doris pilkington follow the rabbit proof fence

The author switched back and forth between using Aboriginal words and English words, but never really takes the time to explain what the Aboriginal words meant. There is no plot development, no character was just a jumbled mess. The book was so jumbled that I was sure it was written by a child. It took half of the 160 pages to even get to the story of the girls, and then it raced through their escape and return home. It was unorganized and confusing and I had a very hard time getting into it. The knew there was a rabbit proof fence that would lead them back home, and if they found that, they would get back to their parents. They were 100s of miles away from their families, but they decided to escape. The reason they were taken was because they were 'half caste' (their fathers were white), and they were being forced to be 'made white'. This is the true story of three young Aboriginal girls who were taken from their families and put in a Native Settlement in Australia. This was a jaw-dropping achievement and an amazing survival story and I would have loved to see it expressed in a more creative way. The story is told in easy, step by step stages but there is no spark that allows the reader to feel part of the adventure.

The author is actually the daughter of one of these young girls and it becomes very obvious that she isn’t a word-smith. Unfortunately I found the book suffered from less than stellar writing. The fact that these young girls, aged 14, 11 and 8 made it back to their families is astounding. As there were no major roads for the girls to follow, the fence became their guideline. The Rabbit-Proof Fence is in actuality the State Barrier Fence of Western Australia built between 19 to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests out of Western Australian pastoral areas it is 3,256 km in length. The term “school” is used loosely here, these girls were basically being removed from their families and being trained to be servants to the whites. Based on a true event, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence is story of three young Aboriginal girls who, in the 1930s, cross the harsh Australian desert on foot to return to their home after being gathered up and being placed in a settlement school to be assimilated.

Doris pilkington follow the rabbit proof fence