Walkabout Year: Twelve Months in Australia (Volume 1) - Softcover

Pickering, Sam

9780826210432: Walkabout Year: Twelve Months in Australia (Volume 1)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826210430 ISBN 13: 9780826210432

Publisher: University of Missouri, 1995

"Reading Pickering," said Smithsonian, "is like taking a walk with your oldest, wittiest friend." In Walkabout Year, Samuel Pickering, the professor who inspired the movie Dead Poets Society, provides an intimate, engaging chronicle of his family's year in Western Australia. The reader is pulled into Pickering's tight family circle and off on an intriguing trip to another land.

With humor, skill, and insight, Pickering describes the educational system his three children experienced; the family's journeys from one area of the country to another as he lectured; and the people—both academics and nonacademics—he encountered. He compares the flora, fauna, and economics to those in America, and reveals much else about daily life in a new country. As a result, Walkabout Year is part travelogue, part reflection on the differences between two cultures, and part autobiography. As Smithsonian stated, "Pickering has created his own comfortable world, and it is always a pleasure to slip into his company for a time." Readers will feel a strong bond with the family and as if they too have been thoroughly exposed to the intriguing world of Australia.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Samuel F. Pickering is a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut. His unconventional teaching style was one of the inspirations for the character of Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in the film Dead Poets Society. Academically, Pickering specializes in the familiar essay, children's literature, nature writers, and 18th- and 19th-century English literature. He has published many collections of nonfiction personal essays as well as over 200 articles. Pickering and his wife, Vicki, live in a small house in Connecticut with three little rescue dogs and two imaginary grandchildren."Well-behaved children," he writes, "mannered and old-fashioned, kids who genuflect to their elders and use bad language only at the dinner table at home."

From Publishers Weekly:

It's hard to identify the charismatic teacher portrayed by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society with the archly pedantic persona of the author of this account of a sabbatical year in Perth. A university professor of English in Connecticut, Pickering, who inspired that movie character, took his wife and three children to Western Australia, where the children attended local schools. Pickering took advantage of his year abroad by traveling throughout the country, going wherever his movie-related fame took him as a guest speaker. Although Pickering quickly glosses over the content of his lectures, he does describe in precise detail what seems like every plant he saw on the way, including exotic specimens in various parks and botanic gardens, his hobby being to visit local gardens. U.S. readers unfamiliar with Australian flora and fauna will find these passages tough going. Vacations with the whole family to the bush, Ayers Rock, the Great Barrier Reef and other South Pacific travel meccas also become platforms for Pickering's elaborate descriptions of plants and birds, while he tells little more about himself and his family than what flavor ice-cream they ate. As Pickering himself notes, in a typically meandering aside, about his lengthy descriptions: "In truth I usually examine things in order to escape self." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.