Trace Balla is a ‘story catcher’ who creates graphic novels and children’s books about connecting with Country and community. Her favourite place has always been up a tree! Red bush apple, mango, bunya, cedar, wattle, manna gum and cherry ballart trees (its fruit is a tasty treat). Trees are places for crafting, sharing stories, sketching, stretching, sleeping, dancing, leaning, dangling and hanging out.
Treeshape is a wonderfully colourful illustrated memoir telling the story of Trace growing up, her love of art and drawing and her connection with the Australian environment: clouds, creeks and cockatoos; red earth, sandpipers and ringtail possums.
Trace remembers the people she met along the way. There’s lots of camping, planting, protesting, cooking, swimming, yarning, weaving and drawing while spending time with Indigenous and other communities.
Trace remembers existing quietly together, in harmony with trees and ‘having a place to feel a sense of family and belonging’.
Reviewed by Mark Parry
Age Guide 10+
This review was supported by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trace Balla is a much-loved Australian children’s book author, illustrator and writer of song lyrics who lives on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. She has won the CBCA Book of the Year Award, the Readings Children’s Book Prize, the Wilderness Society’s Environment Award for Children’s Literature, a Comic Arts Awards of Australia Bronze Ledger, and an Honour Award for the inaugural SCBWI Australian Picture Book Illustrator Awards. She has also been shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Speech Pathology Book of the Year Awards (twice), Adelaide Festival Awards for Children’s Literature, and ALIA Graphic’s Notable Australian Graphsic Novel Award.
Trace’s stories explore themes of connection to Country and community, nature, friendship, gratitude, grief and human rights. She also loves to inspire others, of all ages and from all walks of life, through her talks and workshops, which explore creativity and caring for the planet. Trace does freelance illustration work, from logos to murals, and has a bookshelf ever filling with her nature journals and other reflections.
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