Margaret Wild & Ron Brooks' "The Dream of the Thylacine" teachers' review

Brief description and distinctive features

The authors

The creators of The Dream of the Thylacine, Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks, have previously collaborated on texts that explore nature and sustainability. You might have encountered their other picture book, Fox, which is a powerful portrait of the relationship between animals and their environment.

Margaret Wild is one of Australia’s highly regarded writers for young people. She was born in South Africa and came to Australia in 1972. She has been a newspaper and magazine journalist, and a book editor in children’s publishing. Wild now writes full-time, and her books, which are published around the world, have won numerous awards.

Ron Brooks is the illustrator of the text. He has written, designed and illustrated picture books for over thirty years, and has won several awards.

Allen and Unwin have an excellent set of Teachers’ Notes on The Dream of the Thylacine - download the PDF here.

Brief description of The Dream of the Thylacine

In The Dream of the Thylacine, Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks tell the story of a captive thylacine that longs for its freedom in the ‘wild lands.’ This is its dream which echoes the title. The story is told from the point of view of the thylacine and opens with the animal prowling, raging and growling in its cage of concrete and twisted wire. The story moves between the natural landscape of the tiger’s dreams and the despair of its caged existence.

The Dream of the Thylacine combines printed text and images to represent the thylacine’s story. Margaret Wild’s words are laid over a background that Ron Brooks has created using old photographs and film stills of the last surviving captive animals. The stills show the thylacine confined in a small concrete and wire enclosure, anxiously pacing.

Distinctive features of The Dream of the Thylacine

• All parts of the text combine to create the story - from the front and back covers, inside covers and each double page.
• The written text is compelling; in only 130 words Wild’s poetry tells a moving story of this now-extinct Australian animal.
• Wild uses first-person pronouns and inverted syntax —‘Trapped am I’, ‘Ailing am I’ and ‘I am tooth and claw’—to communicate the thylacine’s despair.
• The images by Ron Brooks are a combination of different styles including evocative paintings where he captures the thylacine in different landscapes.

Ways to use The Dream of the Thylacine in the classroom

Focus ideas for a wider unit of work

The Dream of the Thylacine would suit a wider unit of work which uses the textual concept of representation as a core concept to explore a range of texts. The unifying idea could be “Nature in Peril” or if you want to be more provocative in your class exploration, a focus idea like “Our World is Burning” would be powerful.

The aim would be to explore how various forms, modes, features and language choices position the reader/viewer to consider the ways specific ideas are represented on your chosen topic. A selection of a range of different forms would best suit this unit so students can see the richness of representation.

Other texts could include:

• Environmental websites like WWF, Greenpeace
• ABS Television series: first episode of Ninagaloo Nyinggulu the 2023 television documentary series written and narrated by Tim Winton.
• Speeches by Greta Thunberg, Severn Suzuki, Tim Winton
• A first nations perspective would be very valuable – there is the delightful verse novel Bindi by Kirli Saunders (see Five Senses blog August 25 2023) and also the ETA’s Issue 3 2024 mETAphor.
• The compelling Young Dark Emu which is in picture book form.
• Students could also read Tim Winton’s Blueback and view the 2023 film (see Five Senses blog July 18 2024)
• Read the backstory from Blueback’s director Robert Connolly and his insights about the impact of films like Blueback
• Share The Golden Mole, a glorious new text by Katherine Rundell which is a truly splendid exploration of the wonders of the animal kingdom.

A third unifying focus could be: Picture Books Have Grown Up. This unit could explore picture books as a genre and how popular they have become in the world of young adult publishing. Students could explore The Dream of the Thylacine and consider two others as a class and collaboratively explore another two texts. The focus could be how these texts have become powerful and compelling texts for adolescents to explore important ideas about how we interact with the world around us. A digital essay or feature article would suit an individual or collaborative task.

Picture books to suit this focus could include:

• The Rabbits by Shaun Tan and John Marsden
• Spark by Adam Wallace and Andrew Plant
• Azaria by Maree Coote
• Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan
• Cicada by Shaun Tan
• Maralinga, the Anangu Story – collaboration with Yalata and Oak Valley communities and Christobel Mattingley

Suggested “ways into the unit”:

Class or group discussion through verbal questions, or a poster, or a PowerPoint of key questions accompanied by images which represent situations like animals at risk, the ivory trade, supertrawlersand fishing, deforestation.

Some questions to pose and provoke initial discussion:

• Do we care about animals and plants being destroyed?
• Should we care?
• Is a loss of one species a loss for all of us?
• How can species’ extinction really affect our life in (your suburb or town)
• Share a YouTube clip or website e.g. the World Worldlife Fund's website, or this article from The Guardian

What do we know about the thylacine?

Group brainstorm on what students know about the thylacine or group “power” research activity e.g. you have 60 seconds to use your preferred search engine to discover 5 points about the thylacine.

Build up a class fact sheet on the thylacine.

Share this brief clip which is rare footage of the last thylacine in Hobart Zoo

Exploring the text

Consider the best way to initially share the story: perhaps in small groups or as a full class. 

Students need time to explore the power of the images as well as the poignancy of the poetry. 

In groups, students could record their initial observations, and after some close examination of the  text, the teacher could share the points below with the class and ask for any other features:

Open each point with:

Did you notice?

OR

The composers have deliberately chosen this feature as part of their representation of the thylacine’s plight to engage our empathy and understanding of the fragility of our world:

• Brooks has chosen sepia colour as part of his representation and this colour that is characteristic of old photographs. Today, digital technology can be used to re-create sepia-toned images that have an aged appearance. The sepia colour reinforces the idea that these events are from the past.
• On the book’s endpapers (decorative inside covers), Brooks has drawn wire mesh over the landscape. The wire of a cage could represent a barrier to the landscape through which the wild thylacine would naturally roam.
• These haunting images contrast with the double-page paintings that represent the thylacine’s dreams of freedom. The colours are vibrant and the landscape portrayed is a contrast to the images of captivity.
• The text is broken into four distinct sections. The first three sections represent the progressive stages of the captive thylacine’s decline. The final section reveals its demise. Wild’s poetry appears on three pages in the first three sections, with carefully chosen words such as ‘trapped’, ‘ailing’ and ‘shadow’ used to describe the state of the thylacine and its defeat.
• The three poems are written using a similar pattern. Each opens with the predicament of the tiger: ‘Trapped am I’, ‘Ailing am I’, ‘Shadow am I’. The second line is the same in all three poems: a prepositional phrase reinforcing the message that the thylacine is trapped ‘in a cage of twisty wire, cold concrete’.
• In each poem, the middle stanza is just three large, bold words, each on a separate line. With three words, this stanza communicates how the thylacine is feeling.
• The third stanza of each poem opens with a similar word structure (or syntax): ‘Know you not that …’ This leads into a heartfelt plea to recognize what the thylacine cannot do now that it is a captive. Did you notice that in the third poem this word pattern changes to ‘Know they not that …’?
• On each of the three pages of text in the earlier sections, different typefaces and font sizes are used to emphasise sections of the poems and separate the three stanzas. Only in the fourth, final section is a handwritten font used, creating a gentler feeling. The final section also uses fewer words and ends with the strong and clear ‘Dreaming am I’.
• The written text in The Dream of the Thylacine is compelling. Wild’s lyrical prose is minimal but powerfully communicates the tragedy of the thylacine, the animal’s despair and the natural landscape’s beauty.
• Wild’s use of first-person pronouns gives the narrative a strong sense of ‘voice’; it is the voice of the thylacine speaking directly to readers to evoke an emotional response of pity and sorrow. Each time the thylacine speaks, it describes its incarceration in the ‘cage of twisty wire, cold concrete’.

In Stage 4 it is important to build the skills of sophisticated visual literacy including the appropriate metalanguage.

Share this analysis as a model for analysing visual texts:

The pages depicting the tiger standing ‘in glory at the edge of the cliff’ feature the strong orange and yellow of the rockface with bold red outlines of the rocks. It is like a wide-angle camera shot from a film, and Brooks’ landscape is expansive and stunning. These strong colours help draw our eye to the proud tiger who is the salient image on this page. In visual texts, we use the term ‘salience’ to refer to the most prominent feature or striking image that draws our attention, and this is usually the main element of the text. Brooks uses acrylic paints to add texture and a luminosity to his images. His powerful colours suggest the energy of the earth and the interaction of the wild thylacine with its natural environment. These bright and colourful pages are in stark and poignant contrast to the reality of the thylacine who is ‘trapped’ and ‘ailing’ and is a ‘shadow’ of itself.

Divide the class into small groups and allocate a section of the book to each group.

Each group is to create a presentation where specific features of Wild’s poetry and Brooks’ images are explained as examples of representation of their ideas.

Groups can share their findings with the class and ask for contributions.

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

Text requirements: The Dream of the Thylacine is a picture book (multimodal text) by an Australian author and fulfils the requirements to give students experience of a range of types of texts inclusive of short prose, visual, spoken, multimodal and digital texts.
Looking for more classroom texts for Stage 4 students? Browse our Year 7 texts and study guides and Year 8 texts and study guides at Five Senses Education.

Concepts could include Representation, Perspective and Context, and Theme

Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content

Reading, viewing and listening to texts

A student uses a range of personal, creative and critical strategies to read texts that are complex in their ideas and construction EN4-RVL-01

• Revisit texts to develop a clear understanding of the themes, ideas and attitudes they express
• Explore the main ideas and thematic concerns posed by a text for meaning
• Engage with the ways texts contain layers of meaning, or multiple meanings
• Identify and understand that relevant prior knowledge and personal experience enables and enhances understanding when reading, viewing or listening to texts
• Explain personal responses to characters, situations and issues in texts, recognising the role of written, oral or visual language in influencing these personal responses
• Identifying and articulating how the opinions, motivations and choices of characters in fiction evoke empathy, sympathy, antipathy and identification.
• Explain how the use of language forms and features in texts might create multiple meanings
• Read texts selected to challenge thinking, develop interest and promote enjoyment, to prompt a personal response
• Understand the ways reading helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world
• Reflect on how reading, viewing and listening to texts has informed learning
• Reflect on how an understanding of texts can be enhanced through re-reading and close study
• Discuss and reflect on the value of reading for personal growth and cultural awareness
• Reflect on how reading promotes a broad and balanced understanding of the world and enables students to explore universal issues
• Reflect on own experiences of reading by sharing what was enjoyed, discussing challenges to strengthen an understanding of the value of reading

Understanding and responding to texts A

A student analyses how meaning is created through the use of and response to language forms, features and structures EN4-URA-01

• Explore how language and text are acts of representation that range from objective to subjective and may offer layers of literal or implied meanings, and apply this understanding in own texts
• Use appropriate metalanguage to describe how meaning is constructed through linguistic and stylistic elements in texts
• Understand how language forms, features and structures, in a variety of texts, vary according to context, purpose and audience, and demonstrate this understanding through written, spoken, visual and multimodal responses
• Analyse how figurative language and devices can represent ideas, thoughts and feelings to communicate meaning Recognise how texts engage and position the audience to perceive events, characters and ideas using narrative voice and focalisers, tense, sequencing and intrusion, and apply this understanding in own texts
• Understand how choice of first, second and third-person voice can establish different relationships between creator and audience, and experiment with changes in point of view in own texts
• Understand narrative conventions, such as setting, plot and sub-plot, and how they are used to represent events and personally engage the reader, viewer or listener with ideas and values in texts, and apply this understanding in own texts
• Examine how narratives can depict personal and collective identities, values and experiences

Understanding and responding to texts B

A student examines and explains how texts represent ideas, experiences and values EN4-URB-01

• Understand how perspectives are shaped by language and text
• Explore how the perspectives of audiences shape engagement with, and response to, texts
• Examine how elements of personal and social contexts can inform the perspective and purpose of texts and influence creative decisions

(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