(1916) was notable because the reproduction of watercolour illustrations was so lavish
and because the book was completely published in Australia. Most Australian children’s
books prior to this period had been published in Britain. (Muir and Holden (1985)
explore the details of originals which are to be found in the Hardie Collection, Sydney
NSW.) Bicentennial celebrations confirmed that May Gibbs’s ‘gumnut babies’ from
Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918) have become Australian icons—while the ‘banksia men’
remained in hidden adult fears remembered from childhood.
The Second World War was a strategic point of development for many facets of
Australian life. People realised, probably for the first time, that the Commonwealth of
nations could not meet Australia’s needs, although Britain continued to be important for
the purposes of industrialisation, markets for primary produce and as a source of
culture. Australians realised they had to become more self-reliant, yet for the sake of
security, military and strategic links were developed with the USA; links were also
sought with emerging nations of Asia, Australia’s northern neighbours; and the country
began to play its own role in the international arena of the United Nations. These were
difficult and contradictory political threads to weave. Similarly, the sense of national
identity ebbed and flowed in the cross currents of a society experiencing rapid change.
Within the nation, at a level identifiably closer to the future of children’s literature,
there was a post-war ‘baby boom’. Librarians became the self-appointed custodians of
literature for children—many gave their time voluntarily to bring children and books
closer together. They were responsible for the Children’s Book Council of New South
Wales which was established in 1945, and which in 1946 began the Children’s Book
Awards. From these modest beginnings the Australian Children’s Book Council was
formed in 1959. The awards (listed in Prentice and Bennet 1992) are highly valued by
authors and publishers, and have done much to foster children’s literature—though not
without controversy.
The world of children’s literature during the post-war period, into the 1950s and
beyond, was clearly focused, with the emergence of a number of women writers who not
only wrote stories of family life, but who combined this with a strong sense dawning self-
awareness in childhood and adolescence and the beginnings of a questing after a sense
of belonging in the land: Nan Chauncy, Mavis Thorpe Clark, Joan Phipson, Patricia
Wrightson, Eleanor Spence and Hesba Brinsmead remain significant writers of the
period. In writing about such works Maurice Saxby, an early influential critic of children’s
literature in Australia dismissed them as being ‘as predictable as those of the adventure
stories of a hundred years earlier’ (Saxby 1969:194). In retrospect, few would agree and
such comments are now recognised as part of the cultural cringe of the times (where
things Australian were less valued than those which came from overseas) as much as
alignment against the value of subject matter (usually domestic, family or romance) said
to be chosen by women writers.
Wrightson has subsequently become Australia’s best known writer for children
internationally, as was confirmed by the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen award in
- She has been publishing books for children for more than forty years and has
courageously broken new ground with her trilogy, The Song of Wirrun (1993)—
comprising The Ice is Coming (1977), The Dark Bright Water (1979) and Behind the Wind
(1981). Drawing her inspiration from the ‘folk-spirits of Aboriginal Dreamtime’, she has
836 THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE