Diversity

Book Review

Meet Lina by Sally Rippen

(This is a book review for Middle Years school students aged about ten to fourteen years of age. I have written the review using the language and style that I would write for Year Levels 5 to 8 in a school library blog)

When did your family first come to Australia and where did they come from? Lina  (Carmelina) Gattuso’s parents originally came from Italy and arrived in Melbourne not very long after the end of the Second World War. In Australia today we celebrate the cultural diversity of our nation and our people but when thousands of migrants came here in the 1940s and 1950s the Australians living here at that time were not always so welcoming.

Meet Lina is the first book in one of the next episodes of the Our Australian Girls series  http://www.ouraustraliangirl.com.au/. The Year is 1956 and Lina is trying desperately to fit into her new school, St Brigid’s Ladies College, a rather posh and expensive school in Ivanhoe, Melbourne, that she is only able to afford to go to because she has won a scholarship. Lina’s parents are Italian, speak broken English and work at rather menial jobs. The extended family includes her Nonna (grandmother), Uncle Zio, little brother Enzo and older brothers, Pierino  and Bruno. The family somehow all fit in to small terrace cottage situated on a laneway off Lygon Street, Carlton. This is in huge contrast to her best friend Mary Doveton. Mary lives in a large designer house just around the corner from St. Brigid's with her mother (a former model) and businessman father (who regularly travels overseas). Lina through various means (including a few white lies … tsk, tsk) manages to keep her two worlds apart. However, her nemesis, Sarah Buttersworth, will soon have her worlds colliding (or will she?). Lina has a burning ambition to be a journalist but her idea to write a magazine with her friend Mary will, after a number of twists and turns, mean she will soon have to work with Sarah who thinks parmesan cheese smells like vomit (which it does but it is delicious to eat) and that the suburb of Carlton is unsanitary and a slum.     

This is a delightful story written in very easy to read language about the struggles of a first generation Italian girl to be part of a new Australia. We catch glimpses of her warm home life and how hard the whole family works to make a success of their adopted country. We see Lina torn between love for her family and shame for their differences. Will Lina learn to embrace her diversity?  

Rippen, S. (2013). Meet Lina. Melbourne : Puffin Books (Penguin Group). 

Just who is the Accidental Librarian?

This poem was not written by me but it could be about me.

Warning

by Jenny Joseph

With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.