I don't go to church much anymore, but Methodist values still wind me up and send me ticking into my daily life.

I was the most Australian child ever in the world, even though my home was in Africa.

The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading.

I don't go to church much anymore, but Methodist values still wind me up and send me ticking into my daily life.

If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent- and every adult caring for a child-read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in our lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.

My Mother was a very wild Australian woman. When we were in Africa she could kill a snake with one blow from a crow bar, which she kept at the back door.

As everyone knows, nothing is sweeter than tiny baby fingers and chubby baby toes.