People of the Dream Time

This is a great little read - at only 88 pages, and with a generous supply of illustrations it is only an hour and a half of amusement, but that makes it all the more worthwhile, in my opinion.

These are mostly the origin stories of animals and objects, taken from an oral history as short folk stories. The artworks are worth special mention as they are accurate and excellent, and they are the reason I initially picked up this book (for a dollar at a local fund raising sale for something or other).

The story titles go some way to giving more clues to the stories, here are a few:

The Dog and the Kangaroo The starting sentence: “When the kangaroo and the dog were men, they met on a track in the bush.”The Milky WayThe Jabiru and the Crow Which begins “In the days when the Jabiru and the Crow were men, the Jabiru sent a message to the Crow...” and ends “This is why the Jabiru and the Crow are never seen together.”The Origin of Mount NimbuwahLuloo, the Blue Fish, and Nullandi, the MoonHow the Red Dust Came to BlowHow Fire BeganWhy the Tribes Speak Different LanguagesThe Blue CraneThe Starfish

There are some really good ones - if I had to pick a favourite it would be The Winjarning Brothers. Google tells me that there is more to these brothers than the short story here, but it was a good one, and the illustrations were particularly good.
Some stories have a moral or a lesson, although as alluded to above most stories tells of the origin of something - the moon, the dog, a particular mountain, fire, the starfish etc.

4 stars.