Authors Sally Rippin and Gregg Dreise celebrate Australian Reading Hour with unique storytelling event

By ERIN MODARO

Australian Reading Hour has hit Sydney with a splash at the Sydney Opera House last week, as some of Australia’s leading authors came together to celebrate books and reading.

City Hub spoke with Australia’s highest-selling female author Sally Rippin, and author, songwriter and artist Gregg Dreise, who is a descendant of the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi people of south-west Queensland and north-west New South Wales.

If there is one thing that Rippin and Dreise can celebrate in common, it’s that they both grew up around books and reading.

“I grew up in a household of books,” Rippin said. “But it’s not the case for everybody.

“Sometimes we need to remember that books can be found in bookstores, but also libraries, school libraries, public libraries, so everyone can access stories,” she said. 

Dreise said that he was also lucky enough to have access to books in his childhood.

“It’s something that I’m fortunate enough to [have] grown up with, especially being an Indigenous boy from Southwest Queensland where I think access to books does get restricted,” he explained. 

Kids and adults across Australia join in for reading hour

Thousands of students tuned in for one of the Australian Reading Hour’s 200+ events on Thursday last week. The day is geared at improving literacy and encouraging passion for reading, and has been around since the National Year of Reading in 2012.

Rippin and Dreise, along with author Andrew McDonald, celebrated the Australian Reading Hour with a unique storytelling event livestreamed across the country, called the Magic of Storytelling. The event involved the authors using their creativity and storytelling talent to come up with an improvised tale, which was illustrated by three artists in real time.

“The thing that’s quite interesting about this is we all tell stories in very different ways,” Rippin said. 

“Our plan is to break down a story so that the kids are aware that you know, stories have that orientation, that that resolution, and then and then that series of events in the middle,” Dreise added. 

As for what the authors are reading at the moment, Rippin recommended picking up Amy Thunig’s heartfelt memoir titled Tell Me Again.

“I think that’s a really important thing about reading is to understand what other people’s experiences are like, particularly when we can often make judgments from people’s backgrounds or what their history might be,” she said.

Dreise said his must read is Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, a non-fiction reconsidering of Australian colonial myths.

He described the book as one that “all Australian adults should know”.

Rippin said she was “thrilled and excited to be invited” to work at the Sydney Opera House for the reading hour.

“It’s super exciting” Dreise said. “To celebrate two things… that we’re all different… and that we’re all so similar.”

The Australian Reading Hour took place on Thursday March 9.