AustLit

An analysis of Australian children's publishing as a 'business environment', with attention to trends in areas such as ownership, production and distribution, technology, and the role of Government.

An analysis of Englishman William Howitt's work for children, A Boy's Adventure in the Wilds of Australia, and the ways in which its depiction of both the Australian landscape, and Australia's Aboriginal people, reflects an 'imperialist discourse'.

Monica Jarman draws on both postcolonial criticism and systemic functional linguistics to argue that 'The Children of Mirrabooka is a [...]direct example of a general tendency in other postcolonial era Australian children's literature to elide contemporary Aborigines and their culture' from the foreground of the work.

Discusses a neonarrative model as a basis for research into the artistic practice of children's book illustrators. Includes a brief discussion of work by Daisy Utemorrah and Pat Torres and Ian Abdulla in the way their art conveys 'life narratives'.

The author examines the different roles of food in literature. Six roles have been selected and examined, with examples from Australian picture books.

In this work the author concentrates on female-authored texts for young adults "...to consider their representations of female friendships; how they locate such friendships within narrative and ideological frameworks and how they construct women as gendered subjects." (Bradford, 1999, p.109)

"Books written for, and read by girls formed an important part of their culture and their perceptions of themselves as female. Women who shaped the texts, helped shape the culture. This paper will examine the construction of gender identity through this significant form of cultural transmission, stories written for girls and young women during the early twentieth century Australia. Contance Mackness's life and work will be used as an example." (Macintyre, Pam, 1999, p.119)

"This paper studies the nature of masculinity that is depicted through writer's use of animal metamorphosis in children's literature. It examines the concept of boy/animal transformation by exploring the ideology behind the metaphor." (Coward, Jo, 1999, p. 135)

This work examines how readers understand popular fiction as opposed to literary fiction. "Using Gleitzman's two most challenging works, Water Wings and Two Weeks with the Queen, as benchmarks, I investigate this issue, looking particularly at how he balances humor and pathos in his treatment of sensitive material." (Kroll, Jeri, 1999, p. 157)

This work examines which literary techniques an author uses in their works for children to establish character traits when their main character is an elective mute.