There are two parts to the narrative in 'Tucker'. In conventional picture book structure, each spread consists of a painting on the right hand page, and typeset text on the left hand page. The main painting, however, incorporates handwritten first person text. The author clearly intends this to be the primary text, so that his personal history is inscribed on a single field in both verbal and visual images. The two renderings of the word text are not identical. The typeset rendering on the facing page adds explanations - sometimes in a sentence or a word, occasionally in a paragraph or two. The expanded typeset rendering is clearly the result of editorial advice, and intended to clarify points in the narrative that may not have otherwise been understood by readers unfamiliar with the context of the time and place the author is describing.
The narrative gaps between typeset and handwritten text invite a discussion among older readers of the storytelling process and the shifting nature of both memory and the audience being addressed. It is not that one version is 'right' and the other 'wrong': they have different purposes. There are multiple ways in which this complex narrative can be read. As the title employs a familiar Indigenous word for food, Tucker includes detailed information on the gathering, hunting for and preparation of wild foods in the past.
Although what has been termed the 'naive' style of line and composition may seem to position Tucker safely among works of nostalgia for a simpler Australian past, it is also a significant political document. Given the critical status of water flows in the Murray-Darling river system, and the danger to animal, plant and human life along its full extent from the inland to the ocean, this book is an important historical record of the health of that river system in the past. It is therefore an inspiration for all readers committed to joining Indigenous Australians in the struggle to restore the river system to health.
1995 CBCA Book of the Year Awards - Eve Pownall Award for Information Books - shortlisted
Author's cultural heritage - Afghan, Ngarrindjeri
Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander Resource
