Shake a Leg

This award-winning picture book celebrates the diversity of peoples and traditions in Australia.

When three boys go for a pizza, they discover that although the owner can speak Italian, he is actually from an indigenous Australian background. With his family, his everyday life is 21st-century, city-bound and multicultural, while their time off is spent celebrating the rich diversity of their traditional life, and this spills into everything they do. He tells the boys legends, teaches them some of his language, and his family paint the boys’ bodies so that they can take part in indigenous dances, learning about the people who were in their country long before other settlers came.

A revelatory look at the richness of Australian life.