Award-winning Kurrajong Heights author and artist Jasmine Seymour, says her latest book, Open Your Heart To Country, is about the joy of learning.
"Learning about Indigenous people, learning about country, learning about languages," she said. "It is incredible the amount of knowledge we are locked out of when we don't open our hearts."
Open Your Heart To Country is a First Nations children's picture book, released by Magabala Books. It is written in Dharug and English.
It offers a moving account of healing and belonging from a First Nations perspective.
Ms Seymour's collage illustrations place readers among nature. Paired with soft, lilting text, the book not only resonates with young children, but shares a deeper message with older readers.
"Dharug language has been spoken by people who have lived across the Sydney basic for thousands of years," Ms Seymour said. "Because no two languages ever follow exactly the same sentence patterns, and all cultures express concepts and ides in their own way, we learn a lot about how different societies think when we listen to and learn new languages."
In 2020, Ms Seymour won the Children's Book Council of Australia's (CBCA) New Illustrator Award for her book Baby Business. She also won the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Children's Literature for Cooee Mittigar, and the CBCA's Notable Picture Book of the Year for Baby Business.
Ms Seymour said that Open Your Heart To Country was also about generosity.
"It is about healing and the generosity of country that happens when you listen to it," she said. "Even in the most damaged places hope lives in renewal and in memory. That is Indigenous resilience and that is the culture that influences this book."
The book was commissioned as part of the online Storytime program by the Australian Library and Information Association, support by funding from the Australian Government Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand fund.
