Mem Fox and Judy Horacek take you on a wildly wonderful adventure in their rollicking search for the green sheep.
About
This is where my picture book career began. Although I’d always wanted to make children’s books, and had even worked on some ideas, I had never taken it very far. But one day Mem Fox sent me an email, saying that she had been looking around my website and had fallen in love with a small etching I had done of a green sheep. She said that the sheep had to be in a children’s book. So I suggested that we could do it together and we did. It was a wildly exciting time, with ideas of different sheep shooting back and forth between the two of us by phone, fax and email, until we came up with our ideal cast. Some of the sheep that were rejected ended up on the hillside of sheep near the end of the book (along with others like the Ned Kelly* sheep and the Carmen Miranda** sheep that weren’t ever seriously considered for the main part of the book).
*Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger from the late 1800s. He’s the sheep with the metal helmet, holding a bunch of flowers. The flowers are poetic licence.
** Carmen Miranda was an American filmstar – a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, dancer, Broadway actress and film star who was active from the late 1920s to early 1950s.
Awards
Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year 2005 – Early Childhoood;
Speech Pathology Australia Award 2005 – Young Children category
Availability
Available in hardcover, board book and puzzle set.
Editions
Penguin/Viking in Australia ISBN 0-670-04149-1 (hardback, boardbook and large format)
Penguin Group / Woongjin ISBN 978-89-01-11291-6 (Smart English Project)
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in USA ISBN 978-0-15-206704-5 (hardback and boardbook)
Scribble Kids Books UK ISBN 978-1-91-334835-9 (paperback)
In Spanish – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN 978-0-547-39694-1 (hardback and boardbook)
In Kyrgyz, Russian & English (trilingual) – Sonoon Jer, Kyrgyzstan ISBN 978-9967-25-426-8
In Korean – Youngko Publishing, Korea ISBN 89-8389-376-1
In Hebrew – Modan Publishing, Israel ISBN 00-0200-5149-21
In Maori – Huia Publishers, New Zealand ISBN 978-1-77550-305-7
In Vietnamese & English – ISBN 978-604-56-4584-0
In Portuguese – Saber e Ler ISBN 978-8566428452
In Simplified Chinese – Hu Bei Shao Nian Er Tong Hardback ISBN 978-7-5560-8039-7, Paperback ISBN 978-7-5560-7130-2
In Pitjantjatjara – ISBN 978-1-9225-9229-3
In Kriol – ISBN 978-1-9225-9224-8
20th anniversary edition – ISBN 9-781761-347832
Other covers
