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The Australian Literature Resource
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AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Scope

The Australian Children's Literature subset includes records of works of fiction, poetry and drama written for children and young adults by Australian authors. It includes reviews of these works, information about their authors, information about organisations involved in the creation and publication of Australian children's literature and critical articles on Australian children's literature. It does not include writing about childhood for adult audiences: these records can be discovered through subject searches of the whole AustLit dataset.

Search the Australian Children's Literature Subset.

The Australian Children's Literature subset includes:

Works by 'Australian' authors, defined as those:

  • born in Australia, e.g. Norman Lindsay
  • born in Australia and resident overseas but maintaining links to Australia(expatriate authors), e.g. Jan Ormerod
  • born elsewhere but Australian by 'adoption', e.g. Ethel Turner and May Gibbs
  • born elsewhere and resident in Australia with intention to remain, e.g. Colin Thompson
  • visiting Australia and engaging with Australian subjects or themes, e.g. William Mayne

    • Picture books by non-'Australian' authors with a well-known Australian illustrator, e.g. Rymes around the Day illustrated by Jan Ormerod, although compiled by a British author.

    Works by non-'Australian' authors , illustrated by Australian illustrator where the illustrator had won an award for the work, e.g. Aesop's Fables illustrated by Rodney McRae

    Works by non-'Australian' authors where the content, theme or setting is clearly and prominently Australian, e.g.traditional Aboriginal stories or tales involving an Australian bush setting such as Rosalind Kerven's The Tree in the Moon and Other Legends of Plants and Trees and works of non-'Australian' authors who use Australia as a primary location for a work, even when the author has probably never visited this country, e.g. Jules Verne and Bessie Marchant

    Works by Australian authors that are re-tellings of traditional tales and folk-tales where these have been given an Australian emphasis or setting, e.g. Fairy Tales for Young Australians by Jan Wade

    Works classified as Information Books and Non-Fiction only where they have won awards

    Austlit does not include other works by non-'Australian' authors or works with no Australian content even when published or printed in Australia. Many publications by e.g. Melbourne publisher Gunn and Taylor fall into this category. However AustLit does create records for all organisations, including overseas publishers involved in the production of Australian Children's literature.

    Indexing Children's Fiction

    AustLit indexes literary works by assigning work types, work forms, work genres and subject concepts to all works. The work forms 'novel', 'novella' and 'short story' are used to index adult and young adult fiction. However, in indexing fictional material for children, these terms are not used. Instead a separate form 'children's fiction' is used in recognition of the difficulty of assigning more specific categories to fiction that varies in length and character. Form terms 'poetry' and 'drama' are assigned to children's literature.

    Contributors

    AustLit contains thousands of records migrated from the Lu Rees Archives catalogue. Many records about children's literature are created by other AustLit contributors with Deakin University and the Lu Rees Archives taking special responsibility for the development of resources in this area.

    Sources

    The Lu Rees Archives is resourced and developed through donations by Australian authors, publishers, collectors of children's literature and others interested in the field of creative writing for children. Many AustLit records are therefore sourced directly from creators.

    Australian Children's Literature information is also sourced from the full range of AustLit information sources, including the National Bibliographic Database via Libraries Australia, and a number of specialist bibliographies, including:

    Acknowledgements

    Many individuals, groups and organisations have assisted in the development of the Lu Rees Archives, and in the production of research information about Australian children's literature. The Lu Rees Archives particularly thanks the following individuals and organisations for their support, both human and financial:

    AustLit thanks the following people for their contribution of knowledge about Australian children's literature, contributed to various research projects over many years: