AustLit

Begun in 2014, Children's Literature & the Environment is a long-running project that identifies works for children and young adults that deal with the environment in imaginative, scientific, educational, and creative ways. Clustered around such topics as climate change and sustainability, the exhibition is not intended to be definitive, but rather a starting point for students, teachers, and researchers.

Click here to explore the exhibition.

(Image credit: Thylacine cynocephalus, from John Gould's Mammals of Australia. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.)

The Picture Book Diet is a research project by Dr Laurel Cohn, identifying representations of food and food practices in contemporary Australian picture books. What we eat is a topic of robust discussion across the country, yet little attention has been given to the ideas and values concerning food embedded in texts for young children, despite such texts being created with the specific intention not only of entertaining but also of enculturating their audiences, therefore having the potential to influence readers' relationships with food.

This dataset aggregates shortlisted, award-winning and bestselling picture books for 3–8 year-olds published 2000–2013, noting not only food type, but associated depictions of food practices connected with gender, identity and place – such as growing food, shopping, cooking, serving – as well as food-related language use.

Explore The Picture Book Diet.

The AustLit for Schools initiative began in 2018. Bringing together AustLit resources for teachers, students, and librarians at primary and secondary schools, as well as external teaching and publishers notes.

On this site, is advice for using BlackWords texts in the classrooms, and suggestions for alternative texts to Australian Curriculum suggestions.

Visit AustLit for Schools.

Designed to introduce teachers and readers to Australian adaptations, re-writings, and other modifications of Shakespearean plays, this exhibition explores versions of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet for young-adult readerships, as well as works where Shakespeare is studied and performed in schools, Shakespeare for younger readers, and First Nations versions of Shakespearean texts.

Explore Shakespeare for Australian Young Adults.

Header image: John William Waterhouse, 'The Tempest' (1916).

From the essay:

There is far more to Aboriginal authored children’s books than telling the expected Dreaming or creation stories through text and brightly coloured artwork. Rather, for the past decade, books in this genre have raised the bar in terms of the greater worth of children’s literature and literature for young readers in Australia, with Aboriginal titles being increasingly defined by their social, cultural, historical and political value.

Click here to read the essay in full.

(Image credit: detail from cover Stolen Girl.)

The Asian-Australian Children's Literature and Publishing project (AACLAP) was developed in partnership with Queensland University of Technology, under the guidance of Professor Kerry Mallan, Martin Borchert, and Associate Professor Deborah Henderson. Covers works published between 1970 and 2013, it covers works with Asian-Australian characters, works that represent Asian-Australian experience, and works that have been translated into Asian languages.

Click here to explore AACLAP.

AACLAP is also supported by publications, trails, and interviews with authors.

Click here to access the list of scholarly publications that have come out of AACLAP.

Click here to explore the AACLAP trails.

Click here to read a series of in-depth interviews with six authors represented in AACLAP.

(Image credit: section from the cover of the Disney-Hyperion edition of Dragon Moon, from Carole Wilkinson's Dragon Keeper series.)

The Children's Literature Digital Resources project (CLDR) is a full-text digital repository of Australian children's literature published between 1830 and 1945. Over 500 texts can be read online, complete with their original illustrations and marginalia. While the CLDR is an invaluable tool for researchers of Australian children's literature, it is also an enjoyable resource for readers.

Click here to explore the CLDR.

(Image credit: section of the cover from Winifred Law's Rangers of the Universe, represented in the CLDR's full-text collection.)

Developed by Deakin University Library and the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin, this research project comprehensively indexes the contents of the school readers created for Victorian schools from 1928 to 1940. Ranging from the indexing of Australian content to long lists of works by American and British authors, these records offer a fascinating insight into pedagogy past.

Click here to view the records.

(Image credit: top section of the second volume of the Victorian Readers.)

Part of a larger collection of exhibitions produced by AustLit for the centenary of World War I, 'World War I Stories for Children and Young Adults' highlights the key areas around which war stories coalesce: the western front, Gallipoli, the home front, and Anzac Day. It also explores the iconography of the war in picture books and the covers of books for older readers.

Click here to explore the exhibition.

(Image credit: the inset illustration from the first edition of Ethel Turner's John of Daunt, one of her war stories for children.)