Lisa Fuller's "Ghost Bird" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

Distinctive features of Ghost Bird:

• A thriller for Stage 5 about a missing First Nations teenager, a coming-of-age story, and complicated relationships
• Explores First Nations customs, beliefs, spirituality and dreaming stories, kinship and community with the permission of the community
• The Author’s Note explains that the terrifying creatures in the novel are ones that are part of First Nations beliefs but are not named and have had some characteristics fictionalised
• Examines racism and relationships in a small country town in Queensland
• Investigates the bonds and the tensions between sisters, mothers and daughters
• The frank and fearless language may offend some people who have never been in a high school playground
• Contains nightmares and cliff-hanger horrors that could make for a sleepless night

Pre reading

Read Cara Shipp’s Listening from the Heart: Rewriting the Teaching of English with First Nations Voices (2023 AATE 150pp) to explore better ways to engage with First Nations People and their stories, their history and culture and to understand the protocols and appropriate terminology to use when reading and studying texts by First Nation authors. This warm, wise and generous book will be a huge help in the classroom.

Ways to use Ghost Bird in the classroom

Watch Lisa Fuller on West Words to introduce the narrative and to see and enjoy the warmth of the author. Lisa reads the opening of the novel which she says is her favourite section. Discuss what is established in this opening section. Foreshadow to students that later in this unit they will be asked to share their favourite part of the novel and why it is their favourite.

Record aspects of First Nations culture that are revealed in the story

Ask students in groups to find examples of First Nations’ language, culture and practice in the novel.   Look for the use of language, references to dreaming stories, attitudes to Elders like Nan and Pop, and ‘mob’ relationships.  Lisa Fuller also makes considerable use of figurative language to represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, identity and experience in Ghost Bird. Metaphors (including personification) and similes jump off the page. You will find many described in Teaching notes on Ghost Bird from the University of Queensland Press (pages 3-4) and they would make a good start for classroom discussion.

Develop a characterisation grid and a hot seat

The main characters are interconnected in this novel. In pairs ask students to develop a graphic organiser that shows the relationships in the First Nations mobs and the wider community and share with the class. From the graphic ask the class to select 6 characters to Hot Seat e.g.  Stacey, Sam, Rhi, Nan, Laney, Pop and May.  Divide the class into 6 groups with each group to have a student to represent one character while the rest of groups prepare questions. They need to use the information they have gathered from the novel on ONE of the six characters. Then place a chair in front of the class. Each character takes a turn on the hot seat. In turn each class group asks questions of the person on the hot seat and the person on the hot seat answers as the selected character.

Make a book trailer

Create a trailer that would encourage students to read Ghost Bird. Use an appropriate sound track, images and text. Look at the book trailer on YouTube and see how you could improve it with a stronger voice over script, more engaging graphics and your own sound track.

Develop an extended response

“In what ways does Lisa Fuller represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity and experience in her novel Ghost Bird?” In your response make detailed reference to the text. 

Relevant details in relation to the new English 7-10 syllabus

Text requirements: Ghost Bird is a novel by Australian author, Lisa Fuller who is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, a Wuilli Wuilli woman from Eidsvold, Queensland. Ghost Bird contains intercultural and diverse experiences and cultural, social and gender perspectives, including from popular and youth cultures. 

Concepts could include Representation • Perspective • Narrative • Genre.

Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content

Understanding and responding to texts A | EN5-URA-01

• Analyse how engaging, dynamic and complex characters are constructed in texts using language features and structures, and use these features and structures in own texts
• Explore how characters in texts can be lifelike constructions with whom audiences establish intellectual and emotional connections, and can be perceived to reflect, challenge or subvert particular values and attitudes
• Analyse how characters can serve structural roles in narrative, such as foils and drivers of action and conflict, and manipulate these ideas when composing own texts
• Analyse how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors use figurative language and devices to represent culture, identity and experience
• Analysing how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, and authors from a range of cultural backgrounds, choose to represent their identities and experiences through texts.

Understanding and responding to texts B | EN5-URB-01

• Analyse how elements of an author’s personal, cultural and political contexts can shape their perspectives and representation of ideas, including form and purpose
• Engaging with a selection of narratives, poetry and artworks by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, and discussing how words and images are used to reflect connections to Country/Place. 

Reading, viewing and listening to texts | EN5-RVL-01

• Engage in sustained and varied reading that presents increasingly diverse and complex perspectives and experiences, including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and respond in a range of ways, including through extended written responses

(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023)

Connecting texts