SURFING IN THE DARK

Surfing in the Dark tells the story of Matt's life from the inside. The diagnosis at age five. Theschoolyard. The years of being told what he wouldn't be able to do. The footy under his arm, the boardsunder his feet, the world titles that came later. The book is written for children aged seven to twelve, butthe story is the same one Matt tells corporate keynote audiences across the Asia-Pacific. Theframeworks are different. The truth is the same. Limits set by other people are not the same as limitsthat are real.

The book is written by award-winning Australian author John Dickson and illustrated by Phillip Bunting.Bunting's illustrations carry the book's emotional register — playful where the story allows, seriouswhere it doesn't, never patronising. The Books and Publishing review called the result "a sensitive andprecise narrative... vital for all children, whether they have vision impairments or not." It sits on Premier'sReading Lists in every state of Australia and is widely used in primary school libraries as part of thecurriculum.

Each book is printed with braille alongside the conventional text and illustrations — the publishing firstthat makes Surfing in the Dark unlike any other children's book in Australia. The standard edition usesUV-printed braille, designed primarily as sensory exposure for sighted children encountering braille forthe first time. Embossed copies, with raised braille readable by fluent braille readers, are available onrequest from Vision Australia at the time of purchase. Both editions ship from Matt directly with freeshipping Australia-wide.

When Berbay Books and Vision Australia set out to publish Surfing in the Dark, the technology tocombine braille, text and illustrations in a single edition did not exist in Australia. They built it. The resultis the first book ever published in Australia — and one of the first in the world — to integrate all threemediums on the same page.

Most children in Australia have never encountered braille. Most adults have not either. Surfing in theDark changes that. A child who reads this book runs their fingers across the page and feels language astexture for the first time. A blind sibling, parent, or classmate can sit alongside them and read the samepage. The book itself does the work of inclusion before anyone says a word about it.

That is why Surfing in the Dark sits on Premier's Reading Lists in every state of Australia. It is whyprimary school libraries across the country stock it. And it is why the book's reach has extended farbeyond the blind and low-vision community it was originally written for — into every classroom, everylibrary, every household where a child is learning what other people read with their fingers.