based on the libretto of Leos Janacek's opera "The Cunning Little Vixen", re-imagined in the Australian bush. Click here for a comprehensive showcase of how Ursula and Andrew came to create “Brindabella”, including some beautiful video footage of Andrew’s drawings. https://shwca.se/MakingBrindabella
The forest looms dark, deep and mysterious, or so it appears to people, especially poets and painters, who enter it alone. They feel sadness and sometimes even the kind of strange fear one feels in childhood: a fear of nothing.
Click here for Ursula's article in "The Age" on Rudolf Tesnohlidek the Czech author of the original story of "The Cunning Little Vixen"
Click here for teachers' notes.
Click here for a new unit of work on the novel “Brindabella”, produced by the Primary English Teaching Association Australia, aimed at children in years 3 and 4.
