Storm Boy and Jodie's Journey

I don't knock Steve Irwin or Peter Brock. They were the gladiators and charoteers of modernity. Their colosseums and circi maximi were the TVs. But name one gladiator or charioteer of Rome? Yet Ovid and Horace live on in their works. Hopefully children will be reading Colin Thiele's works for many years. Authors of my childhood - Nan Chauncy (Tiger in the Bush) and Margaret Paice (Hill's End?) or was that Ivan Southall? impressed me then as they did when I taught their works. The Wiggles and other children's TV versus a book. Each has a place. But more power to the almost anonymity to the author.
I loved teaching the prose and emotion of Storm Boy: "The shadows moved up from the sandhills as the sun went down. Hideaway Tom and I sat by the fire. The sun went down and the stars came out as clear and pure as ice. And at nine o'clock Mr Percival died." My other favourite was Jodie's Journey, the story of an arthritis sufferer horse riding girl, Jodie in the 1983 Adelaide Hills bushfires. I would read the stories and I knew from the silence in the room that children as well as I were holding back tears as the father discovers the blackened burnt out wheelchair on the edge of the dam ... and then he hears something. It is only a story. But doesn't it reveal so much of our shared humanity. Humanity? What is that.
Thank you Colin Thiele for the inspiration that you gave to young and old alike.