TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation – Reading to Children, with Mem Fox
Event Date – Thursday, 16 February 2012
Venue – Auditorium 1, State Library of Queensland
Speaker – Mem Fox
Facilitator – Jodi Finucan
SUSAN KUKUCKA: Good evening. Good evening, everyone. I’m Susan Kukucka from the State
Library of Queensland and I would like to welcome you all here tonight. I would like to begin by
acknowledging the traditional owners of this land, the Turrbal people and the Jagera people and pay
respects to their answers who came before them.
Before we start can I please remind everyone to switch off mobile phones. Also if you need to leave
at any point during the talk, please just use the back exit and there are bathrooms on levels two and
three. Also we are recording this talk. We’re audio recording it and we’re audio live streaming it, as
well, for anyone who can’t be here tonight. So if you have any questions about this, please just come
and see me or one of the staff afterwards.
So we are very pleased to present tonight’s talk, Reading to Children with Mem Fox, as part of the
National Year of Reading. The National Year of Reading 2012 is about children learning to read and
keen readers finding new sources of inspiration. It’s about supporting reading initiatives while
respecting the oral traditions of storytelling and it’s about helping people discover and re-discover the
magic of books and most of all it’s about Australians becoming a nation of readers. There are
programs, events and resources available all year round so visit the love2read.org.au website for
more information.
This event also celebrates State Library’s current exhibition, which is called Look! The Art of
Australian Picture Books Today, which is in the SLQ Gallery just here on level two. It’s a beautiful
exhibition, so please take the time to come and visit it and experience the artworks and share some
stories with the children in your life or perhaps just your own inner child.
So today we are very privileged to have Australia’s most highly regarded picture book author, Mem
Fox. I’m sure everyone here knows Mem’s name from her books that we all hold very dear to our
hearts. Mem was born in Australia, grew up in Africa, studied drama in England and returned to
Adelaide in 1970, where she has lived with her husband Malcolm and daughter Chloe happily ever
after.
Mem’s first book, Possum Magic, is the bestselling children’s book ever in Australia, with sales of
more than four million. In the USA, Time For Bed and Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge have each
sold more than a million copies. Time For Bed is on Oprah’s list of the 20 best children’s books of all
time and Mem has written over 35 picture books for children and five non-fiction books for adults,
including the bestselling Reading Magic, which is aimed at parents of very young children.
Her recent book Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes was on The New York Times’ Best Seller list
for 18 weeks in 2008/2009 and it won the best book for zero to three year olds at the International
Book Fair in Turin in its Italian edition. And Mem was also the associate professor in literacy studies
at Flinders University in Adelaide, where she taught teachers for 24 years until her early retirement in
’96.
She has received many civic awards, honours and accolades in Australia, including two honorary
doctorates and she has visited the United States more than 100 times, mostly in her role as a literacy
expert, although she’s also obviously a very well known author in America as well. She is an
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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influential international consultant in literacy but she pretends to sit around writing full-time. Her latest
book is A Giraffe in the Bath and she hopes four year olds and over, including adults, will adore it.
So joining her tonight is State Library’s own literacy expert Jodi Finucan. Jodi is currently our acting
executive manager of Literacy and Young People’s Services and she has worked in the education,
arts culture and heritage sectors for the past 15 years developing programs, policy resources in the
areas of social and cultural history and literacy. Jodi’s work has included developing visual literacy
programs for children in schools and developing learning objects and touring programs for the
Queensland Museum and more recently Jodi wrote the literacy indicators for all Queensland
schooling sectors to support planning for teaching, learning, assessment and monitoring of literacy
from Prep to Year 9. And her interests are in the role of reading in developing creating and critical
thinkers, as well as historiography and literature.
So together tonight Mem and Jodi will discuss with us the significant issue of reading to children.
Research shows that reading to a child from an early age contributes to language, critical thinking and
literacy development. Half a child’s brain growth occurs between birth and age four, which makes this
a crucial time for us as parents, carers and educators to foster a love of reading, illustrations and
stories with children. More than any other skill the ability to read allows a child to succeed in school,
to learn about the world, function in society and someday participate successfully in a workplace. Yet
despite all this evidence, studies have also shown that in Queensland only six out of ten children are
read to regularly at home.
So obviously we have almost a full house here tonight because we’re all passionate about reading to
children and wish to learn more. So following our conversation there are going to be opportunities for
audience questions and we’re also recording this talk, as I mentioned earlier, so wait for a microphone
if you want to participate in that and also if you want to join in our conversation via Twitter tonight,
there’s a hash tag here on the screen that you can use.
So without further ado, I’ll hand over to Mem and Jodi to share with us their insights into literacy,
development, as well as their expert ideas and tips on how we can make reading an integral part of
life from infancy. Thank you, Jodi and Mem.
MEM FOX: Thank you.
JODI FINUCAN: Well, thank you, Mem. I’m personally very pleased to meet you. It’s very exciting to
be here and to hear you talk today and I thought for the audience we might start with the question of
what do you think is the most important aspect of research that underpins how reading creates
creative and critical thinkers?
MEM FOX: Do you know, I don’t want to talk about that.
JODI FINUCAN: That’s okay.
MEM FOX: I actually don’t want to.
JODI FINUCAN: She did tell me I was about to go on a very wild ride and I said that’s totally fine. I’m
very excited.
MEM FOX: And I’ll tell you why I don’t want to talk about that.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes, absolutely.
MEM FOX: Because I keep reading things in the national curriculum. I read statements, you know,
set out by libraries. I read information about a night like tonight and everywhere - everywhere in every
one of these frameworks or pieces of information I look for two words that I can never find. One of
them is love and the other one of them is fun. I never see those two words. I see I feel a weight of
heavy burdensome duty. So we have to read to the children in our lives because if we don’t they will
go to hell in a hand basket. You know, so really I think, Jodi - poor Jodi. She has a terrible job
tonight, this poor woman. I feel terrible for her because I’ve just gone miles away from your question
but I would like to - I would really like to focus on the joy of it.
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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JODI FINUCAN: Absolutely.
MEM FOX: I really want to focus on the love, the joy, the delight, the hilarity, the squidginess, the
kissiness, the laughter, the bonding, the cuteness, the things kids say about books. It’s so fantastic,
you know, reading to a kid. It’s so fantastic and people keep talking in this sort of, “Well, we’ve got to
do it,” kind of voice. No. No, we haven’t got to do it like that. If that’s our attitude the kids won’t like it
either, will they? You know, they’ll think it’s awful. So what was your question, Jodi?
JODI FINUCAN: I think my next question is: so how do we make children love reading and what sorts
of things do we do with children to give that joyfulness to reading?
MEM FOX: Right.
JODI FINUCAN: And not make it a burden.
MEM FOX: And not make it a burden. Okay. God forbid that reading a book should ever be a
burden. One of my colleagues in Melbourne - I live in Adelaide but a university colleague in
Melbourne, David Hornsby, whom some of you will know, says that he’s always amazed on a plane at
how many people can sit there without reading a book. He says, “What have we done to people that
we have made reading so horrible for them? What have we done?”
And I think one of the things that we might have done is a sort of - is something that - is that we
haven’t started early enough, before kids are cognisant of anything. We haven’t started early enough.
If we start early, the earlier we start the ‘hookeder’ they become. I know there’s no such word as
‘hookeder’. The more hooked they become, okay?
I’m sorry, this will be a recurrent diversion all evening but I now have a grandson. It must be obvious
to you from the haggard look of my face that we care for him every day. He’s now two. When he was
born, he was a kilo. He was one kilo. His hands, his arms were the size of this finger and I thought,
my God, how will this child live? How will he thrive?
And because of this book, which I think the best thing I’ve ever written in my life and I hope I’m
remembered for this rather than Possum Magic when I cark it, but because of this book and having
written it many, many years before he was born, because I know about brain development, because I
know about bonding, because I know about language development, because I know about literacy, I
freaked because this child wasn’t in his mother’s womb after 30 weeks. That was it. He had 30
weeks and I thought, oh, God, you know, when children are in-utero they hear all sorts of things. You
know, they’re with their mother all the time. They’re hearing all sorts of noises. They’re hearing
language. They’re hearing television. They’re hearing the radio. They’re hearing conversations
between adults. They’re hearing so many things. I thought, how will he develop? His brain. Uh,
hmm. Poor thing. All alone in his little humid crib. Just lying there this big.
Well, of course, I’m Mem Fox and so I was a bit embarrassed, you know, about going to visit my
grandson because Adelaide’s a small place and everybody knows who I - well, nearly everyone. I
feel that everybody knows who I am. I’m always embarrassed when somebody says, “Are you Mem
Fox,” and I look like a dag. You know, I want to say, “Well, not today, I’m not.” Anyway but I was
embarrassed about reading to him because I felt that I was drawing attention to myself because
nobody else was reading to the premmie babies. Nobody. Nobody was reading to those children.
This is the smallest copy of any book that I have that I have written myself. It’s the tiniest copy, so I
didn’t choose it because it was brilliant. I chose it because it was small and I could sneak into the
ward without drawing attention to myself. You know, I could just pull it out, open the little round
window. “Little one, whoever you are, wherever you are, there are little ones just like you all over the
world.” And I read him this book for two and a half months. Every single day I read him this same
book in the same lilting rhythm, the same rhythm, the same tones, the same pauses in all the same
places because I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to hear my voice and love me.
I also sang to him. I sang to him every day a song that I had made up from a book that I had written
called Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes. The song is on YouTube, should you wish to hear it. I
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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am embarrassed to say that I had the courage to do that. And the reason I did it - the reason I read to
him and the reason I sang to him and the reason I talked to him and the reason our daughter did the
same and my husband did the same was because we loved him and we wanted him to love us but we
also knew that out of that love and out of that experience of reading we would be ensuring that this
beloved child, our only grandchild will not fail. He will not fail to learn to read because there are
members in my family who have failed to learn to read, who have been in and out of prison as is very
common with illiterates. You know, they end up in the justice system. The contrast between those
children who have been read to and those who haven’t is absolutely heartbreaking.
A paediatrician stood beside me one day when I was reading to Theo and he said, “I wish more
parents and grandparents would do what you’re doing because, as a result of what you’re doing, you
will see this child will thrive. He’ll thrive.” And when Theo was in hospital last year with asthma,
unfortunately, at the age of almost two, the paediatrician said, “What did I tell you?” This kid’s
language is incredible. I cannot believe the way he talks at the age that he is and he’s two. He’s tall.
He’s healthy and he’s on his way. Apart from inheriting his grandmother’s chronic asthma, he will be
okay.
But that’s why we have to start early because that kid was trapped. He couldn’t get out of the humid
crib. There was no way he could - he couldn’t escape and once they can crawl, seven months, we’ve
lost it, except at bedtime because when they’re crawling there’s a world out there, you know. It’s
exciting. They shouldn’t be sitting all the time being read to. They should be exploring the world. But
if we can get in there early, they’re totally hooked on books and this is a boy we’re talking about and a
boy who could have been brain damaged because he was so tiny.
JODI FINUCAN: Absolutely. That’s a lovely story and an example of how children should be read to
in utero and as soon as they come into the world. So what do you think are some techniques that
parents could use in reading to children to make children like a joyful, celebratory experience when
they are with the children in those reading times?
MEM FOX: Right. I think - I think that if we have fun - I mean it’s got to be fun for us and I can’t bear
the phrase you be expressive because that has a whole lot of connotations of a particular training, a
particular personality but I think if we use the word zest, which one of my favourite words in the world,
if we read with zest then children will tune in. You know, they’ll get the hang of it and they’ll love it. A
man heard me speak one night and I was at his daughter’s school the next morning and he said, “I
went home after your talk and I read completely differently to my daughter. I just hung loose. I didn’t
care. I just hung loose.” He said, “Man, it was fun. I didn’t realise it could be so much fun and my
daughter’s attitude was completely different and my attitude is completely different. I loved it. I loved
it and it was just because it was joyful.” So joy is the first thing. It’s got to be joyful and full of zest,
not to be too boring.
But the other thing is to read the same books over and over. I mean sometimes you just have to
because they demand it but to read them over and over and over and over and over and over and
over again because the familiarity also is what brings them back and back and back to the book.
Now, the first time you read a book, they’re not familiar with it and my husband once said, “Oh, he
doesn’t like that book,” about Theo. “He doesn’t like that book.” And I said, “How often have you read
it to him?” He said, “We read it this morning.” I said, “So you’ve only read it once?” and he said,
“Yes.” I said, “Well, he doesn’t know the book yet. He doesn’t know it. He’ll love it. He’ll eventually
love it.” So, you know, the over and over and overness.
I mean sometimes kids don’t like a book and they’ll just tune out. The other thing is, of course - the
other thing that is a good thing to do is when you’ve read millions of different books to children is to
allow them to choose. You know, you take out, say, six books at night or whatever and say, “What
about?” No. “What about?” No. “What?” Sometimes he says - well, very often he says no to my
books, which is very hurtful. He doesn’t know which side his bread and butter is on or whatever that
phrase. He doesn’t know he could be cut out of my Will with just a swift thing of the pen. No, he
doesn’t want that. No. No. Okay, you say a particular book. Okay. You know, they can actually
choose the book.
The other thing is to always read the book in the same way. Never change the way you read it
because children who can learn to read easily and quickly do so because they have the rhythm, the
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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rhyme, the structure never changing, like an advert on television. They can almost sing the book in
their head. So we’re not singing the book but we are reading it with the same tune all the time. We
are never changing the tune.
There are ten read-aloud commandments on my website, memfox.net and there are hints in that that I
can’t recall at the moment but there are many other hints about reading to kids. Let me take - I
brought some favourites. I gritted my teeth and brought some books I didn’t write.
Now we could easily, with Hairy Maclary, go like this:
“Out of the gate and off for a walk
went Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy
and Hercules Morse as big as a horse
with Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy.”
“Out of the gate and off for a walk
went Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy
and Hercules Morse as big as a horse
with Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy.
Bottomley Potts all covered in spots
Hercules Morse as big as a horse
and Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy”
It’s zestful. We are having fun. We’re not thinking, oh, my God, I’ve got to read Hairy Maclary again.
We’re thinking, “Yay! Oh, fantastic. Hairy Maclary.”
And because we’re reading this kind of book over and over and over and over and over again,
amazing things happen like, you know, he’s 18 months old, a black and white dalmatian goes past the
playground and he looks at the dog and it’s huge. It’s a very big dalmation. He looks at the dog, I
look at the dog and I say, “Theo, that dog is huge.” And he says, “Bottomley Potts.” The things they
learn from books it just staggers me. It absolutely staggers me.
For example, he got for Christmas a sailing boat. Very small, wooden, with a little blue sail. On
Christmas night in the splashing of the bath, the boat fell on its side. Immediately - I wasn’t in the
bath. I don’t do the bathing. Immediately he said, “Mayday.” And my husband came downstairs and
said, “I’m sorry but Theo is a genius. Theo’s a genius. Do you know what just happened? The boat
went over and he said, ‘Mayday’.” He said, “I didn’t know what mayday was until I was about 25.”
And I said, “It’s Terry Denton. It’s Terry Denton. It’s in one of my books. A particular cow - a cow
jumps into a boat, the boat nearly goes over and the people in the boat say ‘Mayday’.” There’s no
genius about it. It’s just because the child has been read to and it’s so nice to do it.
JODI FINUCAN: As children get older, do you think that the question should be asked in before,
during and after reading to build comprehension or that should be the role that happens in schools
and not just at - - MEM FOX: I don’t think it should happen at school.
JODI FINUCAN: No?
MEM FOX: I don’t even think it should happen at school. What quicker way to kill the love of reading
than to ask a question before, a question during and a question after. If I were about to start Charles
Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities and somebody said to me, “What do you know about the French
revolution?” I’d say, “Bugger off.” You know, I just want to read the book. I just want to read it. “It
was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” I just want to read the ending and sob. I just want
to read the book. There is no greater teacher than the book. No greater teacher. My father was the
most gifted educator I’ve ever come across. He was unbelievable and one of his maxims was - which
I have lived by as an educator - stop teaching and let the children learn. It is the passion for books, it
is the passion for reading aloud.
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You know, people say, oh, reading aloud is just too easy. It won’t do anything. You know, it’s like the
school principal who went in to hear a friend of mine teaching in America who came in - she’s a year
eight teacher. He came in - that’s high school where she is. I mean I don’t know whether it is here
but, anyway, year eight is high school. He came in and she was reading a long novel to the kids and
they were absolutely rapt. He came in for an appraisal. He crept up to her and he said, “I’ll come
back when you’re teaching.”
You know, when we read aloud to kids they pick up general knowledge, which we need to be able to
read with. You can’t read unless you know about the world. They offer - if it’s big books, they’re
picking up print. If it’s novels, they’re picking up language. You have to have print language and
knowledge of the world to be able to read. We keep interrupting that by saying, “No. No. We’ve got
to teach them. They won’t understand the vocabulary of invisible before we read Possum Magic.
Children, do you know what invisible is?”, people will say before they read Possum Magic. If you read
Possum Magic, you find out what it is in the context of it.
You know, we kill the love of reading with our questions. We kill it so much that our daughter, who
was - you know, became a journalist, then became a teacher and now, for her sins, is a politician in
South Australia, which is why my husband and I are so exhausted, because she loved reading so
much, because she loved English so much, we were shocked and shattered when she went to
university and said, “I’m not doing English. I’m not going to do English. I don’t want literature ruined
for me.”
Now, that is an absolutely ridiculous attitude. She didn’t do English. You know, she did French and
anthropology. She didn’t do English and I think she lost something by not doing English but she didn’t
want literature wrecked for her. She, instead - most of friends did English and so she read all the set
books. She read all the books but she didn’t want to pick them to pieces. She didn’t want to have a
post-modern, post-colonial stamp put on a book. She wanted to read the book for the reason that the
author had written the book which was for comfort, enchantment, thrill, horror, pity, empathy, finding
out about another world, meeting different people, going to different times, going to different places,
all of these things wonderful books provide and teach us and we kill it with some of our teaching and
some of our aims in school. We kill it.
We should just be reading to kids over and over again, particularly the children whom we ask to read
to us: the failures, the strugglers, who come up to our table and say, “I hate reading because my legs
hurt because they stand there for so long struggling to sound out a word. Those are the children that
we ask to read to us and those are the children whom we should be reading to because they are
struggling because they haven’t been read to and they will continue to struggle until they have been
read aloud enough to. They will continue to struggle. We cannot skip that read aloud part of
children’s lives. We can’t.
You know, I get so angry - and my daughter is a politician, as I’ve just mentioned. I get so angry with
politicians because they keep talking about education revolutions and blah, blah. Doesn’t matter
who’s in power, they’re all for it. They’re all for it starting from the day kids go to school. We’re going
to do this, they say. We’re going to remediate from the age of five. For heaven’s sake, people. It
starts at birth. It doesn’t start at five. Five is five years too late. Am I getting passionate?
I’m going to think about this tonight when I go to bed. You know how you go through your event and
you think you were really over the top at that point and I’ll be embarrassed for myself. Sorry.
JODI FINUCAN: That’s all right. So I can almost guess what your answer is going to be but I’ll ask
the question anyway: when we have the statistics that our educators and mainly our educational
bureaucrats drive to us that children have low - have high literal interpretation skills but very low
inferential interpretation skills and they can’t track meaning through a text and they don’t understand
or can’t, you know, pronoun reference and all of these other things, which means that they’re not
making meaning of the world - - MEM FOX: Sense.
JODI FINUCAN: - - - and making sense of the world and they can’t then read to learn and build on
that knowledge in a particular discipline, what would you say to that?
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MEM FOX: Well, what else can you do but read to them? They haven’t got the grammar. They
haven’t got the knowledge. They haven’t got the print. You know, we need to read to them.
JODI FINUCAN: And beyond reading, when they have to read for themselves and then start
comprehending and we have those questions we have to ask in an educational setting and we
suddenly realise that they don’t have the inferential comprehension, what would be some strategies
you would suggest?
MEM FOX: Look, I’m sorry, but you have to read to them. There’s a wonderful book called - I can’t
remember the name of the book. The author is Daniel Pennac. It’s not Such is Life, because that’s a
famous Australia novel but it’s something like that and - he’s French. He’s a French educator and he
is also a famous French author but he chooses to - he chooses to teach failing adolescents. And the
way he teaches them, the way he gets them to do those sorts of things and to answer those sorts of
questions which, in a French system are even more prevalent than they are in ours - - JODI FINUCAN: Absolutely.
MEM FOX: Is by reading aloud. It is an absolutely inspiring book. These kids are rough. They have a lot of them come from non-French speaking backgrounds. Their French language is bad. They
have no literacy in home language and he just sets them alight by the way he does it. We can’t do what else can we do? These kids lack so much and one of the things that they lack is the fire. You
know, they’ve no fire for literacy. They’ve no fire for books because it’s always been such a horrible
experience for them. You know, somebody has held up a book called The Magic Cat when they’re
five and asked the dumb question, “This book is called The Magic Cat. What do you think it might be
about?” I mean what are people thinking? What on earth are people thinking, orientating the child
towards the book?
You know, Theo in his humid crib got no orientation to the book. He got not orientation. Sweetie, this
book is called, Whoever You Are. It’s a very beautiful book. It’s about humanity. Now, having told
you that it’s about humanity and that it’s called Whoever You Are, could you possibly guess what this
book might be saying to us as human beings?”
You know when I used to watch my darling own students on prac teaching, I’d see them, you know,
the kids would - you know how student teachers think they’re going to get silence. You know, they
think they’re going to get silence so they wait and they wait and they wait and, you know, they’ve got
near silence, which is when they should jump in and get going but they - but they wait until there’s they’re never going to get it and their kids are rabbling and rabbling and then they start asking
questions and talking and doing anything but the book itself. The moment the story starts there is no
discipline problem. The moment the story - the whole point of it - the moment the story starts, there is
no discipline problem because we are wired to love stories. We are wired to love them.
You know, I used to love teaching in schools that my students were teaching in. I used to love going
in on a Friday afternoon and my students would think ‘She’s going to fail. She’s a uni lecturer. She
doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She hasn’t talked for years.’ And you just start - you know,
you tell an Edgar Allen Poe horror story. There’d be total silence. I remember doing it once, telling - I
think it’s called The Beating Heart. I’m not sure but it’s about a beating heart anyway, that’s under a
floor after somebody has been murdered and it was year nine girls and there were two kids in the
second row and nobody was breathing. I mean they were going blue in the face and one of them
grabbed the other’s wrist and said, “Oh, my God. It’s the heart.”
You know, the stories get us every time. They just get us every time. I tell you, when I was a lecturer
at Flinders Uni, I would attend the lectures that my colleagues gave, obviously, you know, because
we were all teaching in the same course. I needed to know what they were saying, they needed to
know what I was saying. I would sit in the lectures. I would sit with the students and every time a
lecturer said, “You know, last week when I was at the supermarket,” suddenly all this kind of - it’s a
story. “Last week when I was at the supermarket. Mm mm mm.”
As soon as a story happens in a lecture, of any kind - you know a brief story like that about literacy or
whatever it is in the lecture, a story is what grabs attention. It’s astounding. The whole physical
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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attitude of everybody - you know, I could see heads moving in front of me. I could feel bodies
changing beside me because suddenly there was a story and we tried to kill stories, you know, by
doing too much with them. If we just damn well got on with the story, we’d be so much better.
JODI FINUCAN: So, Mem, you wouldn’t be a fan of deconstruction of the narrative at all? So when I
was at university, one of the fascinating things that happened to me was obviously I read The Great
Gatsby.
MEM FOX: Yes.
JODI FINUCAN: And I’d read it as a young teenager and thought it was a fantastic novel and then my
lecturer said to a group of us, “How do we know that what happened to Gatsby really happened?” and
I was like, “Because the book said it - you know, things happened to Gatsby in the book. The book
describes what happens to Gatsby.” And he said, “No. The narrator of the Gatsby is Nick Carroway
and how do we know he’s a reliable narrator?” and suddenly all these questions came with how an
author and then reading F Scott Fitzgerald and some of his memoirs, how an author constructs a
certain reality and I was blow away because the Gatsby had already just been a story about Gatsby
until I started to look at the way he’d constructed narrative voice.
MEM FOX: I love that kind of stuff.
JODI FINUCAN: You love that? Oh.
MEM FOX: I love that. It’s so exciting.
JODI FINUCAN: And therefore the questions that you would ask of children?
MEM FOX: And a good teacher - a good teacher can be absolutely inspiring.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes.
MEM FOX: Absolutely inspiring and set you alight with things like that. I remember when I was an
adult student at Flinders just before I was a lecturer and we had an inspiring English professor and he
was talking about Pride and Prejudice, which is a book I think I had read many, many, many times
and I was so orgasmic over what this guy was saying, you know. I was almost sort of sinking in my
seat. I was going, oh, oh. Oh. Ohh. Ohhh, that’s fantastic, you know. It was so exciting. What he
did was so exciting.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes.
MEM FOX: But I was at a certain point in my life. I wasn’t five years old.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes, absolutely.
MEM FOX: I wasn’t 13. I wasn’t, you know - - JODI FINUCAN: Yeah.
MEM FOX: A brilliant teacher can do anything with a book.
JODI FINUCAN: So when should we introduce concepts like semiotics and things to children and the
ideas of certain multiple meanings and things like that? When they’re way older?
MEM FOX: When the National Curriculum says we have to.
JODI FINUCAN: Then some of those things will never happen, we all know that. We’ve read those
documents.
MEM FOX: Yes.
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 8 of 23
JODI FINUCAN: Another question I’d like to ask is about vocabulary.
MEM FOX: Yes.
JODI FINUCAN: So obviously there’s a lot of research gone on on how we build a child’s vocabulary
from the early years of reading to them. So I was wondering what your perspective was on how we
broaden children’s vocabulary and also is it just reading that would broaden their vocabulary or, as
some teachers do do, they’re out in schools and early childhood educators do certain vocabulary
building games and what do you think of that? So I’ll give an example. I have a seven and eight year
old who, at the moment, are obsessed with watching Keira Knightley’s Pride and Prejudice. They
watch it over and over again. I don’t know if I should admit that but they’re obsessed with that.
Hopefully they’ll start reading the book. They’re only seven and eight and when we leave the house
we’ll say thing like, “It’s a beautiful day,” and as we’re walking to the train station, “It’s a fabulous day,”
and so we start the game going on how many descriptive words they can come up with for the day
that all have a similar, you now, meaning. Are there any other things other than reading to children
that you believe build vocabulary?
MEM FOX: This - in here, this book, which I reread today on the plane because I wanted to have it
fresh in my mind, I can’t believe it’s 11 years old already and I did read it on that trip so it took me just
two hours to read it and I do have ideas in that. There are lots of ideas. One of the things that I say
in this book and I reiterate again and again and again for parents is not to teach their children to read
before they’re five. Not to teach at all. Children will often learn to read.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes.
MEM FOX: They’ll often learn to read but we’re not teaching them. So what I’m describing here in
relating to, you know, picture books and so on with very young children are that sort of game. It’s that
sort of game. It’s that sort of game. If it’s a game, it’s okay.
JODI FINUCAN: It’s fun.
MEM FOX: If it’s fun it’s okay. Another of my father’s maxims was, “A laughing child likes to learn.”
So if it’s fun, it’s all right.
JODI FINUCAN: Okay.
MEM FOX: Yeah.
JODI FINUCAN: Fantastic. With vocabulary building with children and then working into how children
tell their own stories, do you think that children should be encouraged to narrate and tell their own
stories from a very early age because the oral storytelling builds on that sense of readership?
MEM FOX: I don’t - - JODI FINUCAN: You know the whole talking to babies and letting children tell you their stories.
MEM FOX: Yes. Yes.
JODI FINUCAN: They make them up and it’s fantastical and it doesn’t matter so suddenly the, you
know, walk around the park becomes something very dramatic.
MEM FOX: Yes. Look, what children want to do - if it’s led by children - - JODI FINUCAN: Yes.
MEM FOX: - - - whatever it’s - if it’s led by children it’s okay.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes.
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 9 of 23
MEM FOX: You know, it’s okay. Even if and god forbid that this should happen, but I’m reading a
book - Theo’s current obsession is a terrible book called Elephants and some of you who are as old
as I am may remember reading to your children books that were called McDonald’s starters. They
were non-fiction with little red things around the edge, you know. Well, not only are the books out of
print but the publisher is out of print as well, okay. Long gone. But they were non-fiction books and
they were all non-fiction and this was Chloe’s book, Elephants. It’s terribly badly written but Theo is
absolutely obsessed with it. He is obsessed with this book and your question was, sorry, if - oh, yes.
At the back of the book - at the back of all McDonald’s starters was a vocabulary list and when we get
to the end of the book, which is about woolly mammoths having lived millions of years ago and there
are none left anymore - that’s the last page - you immediately see this word list and he looks at it and
I won’t have a bar of it. I mean what if - you know, if he shows a deep interest in it then I will say, you
know, there’s a map of Africa and it says Africa. But I would never say “That’s Africa. That is a map
of Africa. Can you say Africa? Let’s look at the word. It says Africa?” because in the word list in the
teaching of that wordlist where’s the joy? Where’s the love? Where’s the emotion?
I mean on one page of Elephants it says, “The leader of this herd is very old. The young elephant
fights him. The young elephant is leader. The old elephant goes away,” and the picture is very sad
and both Chloe and my husband think I should rush over that picture because it’s deeply sad, that
page.
But Theo finds it very, very moving. He gets terribly upset by it and we’ll read a few pages beyond
and then he’ll say, “Leader of the herd,” and we have to go back to that page and back and back and
back to this sadness and I say, “He’s an old elephant darling. He’s gone into early retirement. He
was very, very tired and he’s so happy not to be the leader anymore.” And he says, “He was very,
very, very, very tired.” I say, “My darling, yes, he was very tired. He was very tired.” And then we
read on and he’ll get very, very upset on that page and I’ll say, “If you don’t like that page, Theo, we
can always turn the page. We can turn the page. You don’t have to stay on that page ever. You can
turn the page and things will change,” which is now my philosophy of life, as well. If you don’t like the
page you’re on, just turn it, you know. Just turn the page if you don’t like where you are.
But in a word list that heartbreak that he is experiencing on that page, that desire to go back and back
and back to that book, that desire to go back and back to this dreadful text, that desire to go back and
back to experience the sadness will never be found in formal teaching of a word list.
JODI FINUCAN: No.
MEM FOX: Never. But if he initiates it, for example, this is a little distressing. I’m ashamed of myself
because in this book I say don’t teach your kid, I’ll kill you. Okay. I will kill you if you teach your child
to read. Many of you at Christmas time will have read, I’m sure, to your young children, the Dick
Brunner book called The Christmas Story. It’s a beautiful rendition in Miffy form, you know. He’s the
Miffy person. It’s a long book. It’s a landscape shaped picture book and so it says The Christmas
Book all along the front. The Christmas Book and it’s such a long title and it’s such a long book that
sort of like, you know, late November I was just going, “The Christmas Book”, with my finger. “The
Christmas Book,” and if I didn’t do it he would then say, which could be construed as a very rude thing
- it could be construed very badly but he would say, “Do finger. Do finger.” So then I would have to
go “The Christmas Book,” and then he would put out his hand and I would have to do finger with his
finger and now, increasingly he is asking me to do finger. Do finger.
The other day we were - you don’t have Foodland here. It’s a supermarket chain that is in, you know,
pathetic competition with Woolworths and Coles and losing badly but Foodland is our closest
supermarket. So two days ago there is - it’s in a boomerang, Foodland. It’ looks like an Australian
boomerang. Very identifiable. And I said, “We’re at Foodland.” I said, “That says Foodland there.
That says Foodland.” And he said, “Do finger.” Well, it’s a huge sign, you know. And there were you could see me from the car park. You know, it looked as if I was teaching my grandchild to read
and it was so embarrassing but he said, “Do finger.” What can you do? You’ll do anything they ask
so I went, “Foodland” and he said, “Do finger,” and put out his own hand and so we went, “Foodland.”
So we went inside and he was, you know, reading numbers and things and seven, aisle seven, and
things like that and then one of the guys who knows him, who’s a packer in the shop, ‘cause we go
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 10 of 23
there all the time, said, “Hello, Theo.” And I said, “Theo can tell you where you work, Reg.” He said,
“He can’t.” I said, “He can.” I said, “What does that say, Theo,” and he said, “Foodland”. Of course
Reg thought he was pretty clever. I said, “It’s okay, Reg, I only told him five minutes ago. You don’t
have to get over-excited.” But that’s coming from him.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes.
MEM FOX: I know I did it on the Christmas Story but his desire to know - because I think he knows
now that there are things called words. I think he’s got an idea that there are things called words but
you were talking about vocabulary and the fabulous and all of that.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes. Yes.
MEM FOX: We put, as all of us do, I’m sure, put a table cloth or a sheet over the edge of the dining
room table and he makes a house out of it and, you know, plays under there and one day we had just
a menagerie under there. I said to him, “Oh, Theo, you’ve got a fantastic house there, sweetie. You
house is great.” And he said, “Yes, it’s a very fine dwelling.” And now I’m going to forget the title of
the book. I think it’s called Clancy and Millie.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Clancy and Millie.
MEM FOX: Who wrote it?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Libby Gleeson.
MEM FOX: Libby Gleeson. Libby Gleeson. I knew it was a famous author. Okay. And because he
loves that book - it’s about two kids moving house - a child moving house, having no friends. There
are huge boxes that the fridge and other things have come in. He and the girl next door make friends
and they make houses out of these huge empty boxes and the mother is describing the new house to
him, which he doesn’t like at all, as a very fine dwelling. And so when these two children make
houses out of boxes, they say to each other, “It’s a very fine dwelling,” and I always emphasise it and
do it kind of camply, you know. “It’s a very fine dwelling.” So, of course, you know, how could a child
of 20 months say, “It’s a very fine dwelling?” without having been read to? It’s impossible to conceive.
They couldn’t do that.
JODI FINUCAN: No, absolutely.
MEM FOX: And yet we want at school to make a vocabulary list that had the word “fine” in it,
“dwelling”.
JODI FINUCAN: Sight words. Sight words lists.
MEM FOX: Sight words. And you think people, please, please don’t kill it.
JODI FINUCAN: Is a sight word list for autographic development though so that they know how words
are spelt or no?
MEM FOX: Look, if it’s fun.
JODI FINUCAN: Yeah.
MEM FOX: If it’s done in - if it’s - and there are ways of teaching anything that are as dull as ditch
water and take the kids nowhere and that are - that exactly the same method can be done with a
different teacher, different attitude, different zest.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes.
MEM FOX: A smile on the face. A game and the kids learn it and it’s fun.
JODI FINUCAN: So let’s move to reluctant readers.
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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MEM FOX: Yes.
JODI FINUCAN: In lots of early childhood centres and in schools and in the education system,
children do those little readers, you know, and often, you know, as I’ve advised in the past, you know,
do picture books, do meaningful books. Don’t just do those little readers.
MEM FOX: Right.
JODI FINUCAN: But there’s often a rule in schools that you have to go through a certain level of
reader until you’re rewarded with the chapter book, so you can’t have a chapter book until you get to a
certain level and so children who are reluctant readers or deemed poor readers look at that mythical
chapter book coming up - you know my own daughter came home and said, you know, I have two
more levels until I can get to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe so there’s the treat for the children
who are already very good readers and the other children have to struggle through the levels hoping
and maybe sometimes they never make it to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
MEM FOX: And we wonder why children fail. We wonder why they tune out.
JODI FINUCAN: Of course, as a mother I go and say, you know, write a note saying, “Everyone
should have The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because my youngest, though she - when she
couldn’t read and was read to would say things like, you know, she’s very little, you know. I’d say
something like, “Oh, you’re very little. You can’t do that and she’d say, “Mummy, you know, I may be
small but my heart is large,” from Despero.
MEM FOX: Ooh.
JODI FINUCAN: So we wrote a note to say, you know, “Please allow Evie to read a chapter book.
Why does she have to jump through certain hoops to get rewarded with the chapter book?” What
would you think about the scenarios of making chapter books almost unattainable for some children?
MEM FOX: Appalling.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes.
MEM FOX: Beyond belief that anybody in a curriculum office could put that down as a way of
teaching. It’s about a child’s interests. It’s about a child’s development. Some children will never
want to read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe because they’re not interested in fantasy,
because they’re not that kind of child but the child - but to say you can’t do this until you do that, I start
reading Magic with this story but Chloe learnt to read within two weeks of being at school and I was
shocked. I was ecstatic. I knew nothing about the teaching of reading at the time and so she was
reading - she was reading picture books very quickly at home. You know, quite complicated books
really, really well, with a lot of expression. I met my husband at drama school. It figures, okay.
So she would come home with her readers from school. It was a catholic school and my husband
was teaching there, which is why she was there and she would bring these readers home and she
had to go lock step through the series, okay. So she’s reading with expression complicated picture
books. She comes home with the reader and she goes, “Sam and Pam and Digger went to the park.
Sam threw a ball. Sam threw a ball and” - and I said, “Why are you reading like that? What on earth
are you doing?” And she looked at me as if I was from the dark ages and I had no idea about modern
schools and she said, “You have to read like that at school. That’s the way you read at school.” I
laughed so much that she burst into tears.
Now, I come from a missionary background, which is why I grew up in Africa and this was a Catholic
school. Okay, we’re not Catholic but one way or another we don’t lie. It’s not one thing that we like to
do in our family. We’re not liars, okay. So I said to her, “Chloe, you’re not reading these readers.
You are not going to read these readers in this house. I will not have it. I will not have it. I said, “I will
read you the readers and I will say that these pages have been read but not by whom. Not by whom.”
And I said, “We are going to whiz through until you get, you know, to some decent books.” There
were no decent books because it was readers.
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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I brought one with me. Hang on a minute. This is an English reader, because I didn’t want anybody
in Australia to get upset. Okay. Just let’s hear this. Okay, just let’s start this. I won’t go far. “Each
peach pear plumb I spy Tom Thumb. Tom thumb in the cupboard I spy Mother Hubbard. Mother
Hubbard in down the cellar I spy?”
AUDIENCE: Cinderella.
MEM FOX: “Cinderella on the stairs I spy the three”?
AUDIENCE: Bears.
MEM FOX: You can read it, yay! Okay, the play. This is the reader: “Biff and Chip went to school.
They went with Wilf and Wilma. Biff and Chip liked Mrs May. They were in her class. Wilf liked Mrs
May. He was in her class too. It was story time. The story was The Wizard of Oz. It was about a girl
and her dog. The girl was Dorothy. There was a storm. The wind blew the house away.”
It is so boring. It’s so boring and if kids have only readers, if that’s their experience of literature, no
wonder we have illiterates like the poor child in my family who ended up in the justice system because
he never learnt to read. I mean he can read now enough to get a driving licence, which he has but he
ran away from school because he was laughed at at eight and a half because he couldn’t read
because he wasn’t read to.
It’s so simple and it’s so joyful and it’s so yummy and scrumptious and delightful and when people
say, “I haven’t got time to read to my child,” I don’t know why they have them. It’s ten minutes a day.
It’s three books. It’s the same three books. It’s the same book three times or three different books .
It’s ten minutes a day. If you’ve got a child at home and you’re living with it, it can be three hours a
day during the day. It can be three hours and for people to say that a boy of 24 months cannot sit still
for 40 minutes listening to books, you know, we need to raise our expectations.
This is about to be reissued because it’s out of contract. It’s not out of print, it’s out of contract, so
these people have to buy it again from me, which is thrilling but they would only buy it again if I wrote
a chapter from my perspective as a grandmother because it has been so amazing what has
happened, because I didn’t know anything when I had Chloe. You know, I knew nothing. It was all by
instinct and now I know what I know. I know about brain development, language development,
reading development and so on and I have been so surprised as the author of this book, even as the
author of this book I thought, oh, my God. Look at what this kid can do. Well, of course he can do it.
Why am I so surprised? I keep wanting to hit myself on the head with, you know - this is - you wrote
the book. You wrote it. Don’t you remember what you wrote? Don’t you remember what you
believed in?
The reason why I want you to buy this book this evening is because when it’s re-issued it’s going to
be twice the price and you can get the grandmother chapter in the library. You don’t have to - you
know, you don’t have to wait to pay $15 for one new chapter, you know. I wanted this to be well
under the price of a packet of cigarettes. I said, “I want this book to be cheap. Please, please, please
try and keep it under $10.” They just can’t. Costs have gone up so it will now be, you know, $14.95,
which is, for me, heartbreaking. You know, I don’t need to make money out of this book. I make
money out of other books. I just want the message out, out, out. I just want the message out
because we could change the world if this happened.
We’re damn good in Australia, by the way. We are fabulous about reading aloud. When you said,
you know - no, it was the first person who spoke who said only six out of ten children in Queensland is
read aloud to. Only? Six out of ten kids in Queensland is read aloud to? Are read aloud to. How
fantastic is that? That is brilliant. I mean it’s sad that it’s not ten out of ten but six out of ten, man
alive. We are hot. That’s fantastic. We do a brilliant job. Brilliant. But we can always do better.
JODI FINUCAN: Absolutely. So I might ask if anyone in the audience wants to ask you a question
now, Mem, since I’ve asked you some nice, you know - - MEM FOX: Curly ones.
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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JODI FINUCAN: Curly ones. And ask people to get the microphones around the room. If anyone
wants to ask Mem a question and just wait for a mic and we’ll hear from the audience.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thanks. Hi, I wanted to ask a question about reading to your children versus
making up a story for them. I have a three year old daughter. I read to her every night but lately she
is all about just make up a story and, you know, she calls them pretend stories and she wants that
more often than being read at the moment. I’m just wondering about your comments on that?
MEM FOX: I think that’s absolutely wonderful because there are no pictures and if you’re just making
up the story then her imagination is having to work, you know, twice or three times as hard to create
the pictures herself so it’s doing absolutely wonders for her imagination. Wonders for her imagination
and I think that’s absolutely fine. It’s a point in her life when she wants that. It’s about a closeness
between you and her. You’re still with her. You are still with her. It’s not all about literacy. It’s about
bonding. You now, it’s really about bonding. I think everything comes out of the bonding. All the
education, the language, you know, the psychology, it all comes out of bonding. So that’s what’s
happening. It’s a lovely closeness. I think that’s terrific.
I didn’t mention either during this discussion that telling stories is absolutely terrific, you know, with no
book at all. I don’t do any of that, even though - I do sometimes, actually. I know the story of - I know
lots of stories because I used to be a storyteller. I do tell the story of Epaminondas sometimes to him
and I know some of my books by heart, like Koala Lou so I can tell those without the book, as he’s
sort of drifting off in the dark. But Chloe, his mother, tells him - she has three stories, Chicken Licken,
The Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood, which she tells and she says, “Which one do you want?”
“How about” is what we always said. He goes, “How about - how about” and then says the one that
he wants and I think that those - he’s never seen pictures of those three fairy stories. He’s never
seen the pictures. So it’s all in his head and I think that is really, really fantastic and very, very
important.
You know, Einstein was asked by a woman how she could make her child clever and he said, “Read
him fairy stories,” and she kind of thought that was a brush off. You know, she was irritated by the
answer but she was very polite and she said, “And after I have read him fairy stories, then what
should I do?” and he said, “Read him more fairy stories.” So what you’re doing is terrific. Do you like
it?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love it.
MEM FOX: See? How gorgeous. Lucky you.
JODI FINUCAN: Thank you, we might just take a - - JES WAWRZYNSKI: Mem, I have a question. I was just wondering is it the same to read to children
from an iPad as it is from a book? Because iPads are everywhere now. Kids are using them.
They’re so young. Will they get the same benefit from reading an iPad book as they will from a real
book?
MEM FOX: It’s not about the iPad or the book. It’s not a competition between those two things. It’s
whether there’s an interaction between an adult and a child. The iPad is just a thing. The book is just
a thing. So the difference - there is no difference between those except that more often than not,
because children can manipulate an iPad, more often than not they’re left alone with an iPad. That’s
the danger, that the loving interaction - you know it’s much more important to learn language than it is
to learn familiarity of letters. It’s much more important to learn language before you go to school and
there are four year olds across society among the wealthiest kids in this country and among the
poorest, there are four year olds who can’t talk. And they can’t talk because no one is reading to
them and no one’s talking to them. A television cannot have a conversation with a child. An iPad
cannot have a conversation with a child. An iPhone can’t have a conversation with a child.
The other thing - the other thing about the iPad versus the book is if I were Einstein, I would say if you
want your child to be really clever, then use books more often than iPads because the book, by its
nature, because it’s only a book, will inculcate a level of concentration in a child that is going to be
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16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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extremely valuable later on because they’ll be able to concentrate for a long time at a high level
without requiring some break up. You know, if you’re on an iPad - and I have seen this with Theo,
there’s so much excitement - you know, there’s so much excitement that there’s no concentration.
You go for the Pelican and then he says, “Elephant” and then you find the elephant and then you find
the elephant there going, “Woo hoo,” and then you do this and then you do that and there’s lots of
stuff on it and it’s exciting and the fingers go in and out and they get bigger and so on. But where’s
the concentration level?
But, you know, even watching television in our house, we try to watch television with him. The only
time he watches it by himself is when his poor mother, who is a single parent - there’s a story. When
his mother is having a shower, because, you know, there has to be a point where she’s on her own
and he does watch television when she’s in the shower but the rest of the time, whatever it is: TV,
iPhone, iPad, book, it’s the loving interaction with the child.
I mean just this morning I was lying on my stomach on the floor. He was sitting on a very low child’s
couch thing. You know that you buy from Kmart for $9, that kind of chair. And so my head was at the
level of his knee and while he was watching television he was patting the back of my head. He was
just patting the back of my head. Honestly, I just wanted to put my head right on the carpet and sob,
it was so beautiful. So and then we could interact also. You know when something was scary on the
television or whatever or wiggly pig or whatever it was, you know, you could interact and say, “No, it’s
not scary and, you know, it’s going to - you know we’ve seen this one before. It’s fine. It’s absolutely
fine. Do you want me to put your hands over - shall I put my hands over your eyes until it’s over?” No.
But it’s the interaction. It’s the love between the two adults - the adult and the thing. Doesn’t matter
what that thing is. I love technology myself.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Mem. Over here.
MEM FOX: Hello.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just wanted to get your thoughts on children asking questions during the
story, particularly stories that have quite a melody or a rhyme associated with them. Do you feel that
it breaks up that rhyme and that you lose some of the meaning behind the story or do you think that it
actually builds on the story?
MEM FOX: I used to - I used to teach my students as I wanted them to teach, okay? And, you know,
they are all sorts of OH&S things now that, you know, you just couldn’t do what I was doing in the past
but I would say, “Look, I’m going to read this story for the first time. None of us has heard this story
before. It’s so beautiful. I am going to light a candle.” No way could you do that these days. “I’m
going to light a candle and once the candle is lit we cannot speak until the story is over.” Nobody can
speak until the story is over so that children get the logic of this started. Then because of that this
happened, then this happened. The problem wasn’t solved so they had to do this. Then the problem
was solved. Then they lived happily ever after and they get sequence. They get - the also get the
grammar of the sentences. They get the vocabulary. They get the emotion. There is no interruption.
Thereafter, for the second, third and fourth reading of the same book, because I never read a book
once during a week - you know with little kids I would always encourage people to read them, you
know, seven or eight times during the week, so they want to talk. They want to ask questions. Fine,
the second, the third and the fourth time they can ask questions, break it up, break it up. They can
sort things out. They can ask everything that they don’t know and then on the fifth and subsequent
readings nobody talks because they don’t want to. They don’t need to. They just need the story
again. But I never let them interrupt the first reading. Never.
I have sometimes, this is much more boring, put an apple on the table and said, “While the apple is
here nobody can speak. Nobody. Are you ready? Are you watching the apple? Everybody look at
the apple.” “One fine day from out of town,” et cetera.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I hope I won’t offend anyone with this question but it’s important to me. This
afternoon I was teaching in a low socioeconomic, racially diverse area and I drove in to the middle of
Brisbane to sit in a room full of almost exclusively white, middle-class women. And I’d like to ask you
about your thoughts about how to motivate the parents who are not here tonight?
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 15 of 23
MEM FOX: The only way to motivate parents to do what I want them to do is to read to them so that
they can find out how fantastic it is. So, you know, it’s got - it’s got to be, you know, “Dear Parents,
one of you will have to stay at home but one of you can come and have a fun night. This is what
we’re going to do. It could be chaos. It could be this. It could be that. We’ll have pizza and, believe
it or not, I’m going to tell you stories and some of them are hot.
And, you know, because a lot of those parents are frightened of schools. They’re frightened of
buildings that look like prison. You know, they’re frightened of buildings that look like police stations.
They’re frightened of libraries. They’re frightened of authoritative buildings. They’re frightened of
school. They’ve had bad experiences themselves. They don’t want to be there. So but it’s fun. If we
say, “Well, you know, we’re going to run a talk about why you should read to your children,” they won’t
turn up. Why would you? Why would you because the word “joy” isn’t there, “hot” isn’t there. You
know, “fun”, “laughter”, “hilarity” isn’t there. “You’ll wee yourselves,” isn’t there. You know, none of
that’s there because we’re so focussed on the duty of it.
And as you can tell from what I’ve said tonight, I mean it’s the passion of my life but I try to be - I try
not to make it sound like, you know, you’ve got to drink eight glasses of water a day, don’t eat salt,
never smoke. You know, it’s not like that. It’s just such a beautiful thing. It’s such a beautiful thing,
so fun, fun, fun. But reading to them, especially reading to, you know, parents who are second
language learners and so on, reading to parents, you know, this is when you think, you know, I wish I
was the Prime Minister. Anyway.
JODI FINUCAN: Yes, more questions just up here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Mem. I’ve just got a question about book choices.
MEM FOX: Yes.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m lucky to have an eight year old boy, who is a very avid reader and some of
the books he’s wanting to read, if they were movies I wouldn’t let him. They would be M. You know,
he’s wanting to read Hunger Games and all sorts of things that I’m wondering - you know, you were
talking about the struggling reader wanting to read a chapter book and they should have open slather.
Should he also or what are your thoughts on that?
MEM FOX: Look, I think so. Up to a point. I mean if they’re sexually explicit books, for eight year olds
perhaps not but really as soon as we say, “You can’t”, then the desire is there. I mean I was horrified
when we were staying with my sister in London once and my daughter was 12 and she just picked a
book off my sister’s shelves and it was The Color Purple. Well, you know, it starts off with a
masturbating scene and I knew that it started off like that. She was halfway through the book and I
just thought too late now. Too late now. Too late now. You know, it’s a stunning book. It’s an
absolutely brilliant book but I wouldn’t have wanted her to read that quite at 12. I just wouldn’t have
wanted that but I would never - I couldn’t - I was so torn because I didn’t want her to read it but I didn’t
want to say “Don’t read it,” because if I said, “Don’t read it,” she would want to read it ever so much
more.
The quickest way to make somebody read a book is to say, “You can’t read that book. It’s banned.”
My banned books in America - you know how Americans ban books left, right and centre? They love
to ban a book. My banned books sell so well because everybody wants to read them. Why is this
book banned?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I actually had two questions. I’ve got an 18 month old and with your
grandson, Theo, how do you find - you were talking about concentration - keeping their attention on
the book? Because I find she is wanting to just flip the pages, so I’m speeding through the book to try
and get it read before she closes the book and we’re on to the next book.
MEM FOX: Right. Look, we just do what they want to do. We just follow them. You know, if she
wants to speed through the book, that’s okay. When you’re in the car and you know the book off by
heart, she’s strapped in the back. She can’t move, you know, just start to recite it because, you know,
you know it by heart and they can’t move so because it is important that they get eventually but, you
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 16 of 23
know, between 12 and 18 months that is the developmental state where they don’t want to sit around.
It’s completely the time of exploration, between 12 and 18 months where they really are wanting to
zoom around and it’s more difficult, you know, to. But I would never worry about anything. You know,
as soon as we start worrying about anything before they turn five, they all pick up on that worry and
then everything will turn nasty and it will all be horrible and, mmm.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My second question was just - - MEM FOX: So it’s just whatever she wants is fine.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You were talking about tone for reading.
MEM FOX: Yes.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We read to bed for her as well so do you sort of dull it down for bedtime
reading or do you still use the same zest?
MEM FOX: Our daughter Chloe used to say to me, “I don’t want him overstimulated. I don’t want him
overstimulated,” but, you know, you can do The Magic Cat which is, “Oh, the magic cat, the magic cat
it moved like this, it moved like that. It sponged through the air like a bouncing balloon and sat on the
head of a hairy baboon,” and you’re both shrieking but then you finish off with, “It’s time for bed little
mouse, little mouse. Darkness is falling all over the house. The stars are night are shining bright,
sweet dreams my darling, sleep well, good night.”
You know, it’s just the book will say what the tone has got to be but I want to make them happy as
well as sleepy.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love reading but English is my second language. So when I read to my kids
I’m reading with a very strong accent so I’m a little bit concerned that - I’m not sure if I should be
reading really to them.
MEM FOX: Oh, you should be reading to them. It doesn’t matter what accent you’ve got. It’s not
about the accent, it’s about the love, remember that. It’s about the bonding between you and your
child. You know, all they want to be is with us. They just want to be with us. And what - you know if
we can just focus on them for a little time every day, that’s all they want. Do they care that you’ve got
an accent? Of course they don’t care. We all have an accent. Every single one of us has an accent.
I’m always amused in America when people say, “I love your accent,” and I say, “And I love yours.” “I
don’t have an accent.”
The accent is immaterial. You know, they hear English at school. They’ll hear lots of different
Englishes at school. You know they’ll hear rough and tumble Australian. They’ll hear Received
Pronunciation English from their teachers, which is, you know, sort of posh and more literary kind of
way of speaking, a more correct way of speaking. You know, it’s about them loving you and you
spending the time reading to them. To hell with how you sound. It doesn’t matter at all.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sorry, I was transfixed.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. We’ve always read to our children all the time but I now have an 11 year
old daughter who is torn and she says, “Mum, none of my friends have books read to them anymore.
Should I?” You know so we’ve sort of pretended and she said she doesn’t have to tell anyone I read
to her but she’s still feeling a bit – whether she should be a bit more grown up and not have books
read to her.
MEM FOX: Look, she’s obviously at a stage where she’s just moving away, isn’t she? She’s just
moving away and you’re so damn lucky it took until she was 11 because when Chloe was six and,
you know, was a fluent reader and, of course, your child was probably a fluent reader about the same
time, she knew what she was going to do. She was going to wound me mortally. She knew what she
was about to do and so she was incredibly tactful and she said, “Ma, um, I can read it faster by
myself.” And I never read to her again. I never read to her again after the age of six. It was
heartbreaking.
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 17 of 23
She thought she had got rid of me but actually, because I couldn’t read to her, when the light was out
I would kneel by her bed with my elbows on the bed. You know with my hand like this, and we would
just chat. I was absolutely sure that I was not going to be banned from that heavenly night time event,
you know, and that went on - that chat went on for ages. I remember when she was in year seven
and I said about one of her friends, “Do you think so and so, so and so is going off the rails?” You
know and we had a long chat about whether this child was going to end up being a juvenile
delinquent.
It was that kind of chat. It was the chat about values, about life, about behaviour, about, you know - I
remember in this position when she was about 13 I said, I said, “Why don’t you take drugs?” because
some of her friends were already doing that and she said, “Oh, because I’m a leader, not a follower.”
I thought, “Oh, my god.” Those times were so important I couldn’t bear to get rid of them so you’re so
lucky and there are people who will allow their parents to read to them until they’re 17. You know, just
at night, just to be read to. How fantastic. The bonding, the development, the brains of these children
must be incredible. Lucky you that it’s lasted so long.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I also just, sorry, just wanted to say one of our most special things that we
used to do was we had one of your CDs and on a Sunday night that was - if everything was done we
could sit and listen to a few and it was great. So thank you.
MEM FOX: Thank you. The CDs worried me and I’ll tell you why, because they’re okay in the car I
guess but I was worried that people would put on the CDs and have Mem Fox telling the story without
interacting with the child, that the CD was going to take the parent away.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Oh, it was treat for all of us.
MEM FOX: So if everybody is listening, that’s okay. I was terribly worried about the CD. I thought,
oh, will this mean that parents don’t read to their children because it’s not about, you know, the
stories, it’s about the love and the bonding and so on. Well, I’m glad you liked them. Thank you.
Oh, look at this child. How old is it?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Three months.
MEM FOX: Oh, how did she get here? How did you manage it. Ten out of ten.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. He’s not asleep yet though. I just - I’m a speech language
pathologist and have an intrinsic interest in preschool children’s particularly language and literacy
development and I run book groups for babies where it’s the mums that attend and one of the very
frequent comments is that they do the lion’s share of most things - sorry, reading and that they want
to know how to encourage their partners or a male figure in their life to take equal part in that reading
and I just wondered if you had any stories or comments about that?
MEM FOX: I’m not selling this book. I make, you know, two cents out of it, you know, I mean really so
I’m not selling it because it’s not worth selling, you know. It’s too cheap. In this book there’s a
chapter called Boys and Reading. I think it may be the last chapter, yes. There are some absolutely
heart rending stories about times when fathers have decided, for various reasons, to take on the role
of reading to children. So there are, I think, probably four really, really powerful stories at the back of
this book about what happened when father’s began to read to their children. What happened to the
children, what happened to the fathers. There’s just I was nearly crying today on the plane, because it
was the last chapter and, you know, I know this book really well but I hadn’t read it for a long time and
I just read that story and I thought, oh.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct)
MEM FOX: So, you know, borrow it. You don’t have to buy it. It’s in the library.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Mem.
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 18 of 23
MEM FOX: Hi.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’ve been reading to our children - I’ve got a five year - nearly six. He’d kill me
if I said five. Nearly six year old and a three year old and we’ve been reading a lot all through, like
from when they were tiny. What I’ve seen since he’s started school and he’s gone into prep and he’s
starting in grade one is that we do get the readers that says, “The hat is brown. The cat is brown.”
You know that sort of thing. And I can see that he is not enjoying it and I don’t enjoy it really but it
seems to be that there is a requirement to go through this thing. Now, I’ve heard things about when
they read chapter books and that. You know we had The Muddleheaded Wombat series. We’ve read
all of that, you know, Peter Pan, books that perhaps are perhaps a little bit too old for him but he’s
loved them. But what I’m seeing at the moment is that he’s struggling with it and it’s not interesting to
him. So we sort of scoot through whatever he has to do for school and then go and read something
that he wants to read but I just am a bit concerned that, you know, maybe we’re not doing the right
thing in terms of his, you know, the way that the education is happening.
MEM FOX: Look, in three years time I will be in your position. I feel as if Theo is my child because we
look after him every day. He’s not. It makes my daughter furious but, anyway, I care for him. She
has no - she cannot say a word, you know, otherwise I’ll say, “Well, send him to childcare then. No.
No. Go on, send him to childcare and pay for that.” Theo will be at school in three years time as of
now. Will he learn to read happily and quickly and easily with a lively teacher who’s teaching reading
in a way perhaps not prescribed, you know, what will happen? How will I cope? What will I do? You
know as Mem Fox, I will not be able to go to the school and say, “Guys, this isn’t working. You’re
teaching like crap here. You know, this is not working. This highly literate child, you know, who can
read books, who loves books and who’s been read very complicated, wonderful texts all his life is
absolutely not learning to read because of the texts that you’re using. What are we going to do?”
I can’t do that, you know, because I’m too well known, I’m too out there. If I go anywhere near the
school, everybody will come out in a nervous rash. I won’t be able to, you know, be like a normal
grandparent or parent and I am terrified that exactly what you’re going through is what he’ll go
through. You know the first teacher a child has can make up for a child not having been read to for
the first five years. A brilliant teacher can make up for that lack but a bad teacher in the first year of
school can undo also a lot of the goodness that has happened in that first five years. It’s really scary.
And I need to tell you that there was graffiti at Flinders University in the third floor men’s toilets and
when the boys fell in love with me after a while and knew they could tell me, year after year they
would come and say, “Mem, did you know there’s graffiti about you in the third floor men’s toilets,”
and I would say, “No.” Because I always did know but I’d say, “No, is there? What do they say?” It
says, “Mem Fox is not God.” I said, “Well, how wrong can they be?”
But I’m telling you that story because I don’t have the answer. I am not God about that one. I have no
idea what you can do. I honestly do not know what you can do. It’s so depressing. It’s so frightening
that this damage can be done. I think you’ve just - you have to go through the motions probably but
just rush it, get it over and done with, make a joke of it. Make a running joke of - you know, start
talking in school reader language. “I am eating my Weetbix. What are you eating this morning?” You
know, just so that we just laugh out way through it.
I did discuss it with Chloe philosophically. I said, “School is something you have to get through.” I
said that to her all her life. You know sometimes she had brilliant teachers that were just so inspiring
that she just sang the whole year and sometimes it was just, you know, dull and very, very, you know,
poor. It happens in any school, private or public. It doesn’t matter where the kids are educated.
There are some terrible teachers and there’s some brilliant teachers and I would say to her in the
terrible teacher years, “You just have to get through school.” It’s just one of society’s requirements.
You know, you just have to do it. So knuckle down and just get through it. It may be difficult but this
is just - it’s not negotiable.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, and I‘d just make a comment to the lady who was talking about getting
the partners involved.
MEM FOX: Yes.
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 19 of 23
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I like to think that I’m an expressive reader and that the kids absolutely love
me reading to them. If dad, who’s not such an expressive reader, wants to read them a story, I may
as well be invisible so I’d totally encourage that.
MEM FOX: See that says that, you know, they are desperate for him to be - they are desperate for
him to be with them under any circumstances. Under any circumstances. Totally know where your
family is coming from. I can absolutely - I can see it because they probably don’t see as much of him
as they see of you. Is that right or not?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: A bit, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
MEM FOX: So, yeah, terrific.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And if I - - MEM FOX: And the last question probably is it?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And if I could I’d offer - I’d answer to the question about reading to children
through readers I have a colleague who now lectures at ACU in early childhood and he has two small
sons and they used to come home and do the readers and he always said, “Well, in life we have to do
a little bit of work before we can do something that’s rewarding, so we’ll just get through the reader
and consider it work and I’ll sign it off and then we’ll read something that’s actually good,” and so just
get through it and then afterwards do something that’s- - MEM FOX: What a shame that we have to get through it. What a shame that they have to get
through it. How heartbreaking.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s terrible but, yeah. Maybe one day they won’t send readers home.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct) I don’t want my child to read that. I would love parents to come to
me as a prep teacher because I hate (indistinct). I’ve had parents come and say, “When are the
readers coming home?” That was two weeks ago. I think, God, these children just (indistinct) and
you’re wanting homework and home reading? Just go home and talk to your children and (indistinct)
and play with your children - - MEM FOX: Yes. Yes.
JODI FINUCAN: Absolutely.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I already noticed (indistinct) because I have to follow the line but I would
(indistinct). But if they want to say to me, “I don’t want my child (indistinct)” Hallelujah. Read
something else to them.
MEM FOX: That’s very, very encouraging. That’s very encouraging.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct)
MEM FOX: Yes.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: - - - (indistinct) so passionate about them reading some quality literature and
spending quality time with their parents and having to read a home reader is just (indistinct). So
challenge the teacher. Tell them.
MEM FOX: Challenge the teacher? Oh, but we’re only parents and grandparents.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mem, maybe you could help us. At our school we need to conference with the
children in prep to find out their reading goals and their reading goals have to be documented and
written down and then read back to the principle in our meetings with him. So could you help me with
a four year old, writing their reading goal?
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 20 of 23
MEM FOX: How sad.
JODI FINUCAN: So is that a part of an explicit reading strategy? Does the school have an explicit
reading - - AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, it’s their reading goal, what they want to read, how they want to read.
JODI FINUCAN: Okay.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s our school target in literacy. They also need to have a numeracy goal and
a general working and behaviour goal.
MEM FOX: You know, the goals are all right but a child with those - trying to articulate those goals,
especially a child who’s never been read to, how could they have the vocabulary or the thought
processes to understand what you are even talking about? The word “goal” by itself, that is only in
football.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s very challenging from a professional point of view and as I have been a
parent but it is very, very difficult but we are required to do it.
MEM FOX: It’s sad, you know. It’s really sad and I think what happens is that curriculum writers some were never teachers. God forbid but some were never teachers but they’re in education. You
know, they’ve got doctorates in education. They - perhaps some are not parents. Perhaps some are
totally divorced from children, have never interacted with little kids and have no understanding of their
likes and dislikes and so on and they sit in offices which are airless and in committee and come up
with these mad ideas, divorced from the vitality of a classroom, the vitality of human interaction in the
classroom, completely divorced from it. It’s sad.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: One other point. When my children had readers at school that were very
boring, we actually wrote our own text. So we covered the text and we wrote our own.
MEM FOX: Oh, so the children wrote their text.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My children.
MEM FOX: Oh, your children?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct)
MEM FOX: Oh, that’s hysterical.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And we wrote our own text.
MEM FOX: That’s hysterical.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.
MEM FOX: See we all have these problems. You were a teacher. You were too frightened to say
anything. I was a teacher and I was too scared to say anything. Why are we so petrified of the
teacher? Because we don’t want them to pick on our child. We don’t want them to pick on and we
don’t want them to think that we’re divas and that we all think our child is a genius because every
parent things their child is a genius. It’s tiresome. It’s very tiresome and we get scared. I almost
hope I die before Theo starts school, I’m so worried. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Oh, the sweat of that first
week. Oh, my God. Oh, dear, oh, dear.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct) I’ve never had children - - MEM FOX: Right.
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 21 of 23
AUDIENCE MEMBER: - - - but I think (indistinct) and I find when you said earlier that you love
technology and I (indistinct) because I was here last week and in the foyer area I noticed a lady on the
mobile phone. Her little girl was just sitting there so and I came along and (indistinct).
MEM FOX: Yes.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct) when I’m out and about, which is a terrible fascination (indistinct).
MEM FOX: Sure.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I said to the girl, “Oh, aren’t you having the loveliest time. You look at
your lovely (indistinct)” I said, “Aren’t you having the best time?” She was so excited.
MEM FOX: Because you talked to her.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Also I have to be careful because I’m a stranger and people teach children not
to speak to strangers.
MEM FOX: Yes, sure. Yep.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: But if I wasn’t talking to her and her mother wasn’t talking to her (indistinct).
the child just needed someone to talk to.
MEM FOX: Yes, I think we should - I think we should talk to them.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct)
MEM FOX: I think we should talk to them.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I just said to her, “Oh, and I’m very concerned that if you leave your lovely
green tea any longer, it’s going to get very cold (indistinct).”
MEM FOX: You know, how old was this child?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct).
MEM FOX: Right. Because I used to be very, very, very cross with mothers. I lived by the beach and
I used to be furious with mothers who had children in pushers and were on the mobile phone. But,
you know, since we’ve looked after Theo, there’s no time to be on the phone. I was ecstatic to be at
the airport today. I made about three phone calls at the airport because he wasn’t with me. It was
sensational. So, you know, once I had care of this child, I saw the mother on the phone in a slightly
more understanding light but I do think that, you know, to be constantly on the phone with a child with
nothing to do - oh, I said I was going to tell you about what happened on the plane today.
JODI FINUCAN: You did. That was part of the wild ride that I was (indistinct) - - MEM FOX: The wild ride. I have to talk about what happened on the plane today. I promise this is
the last story. Sitting across the aisle from me was a father, a mother and a child of about eighteen
month and, you know, it’s only two hours from Adelaide to Brisbane but your heart sinks. You know,
you think, oh, my God. You know, oh, what’s going to happen here? Oh, no, the child had nothing to
do and you think, oh, what do they expect? The child is going to misbehave because they’ve got
nothing to do. No books, no nothing. Not even an iPhone for God’s sake.
Anyway, the child was terrific, a beautifully behaved little boy and at one point he started to get
agitated but he’d been so nicely behaved, you know, prior to that. He’d been so lovely, so I bent
down and I got out of my bag, because I brought some of my own books and some other books, you
know, in case I needed to talk about them. I took out of my bag Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
and I said, “You can have this. I don’t need it,” and she said, “Are you Mem Fox?” And I said, “Yes.”
She said, “We love the Green Sheep. It’s his favourite book,” and I said, “Fantastic. Well, here’s
another one for him.” And then I thought, “Why haven’t you got the Green Sheep on the plane?”
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
Page 22 of 23
When I looked at that child not interacting with the parents over a book I did not have this thought, oh,
yeah, so it’s two hours of language development that didn’t happen. I did not think, oh, all the brain
development that could be happening in this two hours and they’re just wasting their time. I did not
think, oh, think of the vocabulary that this child could have learnt in these two hours. I just thought,
how sad that they’re not having fun with the book. That’s all I thought. How sad they haven’t got a
book to have fun with. And, you know, as soon as the book was there it was read over and over and
over again. The child was terrific. It was exactly the right level for him. You know and he was quiet
and they had a nice time. The dad read it, the mum read it. You know, then they gave it back to me
and I said, “No. No. It’s yours. It’s yours. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I never want to see it
again.”
So it just astounds me that people can be on a plane for two hours - I mean it’s you know, sometimes I’m too exhausted on a plane to read myself. I did read this. I found it fascinating. But to
have a child on a plane without a book or without a colouring-in or a puzzle or - I can’t behave for two
hours. I get bored in two hours. Of course a child gets bored. So I didn’t think of all those formal
teaching things, which I could have thought of as an educator. I thought of the joy and I thought of the
love and I thought what a shame they’re not having that delight. Thank you very much for coming.
SUSAN KUKUCKA: Thank you so much, Mem and Jodi. I think we’re all, you know, really hyped up
and enthusiastic and wanting to get home and like break out the books whether the kids are in bed or
not but, yes, again, thank you so much for sharing all of that with us and thank you all for sharing your
stories and your questions with us as well. It’s been really insightful for everyone, I think, and
hopefully if you want to learn more, we’ve got some learning notes that we’ve developed. Our
learning and our young people’s team has developed some learning notes you can pick up outside if
you’re interested and we’ve got a copy of our libraries and literacy document there as well. And
please do come back and see our Look! exhibition with some illustrations from Mem’s book in it and
we hope to see you back here again soon. Thank you.
TRANSCRIPT: Deepen the Conversation, with Mem Fox
16 February 2012, State Library of Queensland, Auditorium 1
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