Before Reading
Inform students that the novel celebrated its 50th anniversary recently and was published in 1966, the same year the Coorong National Park was established. What was life like in the 1960s?
Ask the students if they have read this book or seen a movie of Storm Boy? What do they know of the story?
Ask the students if they have read this book or seen a movie of Storm Boy? What do they know of the story?
The first chapter
After Reading
After reading this chapter what do you think the environment is like where Storm Boy and his Dad live?
What words would you use to describe it? Write some of these up on the whiteboard wall.
Use the map below to get a sense of location and size of the area.
What words would you use to describe it? Write some of these up on the whiteboard wall.
Use the map below to get a sense of location and size of the area.
Use the opening paragraph to look more closely at the language that the author employs to set the scene. Discuss.
STORM BOY LIVED between the Coorong and the sea. His home was the long, long snout of sandhill and scrub that curves away south-eastwards from the Murray mouth. A wild strip it is, windswept and tussocky, with the flat shallow water of the South Australian Coorong on one side and the endless slam of the Southern Ocean on the other. They call it the Ninety Mile Beach. From thousands of miles round the cold, wet underbelly of the world the waves come sweeping in towards the shore and pitch down in a terrible ruin of white water and spray. All day and all night they tumble and thunder. And when the wind rises it whips the sand up the beach and the white spray darts and writhes in the air like snakes of salt.
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Finally ...
At the end of the chapter what do we learn about Storm Boy's relationship with the birdlife around him? This will be important information for the rest of the story.