Olympic Tales IV
Australia’s children’s writers have, from time to time, turned their creative minds to tales of the Olympic Games. Sarah Brennan tells the story of a marathon-winning rodent in The Tale of Run Run Rat, while Sally Odgers features the animal mascots from the 2000 Sydney Games in the picture books Milly and the Stopped Watch, Olly and Kookoo, and Syd and the Bad Example.
Harking back to the 1956 Melbourne Games, Libby Gleeson’s Ray’s Olympics has schoolboy Ray getting the better of some locals who will be watching the events on their new-fangled television set.
Dyan Blacklock and Gordon Winch take their readers back to the beginning of Olympic history. In Blacklock’s Pankation, runaway Nic encounters all manner of dangers en route to Olympia. In Matilda Mudpuddle Back in Time, Winch’s adventurous protagonist travels to an Athens where olive leaf crowns cap the victors’ heads.
Books for adults have also featured Olympic Games’ plots. Shane Maloney’s Nice Try draws the Games into a crime novel, as do Jon Cleary’s Five Ring Circus and J. R. Carroll’s Hard Yards. Matthew Condon’s The Trout Opera spans the twentieth century, culminating in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, while David Richard Stevens (using the pseudonym 'D'ettut') takes the Sydney Games into another realm in the science fiction novel Vampire Cities.
To see the full range of AustLit works relating to the Olympics, simply type the words ‘olympic games’ into the Quick Search box at the top of AustLit’s home page. You’ll discover films, plays, autobiographies and more.