Picturing Australian history: visual texts in nonfiction for children

Abstract

Time is one of the most prominent themes in the relatively young genre of children\u27s literature, for the young, like adults, want to know about the past. The historical novel of the West grew out of Romanticism, with its exploration of the inner world of feeling, and it grew to full vigor in the era of imperialism and the exploration of the physical world. From the end of the 18th century, children\u27s books flourished, partly in response to these cultural and political influences. After Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, literary works began to grapple with skepticism about the nature of time itself. This book explores how children\u27s writers have presented the theme and concept of time past. While the book looks primarily at literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, it considers a broad range of historical material treated in works from that period. Included are discussions of such topics as Joan of Arc in children\u27s literature, the legacy of Robinson Crusoe, colonial and postcolonial children\u27s literature, the Holocaust, and the supernatural. International in scope, the volume examines history and collective memory in Portuguese children\u27s fiction, Australian history in picture books, Norwegian children\u27s literature, and literary treatments of the great Irish famine. So too, the expert contributors are from diverse countries and backgrounds.</div