The Gargoyle

Description

He's old, this gargoyle. Very old. Older than me. Older than anyone. He looks tired. If I had a seat, I would give it to him. He shuffles past me and stands near the door and watches the city smushing past. I think I hear him sigh. An echoey, achy, hollow sort of sigh, like the wind when it gusts down lanes and through tunnels and in and out of the big drains that stretch under the city. This is the moving story of an old gargoyle, forced off his rooftop to make way for a new development in a barren cityscape, and the child who encounters him on an overcrowded train. When the gargoyle is ordered off the train, he leaves his suitcase behind. The child opens the case and unleashes the gargoyle's many memories of the city and its inhabitants. When the case crumbles, leaving nothing but a small seed, the child decides to find a place to bring the gargoyle, and the soul of the city, back. A unforgettable story about conservation, ageing and legacies which will leave a forever imprint on your heart.

Zana Fraillon (Author) Zana Fraillon (she/her) was born in Naarm (Melbourne), but spent her early childhood in San Francisco. Her 2016 novel, The Bone Sparrow, won the ABIA Book of the Year for Older Children, the Readings Young Adult Book Prize and the Amnesty CILIP Honour. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the Queensland Literary Awards, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Gold Inky and the CILIP Carnegie Medal. Her book The Lost Soul Atlas won the 2020 Aurealis Award for Best Children's Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2021 Children's Book Council Award for Book of the Year: Older Readers. Her most recent picture book, The Curiosities, illustrated by Phil Lesnie, was a 2021 Aurealis Award winner. Ross Morgan (Illustrator) Ross Morgan is a fine artist and illustrator from Adelaide, South Australia. From an early age, Ross enjoyed exploring the rural environment filled with creatures, abandoned structures and objects of yesteryear. He also practised drawing, painting, and arts and crafts projects at the kitchen table, encouraged by his mother. These early experiences were key in establishing his life-long interest in drawing and painting. He completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the University of South Australia in 2000. Since then, he has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions and running an independent studio practice. Some of Ross's major awards include being selected as a semi-finalist in Doug Moran National Portrait Prize (2014), a three-time finalist in the Kennedy Art Prize (2017, 2018 and 2021) and winner of the John Shaw Neilson Acquisitive Art Prize in 2015. In 2019, Ross won Raising Literacy Australia's Emerging Author and Illustrator Mentoring Project. This led to his first illustrated book, Molly Moores has a House Like Yours, written by Kaliah Tsakalidis and published in 2020. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the SCBWI Australian Picture Book Illustrator Award as an Emerging Illustrator.