Item #102135 Ullagulbra. A Picture-Story Reader. Joyce ABBOTT.
Ullagulbra. A Picture-Story Reader
Ullagulbra. A Picture-Story Reader
Ullagulbra. A Picture-Story Reader

Ullagulbra. A Picture-Story Reader

Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1959.

Quarto, [32] pages with 60 half-page black and monochrome illustrations (either blue or yellow) with the continuous story-line printed beneath each one.

Monochrome pictorial card covers a little unevenly sunned and lightly marked, with minor (mainly surface) loss to silverfish; a very good copy.

Not a bad book, if you like a bad book. When accident-prone Nama, a friend of Ullagulbra and his mate Tewarra, is bitten by a brown snake while out playing, hunting and gathering, the boys quickly kill the reptile and carry the young girl back to camp. 'The witch doctor rubbed some of his magic ointment into the bite. They knew she would get better.' Meanwhile, mother put the snake 'on the hot coals to be cooked with the other food'. It is no surprise that this first and only edition is scarce, while its near-contemporary from the same publisher, Axel Poignant's 'Piccaninny Walkabout. A Story of Two Aboriginal Children' (1957, with 69 illustrations from photographs taken at Milingimbi by the author) was the Best Picture Book of the Year in the Children's Book of the Year Competition, 1957-8, was into its seventh impression by 1964, and was reissued in the 1970s under the title 'Bush Walkabout'.

Item #102135

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