Paranoid prizing : the facts and fictions of Australia’s Eve Pownall Award for Information Books, 2001-2010

Ghassan Hage asserts the “core element of Australia’s colonial paranoia is a fear of loss of Europeanness or Whiteness and the lifestyle and privileges that are seen to emanate directly from them. This is a combination of the fragility of White European colonial identity in general and the specificity of the Australian situation” (419). This ‘White paranoia’ can be traced through a range of popular cultural formations, including contemporary Australian children’s literature. The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) awards an annual prize for “outstanding books which have the prime intention of documenting factual material with consideration given to imaginative presentation, interpretation and variation of style” (“Awards”) published in the preceding year. Although not often included in critical debates, non-fictional texts overtly seek to shape young readers’ understandings of their national context and their own location as national subjects. Thus, the books named as winners and honours of this prize from 2001-2010 provide a snapshot of which facts and whose fictions are salient in shaping the Australian nation in the twenty-first century. Using Hage’s concept of Australian colonial paranoia, this paper considers the relationship between ‘factual material’ and ‘imaginative presentation’ in the ongoing revision and renewal of national myths in award-winning Australian non-fiction for children.

Paranoid prizing : mapping Australia’s Eve Pownall Award for information books, 2001-2010

Each year, the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) administers a number of Book of the Year Awards, including the Eve Pownall Award for Information Books. The books chosen by the CBCA constitute a contemporary canon of Australian children’s literature, and serve to both shape and reflect current educational policies and practices as well as young Australians’ sense of themselves and their nation. This paper reads a selection of award-winning Australian non-fiction children’s literature in the context of colonialism, curriculum, military myths, and Aboriginal perspectives on national history and identity.

The value of books : the fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and the social hieroglyphic of reading

The late eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of new technologies of subjectivity and of the literary. Most obviously, “the novel as a literary form appeared to embody and turn into an object the experience of life itself” (Park), and the novel genre came to both reflect and shape notions of interiority and subjectivity. In this same period, “A shift was taking place in the way people felt and thought about children and the accoutrements of childhood, including books and toys, were implicated in this change” (Lewis). In seeking to understand the relationships between media (e.g. books and toys), genres (e.g. novels and picture books), and modes of subjectivity, Marx’s influential theory of commodity fetishism, whereby “a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things”, has served as a productive tool of analysis. The extent to which Marx’s account of commodity fetishism continues to be of use becomes clear when the corollaries between the late eighteenth-century emergence of novels and pictures books as technologies of subjectivity and the early twenty-first century emergence of e-readers and digital texts as technologies of subjectivity are considered. This paper considers the literary technology of Apple’s iPad (first launched in 2010) as a commodity fetish, and the circulation of “apps” as texts made available by and offered as justifications for, this fetish object. The iPad is both book and toy, but is never “only” either; it is arguably a new technology of subjectivity which incorporates but also destabilises categories of reading and playing such as those made familiar by earlier technologies of literature and the self. The particular focus of this paper is on the multimodal versions (app, film, and picture book) of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which are understood here as a narrativisation of commodity fetishism, subjectivity, and the act of reading itself.

Visual narratives in the children's picture story book : an investigation of the extent to which the formal structuring of a visual narrative retrieves a pastiche of past experiences and images which in turn shapes and redirects the story

Throughout this research, the notion that illustrators of children's books embark on two types of activity has been reinforced at every turn. On one hand the artist acknowledges the external world by organising images of actions and events in the contexts of place and time. This process involves bringing ideas into a physical form and demands the structuring of characters, settings, and story development. Planning and decisions are informed by imperatives that recognise the need for conventions of articulation and communication to a particular target audience. These then become a mayor priority of bookmaking and are constantly impacted on by publishers1 demands and ethical constraints. The other perspective sees the illustrator as expresser where the core of visual narratives for children celebrates the potency of imagination. Here dreams, fantasies, memories and the unconscious become the conduits to shaping sequential images. The artist is engaged not simply in visually telling a story, but rather telling facets of his or her own story. This exegesis traces the evolution of my own picture story book Eddie's Fantastic Fortnight published by Five Mile Press Publishers in tandem with the insights and reflections of five of Australia's most prominent illustrators. It examines whether the structure invested in a visual narrative liberates expressive response, ascribing to the premise that bookmaking plays an informing role to imagination. Equally it adopts the alternative position which asserts that the essence of children's books is indeed fantasy, memory and dreams. This proposition views imagination and inspiration as the primary catalyst around which illustrators build their narrative. In the often lengthy processes of bookmaking, these considerations constantly shift. I have attempted to explore and reveal these mobile and ever changing priorities, not only in my own work, but also through leading exponents in the field.

Asia and the autobiographical picture book

The Asia literacy curriculum objectives in Australian primary school classrooms are currently hampered by the scarcity of quality narrative picture books about Asian countries. Few books engage children without also representing Asia problematically. Anh Do’s The Little Refugee asserts an authentic cultural insider perspective on both Vietnam and Australia. In fact, it presents a paternalistic view of Asia and a self-congratulatory vision of Australia. This presentation engages with the picture book and life-writing genres to highlight the pitfalls and possibilities of using the autobiographical picture book to promote Asia literacy.

Children's Fiction About 9/11: Ethnic, Heroic and National Identities

In this study, Lampert examines how cultural identities are constructed within fictional texts for young people written about the attacks on the Twin Towers. It identifi es three significant identity categories encoded in 9/11 books for children:ethnic identities, national identities, and heroic identities,arguing that the identities formed within the selected children’s texts are in flux, privileging performances of identities that are contingent on post-9/11 politics. Looking at texts including picture books, young adult fiction, and a selection of DC Comics, Lampert finds in post-9/11 children’s literature a co-mingling of xenophobia and tolerance; a binaried competition between good and evil and global harmony and national insularity; and a lauding of both the commonplace hero and the super-human. The shifting identities evident in texts that are being produced for children about 9/11 offer implicit and explicit accounts of what constitutes good citizenship, loyalty to nation and community, and desirable attributes in a Western post-9/11 context. This book makes an original contribution to the field of children’s literature by providing a focused and sustained analysis of how texts for children about 9/11 contribute to formations of identity in these complex times of cultural unease and global unrest.

Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction

Gender Dilemmas in Children's Fiction examines how fictional texts – picture books, novels, and films – produced for children and young adults are responding to the tensions and dilemmas that arise from new gender relations and sexual differences. The book discusses a diverse range of international children's fiction published between 1990 and 2008. Some of the key dilemmas that emerge are around the texts' treatment of romance, beauty, cyberbodies, queer, and comedy.

Reading the environment : narrative constructions of ecological subjectivities in Australian children's literature

Ways in which humans engage with the environment have always provided a rich source of material for writers and illustrators of Australian children's literature. Currently, readers are confronted with a multiplicity of complex, competing and/or complementing networks of ideas, theories and emotions that provide narratives about human engagement with the environment at a particular historical moment. This study, entitled Reading the Environment: Narrative Constructions of Ecological Subjectivities in Australian Children's Literature, examines how a representative sample of Australian texts (19 picture books and 4 novels for children and young adults published between 1995 and 2006) constructs fictional ecological subjects in the texts, and offers readers ecological subject positions inscribed with contemporary environmental ideologies. The conceptual framework developed in this study identifies three ideologically grounded positions that humans may assume when engaging with the environment. None of these positions clearly exists independently of any other, nor are they internally homogeneous. Nevertheless they can be categorised as: (i) human dominion over the environment with little regard for environmental degradation (unrestrained anthropocentrism); (ii) human consideration for the environment driven by understandings that humans need the environment to survive (restrained anthropocentrism); and (iii) human deference towards the environment guided by understandings that humans are no more important than the environment (ecocentrism). iv The transdisciplinary methodological approach to textual analysis used in this thesis draws on ecocriticism, narrative theories, visual semiotics, ecofeminism and postcolonialism to discuss the difficulties and contradictions in the construction of the positions offered. Each chapter of textual analysis focuses on the construction of subjectivities in relation to one of the positions identified in the conceptual framework. Chapter 5 is concerned with how texts highlight the negative consequences of human dominion over the environment, or, in the words of this study, living with ecocatastrophe. Chapter 6 examines representations of restrained anthropocentrism in its contemporary form, that is, sustainability. Chapter 7 examines representations of ecocentrism, a radical position with inherent difficulties of representation. According to the analysis undertaken, the focus texts convey the subtleties and complexities of human engagement with the environment and advocate ways of viewing and responding to contemporary unease about the environment. The study concludes that these ways of viewing and responding conform to and/or challenge dominant socio-cultural and political-economic opinions regarding the environment. This study, the first extended work of its kind, makes an original contribution to ecocritical study of Australian children's literature. By undertaking a comprehensive analysis of how texts for children represent human engagement with the environment at a time when important environmental concerns pose significant threats to human existence, I hope to contribute new knowledge to an area of children's literature research that to date has been significantly under-represented.

The monster chronicles : the role of children’s stories featuring monsters in managing childhood fears and promoting empowerment

Children’s fascination with monsters is a normal part of childhood development. Children’s literature reflects this with a wealth of stories featuring monsters, ranging from fairy tales to picture books to books for independent readers. These stories can raise concerns from educators, parents and other sections of the community such as political and religious institutions on the basis that they could be disturbing or harmful to children. In contrast, there is evidence to indicate the potential for managing fears and enhancing feelings of empowerment in children through the reading of stories featuring monsters. A reappraisal of these stories from a predominantly therapeutic perspective reveals that they may act as agents of positive change in six ways – catharsis, naming, taming, integration, transformation and moral empowerment. Two of these functions, transformation and moral empowerment, are examined further in three case studies of stories for the older reader that feature monsters, Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver, Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling by D.M. Cornish and my manuscript, ‘The Monster Chronicles’. The insights from this research have been used to inform the writing and editing of ‘The Monster Chronicles’ and inherent to that, my goal of creating a children’s story featuring monsters that is sensitive to children’s fears and their desire for empowerment.

Aurora : an illustrated novella

Aurora, an illustrated novella, is a retelling of the classic fairytale Sleeping Beauty, set on the Australian coast around the grounds of the family lighthouse. Instead of following in the footsteps of tradition, this tale focuses on the long time Aurora is cursed to sleep by the malevolent Minerva; we follow Aurora as she voyages into the unconscious. Hunted by Minerva through the shifting landscape of her dreams, Aurora is dogged by a nagging pull towards the light—there is something she has left behind. Eventually, realising she must face Minerva to break the curse, they stage a battle of the minds in which Aurora triumphs, having grasped the power of her thoughts, her words. Aurora, an Australian fairytale, is a story of self-empowerment, the ability to shape destiny and the power of the mind. The exegesis examines a two-pronged question: is the illustrated book for young adults—graphic novel—relevant to a contemporary readership, and, is the graphic novel, where text and image intersect, a suitably specular genre in which to explore the unconscious? It establishes the language of the unconscious and the meaning of the term ‘graphic novel’, before investigating the place of the illustrated book for an older readership in a contemporary market, particularly exploring visual literacy and the way text and image—a hybrid narrative—work together. It then studies the aptitude of graphic literature to representing the unconscious and looks at two pioneers of the form: Audrey Niffenegger, specifically her visual novel The Three Incestuous Sisters, and Shaun Tan, and his graphic novel The Arrival. Finally, it reflects upon the creative work, Aurora, in light of three concerns: how best to develop a narrative able to relay the dreaming story; how to bestow a certain ‘Australianess’ upon the text and images; and the dilemma of designing an illustrated book for an older readership.

The cradle of whose civilisation? : reading the Theseus myth in Riordan’s Percy Jackson and Ottley’s Requiem for a Beast

This paper considers the functions of Greek mythology in general and the “Theseus and the Minotaur” myth in particular in two contemporary texts of adolescent masculinity: Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series (2005-2009) and Matt Ottley’s Requiem for a Beast: A Work for Image, Word and Music (2007). These texts reveal the ongoing flexibility of mythic texts to be pressed into service of shoring up or challenging currently hegemonic ideologies of self and state. Both Riordan and Ottley make a variety of intertextual uses of classical hero plots in order to facilitate their own narrative explorations of contemporary adolescent men ‘coming of age’. These intertextual gestures might easily be read as gestures of alignment with narrative traditions and authority which simultaneously confer “legitimacy” on Riordan and Ottley, on their texts, and by extension, on their readers. However, when read in juxtaposition, it is clear that Riordan and Ottley may use classical mythology to articulate similarly gendered adolescence, they produce divergent visions of nationed adolescence.

Labyrinthine literacies : navigating cultural agency in the arrival and requiem for a beast

The OED reminds us as surely as Ovid that a labyrinth is a “structure consisting of a number of intercommunicating passages arranged in bewildering complexity, through which it is it difficult or impossible to find one’s way without guidance”. Both Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006) and Matt Ottley’s Requiem for a Beast: A Work for Image, Word and Music (2007) mark a kind of labyrinthine watershed in Australian children’s literature. Deploying complex, intercommunicating logics of story and literacy, these books make high demands of their reader but also offer guidance for the successful navigation of their stories; for their protagonists as surely as for readers. That the shared logic of navigation in each book is literacy as privileged form of meaning-making is not surprising in the sense that within “a culture deeply invested in myths of individualism and self-sufficiency, it is easy to see why literacy is glorified as an attribute of individual control and achievement” (Williams and Zenger 166). The extent to which these books might be read as exemplifying desired norms of contemporary Australian culture seems to be affirmed by the fact of Tan and Ottley winning the Australian “Picture Book of the Year” prize awarded by the Children’s Book Council of Australia in 2007 and 2008 respectively. However, taking its cue from Ottley’s explicit intertextual use of the myth of Theseus and from Tan’s visual rhetoric of lostness and displacement, this paper reads these texts’ engagement with tropes of “literacy” in order to consider the ways in which norms of gender and culture seemingly circulated within these texts might be undermined by constructions of “nation” itself as a labyrinth that can only partly be negotiated by a literate subject. In doing so, I argue that these picture books, to varying degrees, reveal a perpetuation of the “literacy myth” (Graff 12) as a discourse of safety and agency but simultaneously bear traces of Ariadne’s story, wherein literacy alone is insufficient for safe navigation of the labyrinth of culture.

Children's Literature Digital Resource (CLDR)

Children’s Literature Digital Resources incorporates primary texts published from white settlement to 1945, including children’s and young adult fiction, poetry, short stories, and picture books. This collection is supported by selected secondary material. The objective is to provide a centralised access point for information about Australian children's literature and writers and a growing body of full-text primary resources. Four key aims are: * To establish an important digital facility for research, teaching, and information provision around Australian children’s literature; * To provide access to a wide range of high-quality full-text data, both primary and secondary resources; * To provide access to essential library and research information infrastructure and facilities for established and emerging researchers in the fields of Humanities and Education; To enable research while preserving important heritage material. The collection contains texts digitised for AustLit through cooperation with various Australian libraries. The collection includes children’s and young adult fiction, poetry, picture books, short stories, and critical articles relating to relevant primary texts. Authors of primary sources include Irene Cheyne, E. W. Cole, Richard Rowe, Lillian M. Pyke, and Dorothy Wall. Secondary sources include critical works by Clare Bradford, Heather Scutter, Kerry White, Sharyn Pearce, and Marcie Muir. These full-text materials are keyword searchable (both within individual texts and across the CLDR corpus) and can be downloaded for research purposes. As well as digitising primary and secondary material, the project locates and provides pathways to existing online resources or internet publications to enhance AustLit's Children's Literature subset. These resources include both primary and secondary texts.