Kathryn's Inbox

  View this post on Instagram Bright & colourful flowerpots at Glenelg. #publicart #glenelg #adelaide #southaustralia A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathryns_inbox) on Sep 8, 2020 at 3:00am PDT

  Another great clip from the Curiosity Show. As well as being an excellent resource for children, there's a bit of a brain teaser in there for adults.

Stella has always known that she was adopted, and she's cool with that. What she's not cool with, however, is her Dad's gambling addiction, which has forced the family to move out of their home and into Fairyland, a dilapidated old caravan park. A few days before the move, she receives a letter from her birth mother and suddenly, she finds herself wanting to know more about her biological family ... How to Grow a Family Tree packs a huge range of topics and issues into its 327 pages. There's adoption, addiction, mental illness, rape, good old fashioned communication issues and, of course, one of Stella's oldest male friends is completely in love with her, only she can't see that. The difficulty with all of these story lines is that not one of them are fleshed out as much as they had the potential to be. I felt as though this one was trying so hard to tick all of the right boxes that it missed its potential. On the other hand, the book has some lovely themes abo

From the moment I learned that beloved Australian author Paul Jennings had released a memoir I was in two minds. On the one hand, this, this was the author who had created Round the Twist , one of the most memorable Australian Television series of all time--and it comes complete with one very catchy theme song. ( Discover the theme song here. ) On the other, I had two equally solid reasons to pass. The first was that much of the publicity focused on the fact that Jennings had abusive father, and those kinds of discussions--though important--can be very difficult for me to read about. The second was that my initial introduction to Paul Jennings' books wasn't that great. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jennings was best known for releasing volumes of short stories with titles like Unreal! -- books that belonged squarely in the domain of 'lets make reading cool for kids.' Which, you know, is fine except when I discovered Paul Jennings at age ten, I was already an avid r

  View this post on Instagram Beautiful vertical garden and mural at a cafe on The Parade, Norwood #verticalgarden #mural #publicart #theparade #norwood #adelaide #southaustralia A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathryns_inbox) on Sep 13, 2020 at 5:45am PDT

A short fable for older readers and adults, Jonathan Livingston Seagull tells the story of the titular character whose goal is to fly. To really fly, not just to do well, but to soar. The only problem is that the rest of his flock disagree. For them, flying is just a means to find food, and what Jonathan is considered strange and, eventually, suspicious. However, Jonathan believes that any seagull can do more than just fly, and even his expulsion from the flock does not deter his quest to soar. And once he has perfected that, all that is left is to teach those willing to learn, just how to soar ... This was a short, beautifully written fable about the importance of following your dreams, the need to be true to oneself and the personal satisfaction that can be gained from doing so, and to keep doing so, despite setbacks, despite the expectations of others and despite a lack of understanding from others. Many of the pages are beautifully illustrated with photographs of seagulls, many of

  This week, I am sharing another classic Disney clip for Friday Funnies. In this one, Mickey Mouse tries to board a train, which has a no dog's rule. I guess they've never heard of assistance dogs, and the whole thing seems kind of strange given that Mickey is a mouse and the conductor is clearly a cat. (Then again, Mickey and the conductor are anthropomorphic, and Pluto is not. Still, I wonder how Goofy would get on ...) Anyway, Mickey participates in a bout of cruelty to animals by stuffing Pluto inside a suitcase and the conductor gets rather angry about it ...

Forming part of the recent Australia Reads promotion, The Greatest Hit is a ripping little short story about a young, first year uni student who encounters her first love, the girl that she hurt back in high school. When Tessa was fourteen, she recorded a song on YouTube that went viral. Even now, four years later, she's still known as the girl from that video. Which would be fine except that one, it's completely embarrassing and two, what people don't know is that the song, I Love Him was originally I Love Her and was written for Charlie, a girl from her new school who she had slowly fallen in love with. Going back and forth between the past and the present, the reader experiences Tessa's heartbreak at seeing her first love again, and just how her age, and a lack of confidence led to her making a decision that broke Charlie's heart. But, maybe, now that she's older and wiser, she might just have the opportunity to make things right. This was an enjoyable read

Kyle and Kimberley are the perfect teenage couple. Or so it seems. Or, at least, that it what Kyle would like to think, but at the evening of their high school graduation things start to unravel. Upset, confused and just wanting to get away from everything, Kyle jumps into his car. Kyle loses control of the vehicle ... and eight weeks later, he wakes with a brain injury and the devastating news that Kimberley is dead. As he starts the long duel processes of grieving for Kimberley and his own recovery, Kyle meets Marley, a girl who knows exactly what Kyle is going through. But nothing is quite as it seems in this twisty story of love, loss and accepting the things that cannot be change ... This story starts off with one hell of an emotional ride. During the chapters that focus on Kyle's recovery, I felt a little confused--something about the pacing felt a little off, and so did a few other key details. However, these were soon explained by a twist halfway through the novel, that, w

  View this post on Instagram Today on my way home, I stopped to tie my laces and discovered these mushrooms growing in a crack between the pavement and the stairs that lead to the Supreme Court. #adelaide #kingwilliamstreet #southaustralia A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathryns_inbox) on Sep 18, 2020 at 2:52am PDT

  This week, another fun clip from the Curiosity Show. 

I have probably mentioned Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on this blog a time or two before, and if so, I would have relayed an anecdote from my high school years about a teacher who often had a copy of this book with him. (That said, however, memory is often unreliable. I may have only seen him once or twice with the book but it was enough to make an impression on me.) Anyway, the teacher's name was Mr Carlsson. He was a very well liked and well-respected teacher at our school, and on a more personal note, he helped me get my first article published when I was just seventeen years old and in my final year of high school. I was sad to hear that Mr Carlsson had passed away recently, and I found myself, once again, driven to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (I had first read this book in 2013, when I was going through a slightly belated quarter life crisis. By then, the book had taken on a strange, almost symbolic and deeply personal quality, a reminder that

  View this post on Instagram Rotunda at Glenelg #glenelg #adelaide #southaustralia A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathryns_inbox) on Sep 19, 2020 at 7:13am PDT

  This week, I'm sharing a classic clip from The Flintstones. It's amazing how well this holds up--it certainly gave me some laughs. Although these days, The Flintstones is usually thought of as a children's cartoon, it actually started life as a Prime Time television series, that satirised The Honeymooners, a popular sitcom of the day. Fred Flintstone was a parody of Jackie Gleeson. In later years, The Flintstones was endlessly repeated during children's viewing slots on television, earning it a reputation as being for children, rather than a prime time comedy suitable for a wider audience. 

Books have a tendency to find their way into my home by various ways and means. There are books that are purchased brand new, after a trip to the bookshop, books that I am desperate to read and that I order online because they're either out of print in Australia or hard to come by, books that I receive for review, books that are gifted or loaned to me, and books that I find in secondhand bookshops or little street libraries. Then there are books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I was browsing in Savers one day when I stumbled across well, several copies. This isn't unusual for my neighbourhood. It seems as though every now and again, everyone decides to buy and read, and then get rid of, the same YA novel. It happened with Twilight, it happened with Before I Die and more than likely all of those film tie-in copies of Simon Vs the Homo-Sapien Agenda and To All the Boys I've Loved Before will go the same way soon, if they haven't already. Anyway, in the particular

Who would have thought that a novel about the end of the world, published in 2014 would prove to be so prophetic? Station Eleven tells the story of how a deadly flu sweeps the globe, eventually killing ninety-nine percent of the world's population. Okay, we may not be that bad off this time around (I hope) but the story certainly shares some similarities with what happened when COVID-19 became global. Anyway, in Station Eleven tells stories across a few different timelines--there's Jeevan based in Toronto, who is studying to be a paramedic, who gallantly leaps out of his seat at the theatre and rushes to the stage to save Arthur, an actor who is one of the early victims of the virus. Then there is Kirsten, a child actor in the same play as Arthur who, twenty years later is part of a travelling group of actors and musicians who perform Shakespeare in various small towns across North America. Unsurprisingly, Miranda is a creative woman married to a selfish actor who eventually l

  View this post on Instagram Spotted in Grenfell Street #streetart #publicart #adelaide #southaustralia A post shared by Kathryn White (@kathryns_inbox) on Sep 29, 2020 at 1:06am PDT