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Meet... Banjo Paterson
A picture book series about the extraordinary men and women who have shaped Australia's history, including the bush poet Banjo Paterson. Banjo Paterson is one of Australia’s most loved poets. This is the story of how he came to write his legendary ballads "The Man from Snowy River" and "Waltzing Matilda". From Ned Kelly to Saint Mary MacKillop; Captain Cook to Banjo Paterson, the Meet ... series of picture books tells the exciting stories of the men and women who have shaped Australia's history.
- GenresPicture Books
32 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2015
About the author
Kristin Weidenbach
9 books5 followersKristin Weidenbach writes creative non-fiction focused on Australian history. She is the author of Tom the Outback Mailman, which is a picture book for junior primary readers based on her Australian bestseller, Mailman of the Birdsville Track: the Story of Tom Kruse.
She is the author of Rock Star: the Story of Reg Sprigg, and has written for Outback magazine and Australian Geographic.
Kristin is a PhD immunologist who specialised in forensic science and worked at Stanford University, USA, before she switched to a writing career.
She is the author of Rock Star: the Story of Reg Sprigg, and has written for Outback magazine and Australian Geographic.
Kristin is a PhD immunologist who specialised in forensic science and worked at Stanford University, USA, before she switched to a writing career.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 14, 2023
Meet … Banjo Paterson is one of the twelve titles in Random House Australia’s Meet series. The series is described by the publisher as ‘a picture book series about the extraordinary men and women who have shaped Australia’s history’. Those featured include Sidney Nolan, Nellie Melba, Douglas Mawson and Nancy Bird Walton.
Author Kristin Weidenbach shapes her text for Meet … Banjo Paterson around Paterson’s formative years in country New South Wales and the influence of his early bush experiences on his literary career. The text focuses on four poems: ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, ‘Mulga Bill’s Bicycle’, ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’; with a selected stanza from each poem quoted.
Artist James Gulliver Hancock uses a restrained colour palette for his picture book illustrations—a range of browns and greys meld with olive, mauve and reddish shading. The colours evoke both the sepia images of Paterson’s era and the tones of the Australian bush. Common 19th century items—saddle bags, stock whips, billy tea, and britches with braces—feature in the illustrations, along with Australian fauna and flora.
Even without the full text of the four chosen poems, Paterson’s storylines are cleverly woven into the book’s words and illustrations. In the section that introduces ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, for example, Weidenbach’s text refers to Paterson sitting in his ‘dingy office’ dreaming of drovers, and Hancock’s illustration shows Paterson, in a central frame, slumped at his desk. The picture then expands across the page into an image of densely packed buildings disgorging soot and smoke and noise into an urban scene. Text and pictures combine effectively to convey the essence of this unquoted stanza from Paterson’s ‘Clancy’ poem:
Meet … Banjo Paterson invites young readers to enter into Paterson’s world and the inspirations behind his poems. A detailed timeline at the end of the book traces his career at further depth, and Random House’s teachers’ notes (https://cdn2.penguin.com.au/content/r...) provide suggestions for classroom activities.
My copy of this book was provided by Reading Time, the review journal of The Children’s Book Council of Australia. A version of my review appeared in Reading Time on 17 July 2015: https://readingtime.com.au/meet-banjo...
Author Kristin Weidenbach shapes her text for Meet … Banjo Paterson around Paterson’s formative years in country New South Wales and the influence of his early bush experiences on his literary career. The text focuses on four poems: ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, ‘Mulga Bill’s Bicycle’, ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’; with a selected stanza from each poem quoted.
Artist James Gulliver Hancock uses a restrained colour palette for his picture book illustrations—a range of browns and greys meld with olive, mauve and reddish shading. The colours evoke both the sepia images of Paterson’s era and the tones of the Australian bush. Common 19th century items—saddle bags, stock whips, billy tea, and britches with braces—feature in the illustrations, along with Australian fauna and flora.
Even without the full text of the four chosen poems, Paterson’s storylines are cleverly woven into the book’s words and illustrations. In the section that introduces ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, for example, Weidenbach’s text refers to Paterson sitting in his ‘dingy office’ dreaming of drovers, and Hancock’s illustration shows Paterson, in a central frame, slumped at his desk. The picture then expands across the page into an image of densely packed buildings disgorging soot and smoke and noise into an urban scene. Text and pictures combine effectively to convey the essence of this unquoted stanza from Paterson’s ‘Clancy’ poem:
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.
Meet … Banjo Paterson invites young readers to enter into Paterson’s world and the inspirations behind his poems. A detailed timeline at the end of the book traces his career at further depth, and Random House’s teachers’ notes (https://cdn2.penguin.com.au/content/r...) provide suggestions for classroom activities.
My copy of this book was provided by Reading Time, the review journal of The Children’s Book Council of Australia. A version of my review appeared in Reading Time on 17 July 2015: https://readingtime.com.au/meet-banjo...
November 14, 2022
Kristin Weidenbach has written this story in a way children will easily understand and enjoy.
Excerpts from Banjo Patersons' poems at the different stages of his life bring the journey alive.
The poetry shows how being bored working in the city after growing up in the outback led him to write down experiences and his humourous style had the ditty on everyone's tongue.
Barty loved horses and the bush. The smells and the life stayed with him when he worked in the city. Readers can see how he longed to be in the bush, and the characters he created from memories of bushmen, 'Clancy', 'Mulga Bill', and 'The Man from Snowy River', were vividly portrayed.
When he wrote 'Waltzing Matilda' he was a household name and the tune put to his words made him an icon.
This series of Meet Australian icons are extremely good. At the back of each of these books, there is a Timeline that helps the reader see the life described.
Excerpts from Banjo Patersons' poems at the different stages of his life bring the journey alive.
The poetry shows how being bored working in the city after growing up in the outback led him to write down experiences and his humourous style had the ditty on everyone's tongue.
Barty loved horses and the bush. The smells and the life stayed with him when he worked in the city. Readers can see how he longed to be in the bush, and the characters he created from memories of bushmen, 'Clancy', 'Mulga Bill', and 'The Man from Snowy River', were vividly portrayed.
When he wrote 'Waltzing Matilda' he was a household name and the tune put to his words made him an icon.
This series of Meet Australian icons are extremely good. At the back of each of these books, there is a Timeline that helps the reader see the life described.
August 8, 2015
I bought this for my son as a way of introducing him to Banjo, so he could "meet" the man who wrote the poems I read to him at night. I thought it was rather fantastic :-), a light an fun way to share information on Banjo's life.
June 7, 2015
Well written, lots of interesting vocabulary to explore too. Could hook kids in with the poems.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews