My Place: 20th anniversary edition

Nadia Wheatley (author)
Donna Rawlins (illustration)

Walker Books, Australia: 1988, 2008

ISBN: 9781921150654

Genres: historical fiction, picture book, realistic fiction

Issues: change, differences, identity, place, social condition

Children often find history dull and boring. My Place reminds readers that history is a living, breathing reality - that we are living it every day.

History is about people - where they lived, what they ate, wore and talked about, their jobs and families, their hopes and dreams.

My Place explores the concept of change as it profiles the lives of people who have passed through one particular place - a terrace house in the suburbs. Decade by decade, readers watch as the layers of lives are peeled away, as layers on a onion, to reveal the core of truth - that we are all just passing through, that no one owns the land; rather, it lends itself to us briefly.

Told through the voices of children, this outstanding picture book explores the development of multicultural Australia - the arrival in various decades of Chinese, Irish, German, Greek and Italian migrants and the contributions they made to commerce and labour. It tracks the growth of Sydney from a convict colony with farming suburbs to the more crowded city we know today. It demonstrates how changes to transport and trade affected social structure. It investigates change and stability. It shows the growth of a nation.

Donna Rawlins' beautiful pastel illustrations draw the reader into each personal history, often given details and information not provided by the text. The maps each child draws of their home encourage readers to compare and contrast each child's experience of their place - and therefore their own. An inspirational book, My Place will encourage readers to think about the past, present and future of their own ‘place' and their experience of it.

For the twentieth anniversary addition, the timeline has been changed to cover the Mabo and Wik judgements and Australia's apology to the aboriginal peoples.

Winner:
• CBCA Book of Year for Younger Readers 1988
• Eva Pownall Award for Children's Non-fiction 1988
• White Rave Award 1988
• Yabba Award 1988