My Dad Has Purple Hands by Wayne Dutschke and Paul Cassidy
And I think that's neat (they match his feet!)
Robyn Lewis
My Dad Has Purple Hands by Wayne Dutschke and Paul Cassidy
The party-poopers are alive and well in France, spiritual home of wine – according to Decanter.com, France's alcohol laws mean children aren't learning about their wine heritage, because they aren’t allowed to read about it.
We don’t have such laws in Australia, but up until now there hasn’t been a children’s book on wine and our wine heritage.
Go to any bookstore (bricks and mortar or online), and you will find thousands of kids’ titles on rabbits, horses, ducks and everything from the barnyard – even the obscure breed of Belted Galloways – and about farming, but grape-growing? Nothing.
Farmers (of both sexes) are depicted on their tractors, with their dogs, striding through fields of wheat, pumpkins and beans like triffids, but never a grape in sight.
We were astonished when My Dad Has Purple Hands arrived on our doorstep. Kerry opened it up expecting a family history story from deep in the Barossa, to be confronted with an illustration by graphic designer Paul ‘Pablo’ Cassidy of a young girl sitting on her dad’s knee admiring his big purple hands. “It’s a kids’ book!” she exclaimed.
Luckily, we have a seven-year old in the household. Her dad also has a vineyard, and although he doesn’t tread the grapes himself, at vintage time he’s seen muttering to himself as he strides up and down the rows of vines, selecting bunches to bring home and press to test the sugar levels with the refractometer (an essential item of kitchen lab equipment at that time of year).
Our daughter helps him too, and is getting pretty good at guessing the sugar content by taste, then confirming it squinting through said refractometer. (Many a vineyard dog also has an exquisite palate for ripeness!) So, guess what she read at bedtime that night?
She especially enjoyed hearing about and seeing the pictures of the little girl playing with bunches of grapes while her parents picked, and being in the truck with dad as he drove them to the winery – things that resonate with her farm life.
“What happens next?” she asked (like many small vineyards, we don’t make our own wine onsite). It was a great way of showing her the process that goes on behind the winery doors, where – unlike in the past – children aren’t allowed, from the pressing of the grapes to the eventual bottling of the wines.
As every parent knows, children are adept at finding the flaw with unerring accuracy. “But mum, they forgot to put in the yeast!” Well, I try to explain, it’s not a wine recipe book, it’s a story. “Anyway, perhaps they use wild yeasts” seemed to do the trick.
There’s purple everywhere, not only on their hands, but their feet, which caused great mirth, especially the last scene of the winegrowers and makers (‘dad and his noisy friends’) tasting the new wines at a long table.
It reminded me of a photo a dear Italian friend once showed me, of his daughter and her schoolfriend knee deep in grapes, hair flying – you could hear them squealing with delight. My friend had a famous vineyard, but as good as the wines were, the most pleasure it gave him was from the people the wines introduced him and his family to, and the rich life they led that revolved around wine, art, music and all good things, which of course included children.
With this simple act of allowing children to tread the grapes, they were passing this love onto the next generation. My Dad Has Purple Hands achieves something of the same. It affirms that dad (or mum) isn’t weird, it’s something to be proud of, a family tradition and connection with the land, that’s fine as well.
The book was inspired by a suggestion made by the author’s mother-in-law. As well as entertaining children in wine regions like the Barossa, it reminds us all that much of Australia’s grapegrowing and winemaking is done by families, often with a long connection to the land, and that the bottle you see in the supermarket can represent year-long toil and input from family members young and old.
Would kids who don’t have a farm or vineyard like My Dad Has Purple Hands? With a little explanation I think they would, and it would certainly be great in schools, both city and country, for ages five to seven.
The connection of children to their food is made early, and the more they learn about where it comes from and how it’s made, the more they will respect it. It’s the new, the unknown and forbidden that can lead to excess, not something they have grown up to respect. Their parents might also learn a little more about the mysterious art of winemaking, too!
Thank goodness we don’t have ridiculous laws like France. I can’t imagine there will be one less French alcoholic as a result of preventing children learning about their agricultural history and culture. Bravo to the French authors Sandrine Duclos and Cécile Gallineau who recently published Vignes et Vins: Un Monde a Decouvrir (Vines and Wines: A World to Discover), so French children can learn about their culture in the same way.
It’s inspired me: next vintage, we might have a party – and invite my daughter’s schoolfriends, sacrifice a bin of grapes, and let them jump in them to their hearts’ content. They can drink the fresh grape juice, get sticky hair, throw grapes at each other and no doubt us, feed them to the winedogs, and after that, we’ll rinse them all down and have a barbecue. There might be a few parents who’d enjoy that, too.
The kids will have more fun than at a sugar-fuelled frenzy at Playworld, for sure. To prepare them, we’ll take My Dad Has Purple Hands to school. And the invitation will say: Wear your oldest purple!
My Dad Has Purple Hands by Wayne Dutschke and illustrated by Paul Cassidy is published by Grape Books (Lyndoch, S.A. 2008; hc 32 pp.) It retails for RRP A$25 and can be purchased from DutschkeWines.com
Regions
- Barossa Valley (SA)
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