About the author
Paul Buddee (1913–2002) was a teacher, a headmaster, and also a concert flautist, who conducted the ABC music broadcasts. His first children’s book: The Comical Adventures of Oscar and Olga was published in 1943. He did much sterling work with the Children’s Book Council, being on the organising committee for Children’s Book Week, as well as touring schools to promote reading, and converting classrooms and cloakrooms to libraries in schools. He thought there were not enough accessible and popular books for Australian children, so wrote them himself. There are four books in his Ann Rankin series.
Links and sources
An obituary of Paul Buddee
Many thanks to Amanda Dolby her help with the pictures.
Finding the books
Reasonably easy to find in Australia; rather less so in the UK.
Series
The Anne Rankin series
Ann Rankin and the Boy Who Painted Horses
Ann Rankin and the Great Flood
Ann Rankin and the House on Coolabah Hill
Ann Rankin and the Lost Valley
Bibliography (pony books only)
Ann Rankin and the Boy Who Painted Horses
Rigby, Adelaide, South Australia, 1973
Ann is out riding with the Murra Wanda Pony Club when they find a boy who has obviously been crying. They befriend Jim Read, orphaned the year before. As he gets to know them, he discovers he has a real talent for drawing horses, but he goes too far when he borrows Ann’s horse at night, and ends up with broken ribs. He recovers, and is asked to draw murals for the walls of the Pony Club. However, two boys jealous of him frame him for theft, and his murals are destroyed just before they are due to be unveiled.
Ann Rankin and the Great Flood
Rigby, Adelaide, South Australia, 1973.
The boys of the Murra Wanda Pony Club form an Emergency Search and Rescue Squad, but they deliberately leave out all the girls. Then Chris Hales teams up with Helen El Shariff at the gymkhana, and it’s more than Ann Rankin can stand. Then an express is derailed during a storm, and Chris and Ann have to work side by side to rescue the train passengers as the dam breaks and the flood waters pour down.
Ann Rankin and the House on Coolabah Hill
Rigby, Adelaide, South Australia, 1973.
Ann Rankin’s secret dream is to live in the House on Coolabah Hill. She’s invited to ride there with the owner’s daughter, but while she’s there, the shooting starts. The Shar Resurgence Movement are trying to kidnap the family who live there, the El Shariffs. Ann calls a meetingof the Murra Wanda Pony Club members to try and track down the terrorists.
Ann Rankin and the Lost Valley
Rigby, Adelaide, South Australia, 1973.
