Alice's Shoe
Age range 4+
A country child, Alice ran barefoot. On smooth waxed floorboards, over dusty clay in the yard, through icy water in the creek…she refused to wear shoes. After losing her sight and hearing through illness, Alice slowly made her way back to life and became the first deafblind person in Australia to be educated. Her hated shoe was Alice’s first connection with the world of language as she learnt to sign.
Alice’s Shoe tells the childhood story of Alice Betteridge, who became known as ‘Australia’s Helen Keller’.
Julie Thorndyke is a graduate of the University of Sydney Master of Creative Writing program, Sydney writer Julie Thorndyke’s two collections of tanka poetry, Rick Rack and Carving Granite, were published by Ginninderra Press. Editor of Eucalypt: a tanka journal since 2017, Julie also writes fiction and other poetry forms. Her debut novel for adults, Mrs Rickaby’s Lullaby, was published in 2019.
Jennifer Harrison lives in Adelaide with her son Nathaniel. Since leaving university she has worked as a graphic designer, commercial artist and art director. Her illustrations have been commissioned for book covers, magazines and packaging for overseas and local markets and she has exhibited in Adelaide Galleries.
