What a delightful, beautiful book and story by one of Australia's foremost authors for children! Koala Lou is a very loveable little koala, and her mother loves her very much, but as more and more koalas are born into her family, Koala Lou's mother becomes too busy to stop and say "Koala Lou, I DO LOVE YOU!" very often. Now, she must come up with a plan to be able to hear those words once again.
The story is simple in its vocabulary and storytelling, but very engaging. Mem Fox states on her web page, http://www.memfox.com/, about how this story came into being:
"Like mothers and fathers and teachers, authors should not have favourites. I can’t help it: Koala Lou is my personal favourite, probably because it’s about sibling rivalry and not winning an important competition which means it’s about me. I’m the oldest of three girls and on top of that I suffered a severe blow when Possum Magic did not win the annual Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Awards in 1984—it came second. Both these themes are explored in the book.
But that’s not how it began. It was Olivia Newton-John who started it all. As well as being a singer and film-star she’d opened up Koala Blue, a store in Los Angeles, in which she was selling Australiana as well her line of clothing. She wrote and asked if I would write a book about a koala named Blue which she would market and sell through her shop, along with a toy koala of the same name. I told her, as I tell everyone, that I can’t write to order—the story has to come from my own life, but I would think about it. That was 1983. (As it turned out, Koala Blue was copyrighted.) So it was back to the drawing board: Koala Sue? No! Koala Koo? No! Koala Pooh? No, no, no! Koala Lou? A girl?? YES!! A gruelling two years and 49 drafts later, the final 585 words of Koala Lou were published, with achingly beautiful pictures by Pamela Lofts. It remains a best seller to this day. I think it’s been reprinted 33 times.
The illustrator, Pamela Lofts, lives in Alice Springs were she has developed a series of books with Aboriginal storytellers and children based on their traditional stories. She has also illustrated a number of picture books, including the classic Koala Lou.
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The pictures in this book are incredible, bright, and accompany the story extremely well. Kids will find the pictures to be a good partner in telling the story. When Koala Lou is sitting out on a tree limb feeling sorry for herself, you can't help but feel sympathy for her. As she starts working on her plan to be in the Bush Olympics, you and see all of the tremendous effort that she goes to in order to prepare. When the day of the Olympics arrives, the pictures showing all of the Australian animals in party hats is fabulous.
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This is a happy and hopeful book that carries the theme of working toward what you want in life. It would be a real pleasure to share this book with students in a library or classroom setting. Also, it would be fun to connect this book to a mini-Olympics type of activity, with various "sporting events" for the kids to participate in. This will open up a good discussion as well about working toward a goal, and what happens if we don't always "win" the prize, but we still did our very best. There will be some interesting comments from kids on this subject, I am sure.
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Publishers Weekly - Fox's book sends out a positive message to children about the wonders of being human: Koala Lou celebrates the eternal love of a mother for her child without the sentimentality of Robert Munsch's Love You Forever.
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