Neridah McMullin (text), and Michael Tomkins (illustrator), Shearer, Walker Books Australia, September 2023, 32 pp., RRP $26.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781760653163
If you have ever found yourself singing, The ringer looked around and was beaten by a blow, but you couldn’t say exactly what a ringer might be or what kind of ‘blow’ it was that beat him, then this is the book for you.
This delightful little book dramatises the true story of Jack Howe, an extraordinary shearer of sheep from 1880’s until 1901 when he retired. He was the world champion sheep shearer with hand-blades until 1892 when mechanised hand pieces were introduced. Then he became world champion with the new technology as well.
Neridah McMullin’s brisk and witty descriptions of Jack Howe are printed in bold black lettering on double-page full colour illustrations of the shearer wrangling his cloudy sheep from their woolly covers. The large illustrations give Michael Tomkins space to add amusing details to the scenes (is that a sheep’s ear about to be clipped off? What is that mouse doing with scrap of wool?) and to explore the characters of the shearing communities in the 1880s.
It is a more engagingly raucous, informal and even chaotic scenario than Tom Roberts’ famous image of heroic figures in his ‘Shearing the Rams’ of 1890. And when Jack Howe, the ringer of ringers, ripped the sleeves off his shirt, the legend is he became responsible for another icon of a past Australian manhood, the cotton singlet.
The book closes with a small biography of Jack Howe and a glossary of shearing-shed terms from the 1880s. This book is a fun way to touch upon a moment in Australian history.
Suitable for reading aloud or reading alone, with children from 5 to 8 years old.
Reviewed by Kevin Brophy
