AustLit

Australian Children's Literature 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, e.g. expatriate authors such as 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

Also included

• Picture books by non-'Australian' authors but with a well-known Australian illustrator, e.g. Rhymes around the Day illustrated by Jan Ormerod, and 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

Conditional inclusion

Works classified as information books and non-fiction are not comprehensively included.

Out of Scope

AustLit does not include other works by non-'Australian' authors or works with no Australian content even when these works are published or printed in Australia.

Many publications by Melbourne publisher Gunn and Taylor, for example, fall into this category. However AustLit does create records for all organisations, including overseas publishers, who are 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.