The Patchwork Bike by Maxine Beneba Clarke

Maxine has published three poetry collections including Carrying the World, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry 2017 and was shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award. She was also named as one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists for 2015. Her critically acclaimed short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the ABIA for Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2015 and the 2015 Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Matt Richell Award for New Writing at the 2015 ABIAs and the 2015 Stella Prize. Maxine’s short fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in numerous publications including Overland, The Age, Meanjin, The Saturday Paper and The Big Issue. Fascinating notes from the Australian author and illustrator are included.Maxine Beneba Clarke is a widely published Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent. Kids will love picking out the familiar objects used in the bike, and parents will sympathize with the “fed-up mum” coping with all that energy. On recycled cardboard with richly hued acrylics and visible brushstrokes, Rudd’s striking illustrations are a joyful celebration of play and children’s imaginations overriding poverty or circumstances. This is street-artist Rudd’s first picture book, and his bold, strong illustrations brilliantly extend the sense of motion, with wide rippling streaks of thick paint flowing across the pages. The shicketty-shakes and winketty-wonks amplify the fun of the language and make the book a joy to read aloud. Clarke’s exuberant poetic text combines simple sentences with evocative onomatopoeia.

In an unnamed village on the edge of a “no-go desert,” a little girl with beautiful cornrows confides in readers about how she and her rowdy brothers spend their time sliding, jumping, and climbing under the “stretching-out sky.” But the best thing is their bike, a cobbled-together creation of found parts, like a dented car seat, tin-can handles, and a bark license plate that keeps falling off. Kids make their own fun wherever they are, and Clarke’s The Patchwork Bike is an ode to this universal truth of childhood.

The Patchwork Bike by Maxine Beneba Clarke