A Handful of Sand

Anne here, talking today about another of our series #5 Aussie topic books, A Handful of Sand. It's about indigenous land rights — how the Gurindji people got their traditional land back.

As the back blurb says: It started as a struggle for pay and turned into a struggle for land rights. It took nine long years but finally the Gurindji got their land back. Read how they did it.

The book was written by Chris Malakar and, as always, illustrated by Moira Hanrahan. I have to say, I think Moira's drawings are getting better and better and this book contains some great examples.

Here's a drawing of the Gurindji stockmen mustering cattle. It was hard, dusty work and they got terrible pay for it.


The book is also one of our new pale green cover readers — it's longer than most of our books, but still has the same limited word count as the Green level 4 books — 300 unique words. (For an explanation of how we arrive at our levels, go here)

The Gurindji walk-off was a turning point in Australian indigenous history. If you want to read more about it, there's some information here.

There's a very moving you-tube here that gives you a brief look at some of the main events and some of the people involved.

There's a brilliant song here about it by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly.

And if you'd like to hear the book read aloud, there's an audio file here.

You can also order the book.