Allan Baillie is an Australian author who has included many concepts that incorporate universal themes and an Asian perspective. Many of his books are set in the South East Asian region dealing with historical, fictional and human relationships. They are excellent resources for the fostering the learning of Asia through all subject areas. These books can be utilised across all syllabus strands (from Science, Literature, HSIE (History), English and Art).

(comments about the books  are by the author himself)

 

 

Little Brother started with cold words in a Thai refugee camp in 1980 from a Cambodian boy, Vithy. I had asked him if did he have a family, and he said:   ‘Family? Now or before? Before I have a father, a mother, four brothers and three sisters. Now I have a brother and a sister.’ I heard many tragedy stories  in other Thai camps and went home – to write an adult novel about the Kampuchea – and failed. Who would read a story set in a place that involved  starvation, torture, brutally killing, and little kids being trained to kill  kids...Then I looked at Vithy’s story.and I thought that I could tell the Kampuchea story through the eyes of a child. If you step back a little, the truth and the tragedy will still be there.                        

[little_brother.jpg]              

China Coin started when I was stalled in a backblocks China village with a Children’s Book Council of Australia – CBCA – delegation in 1987. I thought it would be nice to put a Chinese-Australian in a village and stir the pot.  So in April 1989 I took my family in China, my Chinese wife, Agnes, as an interpreter – she has Cantonese and Mandarin – and daughter, Lynne – an Australian-Chinese teenager – and son, Peter.  We went to two villages near Guangzhou and Chengdu but something in Tiananmen was happening as we moved. The family left for home from Beijing but I was still working four days later. On Sunday, June 4, 1989, I woke in my hotel near Tiananmen to shouting and firing.   From that moment China Coin was changed to the story of Tiananmen Massacre.
               

Treasure Hunters had changed as I fiddled. I started with ship loaded with Chinese diggers’ gold, sinking on the way to Canton but I stumbled onto the treasure ship Flor de la Mar, loaded from Malacca in 1511. A story of treachery, greed, battling, tragedy and I had been Malacca.Then the Indonesian troops attacked people in Timor – and Aceh, Irian Jaya – that linked with the savagery of the Portuguese at Malacca in 1511.  

  

 

Songman was pushed by some stupid politicians who said there was no civilization in Australia before Sydney Town.

I went Yirrkala in Arnhem Land where the Yolngu people gave me excellent help that  I could not expect.  These Aborigines were trading with Makassar before Captain Cook.

So I wen to Ujung Pandang, Sulawesi to follow my Yolngu’s boy. I even sailed a boat which was similar to the Makassar boats in that period.   

 
        

Saving Abbie was created by a paper orangutan.  When I was writing Wreck I put an orangutan, Abbie, in an abandoned freighter, slowing sinking in a storm but Abbie wouldn’t allow herself to be put away.

So I had to take Abbie to Tanjung Puting, Borneo, and that was absolutely magnificent! Cruise up and down Sekonyer River; sleep in a bungalow with orangutans around me, kissed by one.       Nearly all the orangutans in Saving Abbie I know well from that trip.  But they are still losing their jungle bit by bit.  (AETA has a Journal dedicated to this novel)

 
Boss01 by baillie_allan.

The Boss was the reason for me being in Beijing when the Tiananmen Massacre happened. 

On  my first trip I’d seen the small boys wearing generals’ hats in Tiananmen Square and I thought that a boy living in old Beijing maybe would make a good picture book.

I was working on this in those  final days of the students demonstrating at Tiananmen.

The finished story was not Beijing but in the first village I visited , away from Tiananmen Square.

 

Krakatoa Lighthouse began with a small part of a document of Krakatoa where a Javanese lighthouse keeper got a light working in his ruined lighthouse after his family had been killed. That man I wanted to know about.  This led to a trip there.

 Agnes and I went to Krakatoa   – a quiet, beautiful place – found where the lighthouse was in Anjer. We walked over the area of old Batavia but we couldn’t find the name of that Javanese keeper.

 

 

Rebel! Illustrated by Di Wu. A general marches into a Burmese school and starts to order people about, but he has a surprise waiting. Australia, US.
Awards:Short listed CBCA Picture Book of the Year, American Bookseller's Pick of the Lists

 

 

A Taste of Cockroach
These short stories begin in the Himalayas and end with am ill-starred romance on Mars. In between are adventures down the rivers af Cambodia and Laos, battle with bulls in Australian country towns, encounters with French agents, freelance photographers in a war, handbag-snatchers in Naples, rebel thong-flinger in Rangoon, a hunted girl in Afghanistan, and more.  

Allan's latest book  ( a great book if you are doing Volcanoes or Natural Diasters in Science)