Dear Mr Marsden

I dialed your number by mistake a few weeks ago (four weeks ago to be exact). It just happened to be a bit of a co-incidence, but although I’d thought to tell you about it, life got in the way. Until today, when another strange co-incidence indicated that I should relay the story for your amusement…

By way of background, I am a teacher librarian in a secondary boys’ school and promote the Tomorrow series as one I discovered, and enjoyed, when my son brought it home as his year 8 text in 1997. As a family, every December we’d eagerly await publication of the next in the series and frequently the new arrival would have two or three bookmarks as none of us could wait for the others to finish.

So, four weeks ago, when I walked into the video shop and discovered that TWTWB had been released to DVD, there was no contest - it was in my backpack when I arrived home that night.

My dad was in hospital at the time, recovering from heart surgery and my Tassie dwelling uncle had left a message enquiring about his brother. So TWTWB was waiting for me when, returning his call, I dialed 05 instead of 06 and heard your voice.

A good story don’t you think? One I have been telling my classes this past week as I introduce them to a selection of my favorite books in their Wider Reading program.

But today, explaining to the boys the usefulness of encyclopedias (this time in an Information Literacy class), I happened to open the volume in my hand to a random page and guess who was on the bottom right corner of the page!? It was not the John Marsden born in 1950, but it did seem to indicate that I should tell you my tale. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Best Wishes

Judith Wakeman (Marcellin College Librarian)

PS – Loved the movie and eagerly anticipating release of the soundtrack.