Analysis Of Im Australian Too By Ghosh

Children’s literature is an important way to develop reading ability. I’m Australian Too is a realistic fiction, picture book written by the award-winning children’s author Mem Fox. Illustrated by Ronojoy Ghosh, this book was first published in 2017 by Scholastic Australia. This book has been chosen for its ability to be used across grades K-3 and for its five main features. These features include the theme of the book, which is the celebrating Australia’s multicultural heritage. Another feature is its beautiful aesthetic characteristics. The illustrations provide a visual aid to help create a deeper meaning of the story. The illustrator Ronojoy Ghosh, applies different visual features throughout the book. He uses specific colours to reflect the culture of each country and the landscape of the cities in Australia and demonstrates a mixture of shot distance techniques and interactions. For example, the use of burnt orange to represent the colour of the Australian outback and the uses of a mid-range shot of the Aboriginal and Australian flags on the Sydney Harbour Bridge (Callow, 2016, pp. 9-11).

Each page includes two rhyming words found at the end of the second and fourth line to promote interest and play on words. Repetition is a fourth feature used by the author where she repeats ‘How about you?’ at the end of each four-line rhyming section. Vocabulary is used cleverly by the author to introduce geographical names and locations as well as new terminology such as ‘hail’ ‘strife’ and colloquialisms such as ‘G’day mate!’ These features can be used to support four of Serafini and Moses’ ways of developing a child’s reading ability (2014, p. 465). These ways are: coming to know about the world, vicarious experiences, developing narrative competencies and Language play (Serafini & Moses, 2014, pp.