How Frogmouth Found Her Home
This book is about the journey of a Tawny Frogmouth looking for her place in the world. She tries to find her home in many places, and along the way, she helps others who are also struggling to discover where they fit in. Finally, she becomes a light in the sky that shows all the animals their way home.
A creation story (which Frogmouth is) tells of how the world was made (e.g. how emus lost their wings). A teaching story, on the other hand, is a story that contains a message about how to live in the world. Creation stories can be teaching stories also, and usually are, but teaching stories do not have to be creation stories. Thus, Crow and the Waterhole contains a message about self-esteem, The Two-Hearted Numbat about balance, and Caterpillar and Butterfly about conquering your fears. So these are all teaching stories, but they are not creation stories in the sense of telling how the world was made (e.g. how crows became black).
Frogmouth, like my other stories, is a tale formed and informed by my culture as an Aboriginal person. This particular story was, I believe, given to me by the Frogmouths to tell, which is why it is dedicated to them – that is my way of giving the story back. My stories are not ‘old’ stories in the sense of being retellings of stories told for thousands of years, but they are part of that storytelling tradition.
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