Australian Children's Literature

  With Associate Professor Kristine Moruzi (Deakin University), I will be teaching a course on Children's Literature at the Australian and New Zealand Rare Books School at the State Library of Victoria on 8th-9th February 2024. Applications and payment are due by 5th January. We'd love to share an amazing selection of rare and valuable children's books and periodicals with you.  Course description:  Beginning with the earliest examples of children’s reading, such as the horn book in the medieval period, and concluding with the manuscript materials of contemporary illustrators including Shaun Tan, this course will traverse the material history of children’s literature.    Major areas of focus will include visually spectacular children’s books, such as pop-up and movable books, and key genres in the development of children’s literature, including fairy tales, school stories, and adventure fiction. In addition, this course will examine the important role of ephemer...

Sister Agnes’ Fairy Tales Told in the Bush (1911?) is an unusual collection of early Australian fairy tales, not least because its author (Agnes Row) was a deaconess of the Community of the Holy Name. It's also unconventional because of the degree to which it depicts, and engages with, First Nations people and stories. William Barak, the last traditional elder of the Wurundjeri people (the owners of the area now known as Melbourne), told the story of the city’s river ‘The Origin of the Yarra Yarra’ to Sister Agnes and he also appears as a character in an original story, ‘The Magic Gun’. This tale is unique for its attempt to merge convict history with First Nations peoples in ways that attempt to shape national mythologies. The tale begins with ‘Old King Barak, the last King of the Yarra tribe’ situated at the historical First Nations farming community, Coranderrk, telling a boy named Tom Jones the story of the Magic Gun. Tom discovers that Barak possesses a gun that once belong to...

As an academic, I spend a lot of my research time scouring databases for articles. Marvels & Tales is a journal devoted to fairy tales that I have always admired, and used for both teaching and research. It was an absolute pleasure to co-edit a special issue of the journal on Australian fairy tale with Dr Emma Whatman , whose doctoral work broke new ground in the study of fairy-tale adaptations and postfeminism. In postcolonial contexts, thinking about fairy tale history can be a fraught exercise, particularly when it comes to the way that Aboriginal stories were appropriate by white writers. Nevertheless, our contributors made the job of celebrating, at the same time as critiquing, Australian fairy tales, simple.  Juliet O'Conor, for example, contributes her unparalleled knowledge about Indigenous children's literature to contrast "Aboriginalist" texts such as Katie Langloh Parker's Australian Legendary Tales (1896) with stories written an illustrated by trad...

A prince flies in a carriage propelled by kingfishers in Hume Cook’s Australian Fairytales. Author provided Michelle Smith , Monash University Content warning: this article contains reference to racist depictions of Aboriginal Australians. Most of us grew up reading fairy tales adapted from the European tradition: stories of kings, queens and princesses set in palaces and forests, such as Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast. But what about the history of Australian fairy tales? Australia’s vast distances, deserts, harsh temperatures, deadly wildlife, and the ongoing cultures of Aboriginal Australians made the country a complicated fit for fairy tales. Indeed, few tales by Australian authors were published until the late 19th century. These early Australian fairy tales mythologised aspects of the country’s history and environment to sanitise the process of white settlement. In doing so, they helped to invent traditions and cultural explanati...