Beyond the Dusk

by Victor Kelleher, Gregory Rogers (Illustrator)

Absorbed in the book she's reading with her grandson, Meg comes face to face with a picture that plunges her back into the past. Suddenly, it's as if she is a young girl surrounded by the sounds and smells of the bush, hurrying through the dusk towards the first unsettling moments of contact with the creature. Suggested primary, intermediate.

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

Victor Kelleher is an Australian author. Victor was born in London and moved to Africa with his parents, at the age of fifteen. He spent the next twenty years travelling and studying in Africa, before moving to New Zealand. Kelleher received a teaching degree in Africa and has taught in Africa, New Zealand and Australia. While in New Zealand, he began writing part time, prompted by homesickness for Africa. He moved to Australia in 1976, with his South African wife, Allison, and taught at the University of New England, in Armidale, New South Wales, before moving to Sydney to write full time. Many of the books he has written have been based on his childhood and his travellings in Africa.

Kelleher has won many awards for his books, such as the Australian Children's Book Award.

Reviews

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Australian version of ‘cry wolf’, here Meg tells ‘tales’ because she thinks her life is very boring, yet one day on her way home she gets frightened by something that she can’t really explain. First thoughts is that it is a Tazzy tiger, then a bunyip, but then many years later, she is ‘told’ through an artist’ rendering that it is an extinct marsupial lion. A suspenseful ‘short’ story with ‘chapters’, and might be a nice read on Halloween but by a ‘reader’ as the language and length of story much harder for a learner, even though it ‘looks’ like a picture book. Illustrations by Gregory Rogers are B&W drawings to keep to the suspense, though are sporadically throughout rather than as a picture book.

[Emily Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning tale based in the Australian bush with beautiful imagery provided by Gregory Rogers. Victor Kelleher constantly amazes me with his magical realism writing, having read him as both a teenager and an adult.