There are some books which should not

be allowed to go out of print.
I was not merely disappointed but alarmed to discover that "Sun on the Stubble" is no longer in print. The title may not mean much to all of you in Upover and elsewhere but it is a Downunder classic worthy of keeping in print. It was a set text in schools for years and it gives an important insight into life in our Barossa Valley in the earlier part of last century.
The book is an episodic novel I suppose. A book of not quite short stories but short incidents in the life of one young Bruno Untermeyer Gunther - inevitably "Bugsie". He is in the last year of primary school, a year of growing up. It is a year of knowing that the following year he will have to leave home and go away to high school in the city.  His family is, like many actual residents of the Barossa, German in origin. 
That year Bruno helps to trap a possum in the kitchen, his father butchers a pig and none of it gets wasted, and he discovers the middle name of his teacher. It is all part of growing up and learning about himself in relation to the world around him.
And it is told in a quietly humorous fashion. 
The Senior Cat knew the author, Colin Thiele, well. (Yes,  he wrote "Storm Boy" as well.) They did their teacher training together and, for a while, followed similar paths. Colin knew me too and was one of the people who arranged for the poet Judith Wright to nurture me - and no, "mentor" is not the right word there. 
I went teaching and, one glorious day, I took my special reading group to meet him at the teacher training college of which he was then principal. What a morning that was! The children came from largely poor backgrounds with few books. Yes, they liked to read. They had read Sun on the Stubble, Storm Boy and other books. They knew some of his poetry. 
Colin, an incredibly busy man who was in constant pain because of arthritis, gave up a morning for those children. He supplied tea and biscuits and he answered every question they had - and, once they were over their initial shyness, they had a lot. 
And, yet again, at the showgrounds this last week one of my former students reminded me of that day - and was upset that she could not buy a copy to give to a child.
Some books should never be out print.