Blog Archive

2 March 2026

The Pamela Allen Exhibition

Pamela Allen turned 90 last year. For those who have ever had to entertain children or read bedtime stories, you may be familiar with Pamela Allen’s work. She has published over 50 books for children. The Mr McGee stories are well known, but there are many titles you would no doubt recognise if you started to look through her work.

Allen was born in New Zealand, but like any successful New Zealander who steps foot on Australian soil, we tend to claim her as our own. As evidence of this, she has won the Children’s Book Council of Australia Award six times and in 2024 she was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia on Australia Day.

There is an exhibition based on her work at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney right now. It’s free and it will continue running all the way until 18 July 2027. Victoria asked me whether I would go with her to see it over the weekend. The exhibition is set up for children to enjoy and offers places where parents can read Pamela Allen’s books with their children. The books are scattered around the exhibition. It you’re a parent with young children in Sydney, it might be a nice (and free!) outing for you and your children.

I thought I’d provide a few pictures we took while we there. The first is me at the sign leading into the exhibition:

The exhibition also features original illustrations from Pamela Allens books.

In some instances you can read notes written between Allen and her publishers in the margins of the illustrations

And for those who love Pamela Allen, you will find old favourites. In the picture, below, I’m pointing at that little duck because he was a favourite with our sons when they were little. His name is Alexander, and in Alexander’s Outing Alexander does not listen to his mother or follow his siblings and ends up falling down a deep hole in Hyde Park and has to be rescued. We always thought our first son was a bit like Alexander. When we had our second son we gave him the name Alexander as a middle name, based on this book, which wasn’t quite fair because it was our first son who earned it, but he had already been named!

Apart from having books all around the exhibition which parents can read with their children, there is also a wall featuring all of Allen’s books, which Victoria is standing next to in the picture below.

Finally, here is a bit of silliness. As we were leaving the exhibition we noticed this magpie from one of Allen’s books swooping down. I posed with it. It looks silly, but these birds can be quite frightening in spring when they aggressively defend their nesting areas.

And a last one, again with my personal favourite, Alexander, who did not look and did not listen!

- bikerbuddy

3 March 2026

Puppies!

I was going to post this photo today because it is seven years this week since we welcomed Lucy, our dog, home. It is a photograph of Lucy with her siblings when they were only two months old. Lucy appears across this website as part of our website icon: the dog reading the book. In this photo, she is the little cutie, the furthest one to the left, with the brown patches over her eyes.

There is a lot of terrible shit happening in the world right now, so sharing this image seemed even more important. Puppies are nice. Maybe one of the only things that everyone can agree upon – a bedrock foundation for our humanity, perhaps – is that puppies are nice (except possibly Donald Trump, who has never owned a dog and is one of the most evil, stupid, uncaring fuckers who has ever lived).

For the rest of us:

• Puppies are truth, truth is puppies,— that is all
• Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

- bikerbuddy

22 March 2026

Update to the Contributions page

Yesterday I noticed there had been several people looking at the Contributions page for this website. Given the number of expressions of interest we’ve received over several months (not all enquiries lead to contributions) I thought I had better update the page. The page was written early in the life of the website before anyone actually contributed and I never really believed anyone would. Recently I realised how inadequate the page was. For every expression of interest we received I was having to respond, providing extra information the page didn’t contain or making clarifications.

When I noticed those views yesterday, I decided it was finally time to fix it. I rewrote the page, including a clearer step-by-step process, and added information that I was continually repeating in emails. For example, I’ve had to explain to numerous people who contact me and tell me to put a book on our front page, that I didn’t do this for potential first-time reviewers because there is an inevitable rate of attrition between intention and results. (I’ve just been told that I write like a robot and that should have simply said that not everyone who expresses an interest to write a review actually submits one in the end, for whatever reason).

Thanks to everyone who has enquired about this process, and I hope my emails have been somewhat readable. And, as always, thanks to everyone who has been generous enough to write a review for the Reading Project!

- bikerbuddy