Naked Bunyip Dancing (review)

Christmas vacation is over and it's back to school in the sweltering heat for this class of Australian sixth-graders. They have a new teacher who has long hair, a beard, and a fondness for Bob Dylan and poetry, but they prove that they have fondnesses of their own as they organize a school concert to showcase their various talents—rap, dance, poetry, and punk performance art, to name a few highlights. Using a by-now-familiar format of free-verse poetry that alternates among the voices of various students and a more collective class voice, Herrick manages to capture the sweet earnestness and unassuming wit of sixth-graders as they experiment with their identities, experience the agony and ecstasy of first like-like, and test the limits of their hip vegetarian teacher's sense of humor. The teacher is in fact a bit of a cliché, but he's an awfully nice one, and the kids respond to his warmth by participating wholeheartedly in the class community that he encourages. Occasional scrawled black-and-white line art bring the students to inky, angular life. Despite a few tugs and snags, it's a joyous year for this creative group of kids; American readers will need to adjust to the Aussie-isms (including the title, since the mythical bunyip is little known outside of Australia), but they'll enjoy joining the class for their event-filled year.