AustLit
From the first shot to the centenary
- Introduction
- Anzac Field Theatres
- Children's Literature
- Conscription
- Dissenting Voices
- Films from 1914 to 2014
- Gertrude Hart: The War after 1918
- Indigenous Diggers
- Professional Digger and Post-war Entertainment (1916-1935)
- Recruiting and Enlistment
- Research Insights
- Search and Explore the Data
- Soldier and Nurse Writers
- Sumner Locke: War Romances
- The Anzac Book
- The Anzac Memorial
- The Kia-Ora Coo-ee
- Women Writing Women's Roles
- External resources
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The Cub (1915)
The first edition cover of the first of Ethel Turner's trilogy of war novels. Although the Cub's elder brother is killed at the Front in this volume and he himself enlists, the cover focuses on an Edwardian couple in light chat.
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Max the Sport (1916)
One of the internal illustrations from Max the Sport (via Bonza Schooldays), a novel that takes Max from schooldays to university to the war. A stylised version of this illustration was used for the coloured board cover of the first edition.
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John of Daunt (1916)
The cover of Ethel Turner's novel inverts the reader's expectations by placing the visible injury on the small child and not the soldier next to him.
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The Wand of Dawn (1918)
In this unusual addition to Australian children's war literature, a young girl discovers fairies in the Australian bush after her adored older brother enlists. The illustrations were the work of the author.
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The Anzac War-Trail (1919)
The Reverend Joseph Bowes specialised in chummy stories for boys, among them this and The Young Anzacs (1917).
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Bread and Honey (1970)
Wolfgang Grasse's haunting cover image for Ivan Southal's novel about Anzac Day.
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Light Horse to Damascus (1971)
The cover image for the first edition of Elyne Mitchell's novel is very much of its time–but also full of taut movement and power.
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Deepwater (1987)
The first edition of Deepwater showed a young farming girl reading a newspaper with a prominent Gallipoli headline: for this later reprint, the war has been further emphasised with the images of soldiers in the bottom left-hand corner.
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Candles at Dawn (2000)
In Candles at Dawn, an Australian girl travelling to Gallipoli for the Anzac Day celebrations befriends the daughter of her Turkish landlady. The silhouetted cover of this novel deliberately elides the differences between both the girls and their grandfathers.
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Boys of Blood and Bone (2003)
The bifurcated cover of the first edition of Boys of Blood and Bone reflects the twin narrative, in which a contemporary law student becomes fascinated with a digger who died nearly ninety years before.
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Scarecrow Army (2005)
The red and yellow tones on this book cover cast a certain lividity across the faces of the soldiers.
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A Rose for the Anzac Boys (2008)
Emphasising the non-combat roles of women in France in World War I, the cover for Jackie French's novel evokes Edwardian needlecraft–until the reader notices the line of soldiers.
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Evan's Gallipoli (2013)
Like Candles at Dawn, Evan's Gallipoli silhouettes the solitary protagonist on the cover, making him both unique and Everyman.
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Boys of Blood and Bone (Anzac Centenary Edition)
The cover of Boys of Blood and Stone labelled the 'Anzac Centenary Edition' makes the soldiers somewhat other than human, by concentrating on a face that is both strong boned and forged from metal. This image also rather elides the contemporary branch of the narrative.
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Ronan's Echo (2014)
Like Boys of Blood and Bone, Ronan's Echo tells two stories linked across ninety years. But despite the war content, the cover image emphasises the lost glamour of the Edwardian period.
(Display Format : Portrait)Illustrating the War: Novels
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Writing the War for Children
War literature for children began with the war. But how do you write World War I for young readers? Explore some of these works in this exhibition.After war broke out in July 1914, the countries involved sought to inspire the support and loyalty of their citizens for the departing troops–especially in the early stages of the war, before the heavy casualty lists began pouring in.
Among those targeted were children and adolescents. Patriotic poems began appearing in, for example, The School Paper for Grades VII and VIII (a magazine published by the Victorian Education Department) which published poems such as 'To the Helpers at Home' (October 1914), a plea to Australian children to assist the war effort at home, accompanied by a photo labelled 'Children at a Victorian State School Making Garments for the Troops.' Mainstream papers also targeted children with patriotic works: the Sydney Mail, for example, published Ella McFadyen's 'To Santa Claus' (December 1915), which begins:
Dear Santa Claus, I don't mind much
If you don't bring me toys
Cause p'r'aps your money's all been spent
On things for soldier boys
(To see the full list of Ella McFadyen's war poetry for children, follow this link.)
Established children's writers also began working the war into their fiction.
Mary Grant Bruce, for example, had begun her 'Billabong' series in 1910 with A Little Bush Maid. The series, three books strong when war broke out, already championed hard work and mateship, and Grant readily transposed these ideas to the war effort, beginning with From Billabong to London (serialised in Australia as From Billabong to the War) in 1914. Jim and Wally, like the real soldiers on whom they were patterned, wouldn't return to Australia until 1919 (in Back to Billabong).
Read one of Mary Grant Bruce's war novels, Captain Jim, in full via Project Gutenberg. Or, for a war-time experience, read the serialisation of From Billabong to the War in a 1915 newspaper (via Trove Australia).
Ethel Turner also began writing war stories, most notably in her 'Cub' trilogy (The Cub, Captain Cub, and Brigid and the Cub), which took her characters from enlistment to the armistice. But she also wrote standalone war novels, such as John of Daunt, in which the boy protagonist struggles with such problems as a German servant.
Read John of Daunt online via the Internet Archive.
Such works served a specific purpose (not entirely literary), and their sentiments and language are very much of the war period. But although the war ended in 1918, war literature for children did not.
Unsurprisingly, given the spans of time involved, more works have been written for children about World War I in the years since the armistice than were written during the war years. And as the war years retreat further from living memory, the ways in which authors make those year relevant to younger readers shift.
Think, for example, of the flurry of interest in Simpson and his donkey, who appear in picture books and children's novels.
To explore all of AustLit's records for children's and young adult's works about World War I, follow this link.
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Only a Donkey (2007)
Patricia Mullins's cover takes an anthropomorphic approach to the story of Anzac Day, by showing the story of Simpson and his donkey through the eyes of a donkey.
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Simpson and His Donkey (2008)
The naive style of Frané Lessac's cover illustration for Mark Greenwood's picture book somehow works to amplify the heat, pain, and struggle behind this static image.
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Lighthouse Girl (2009)
Lighthouse Girl is based on the story of Fay Howe, daughter of the Breaksea Island lighthouse keeper, who relayed messages for departing ANZAC troops in 1914. As a home-front story, it avoids images of the war itself.
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Light Horse Boy (2013)
In contrast, Wolfer's companion volume, Light Horse Boy showcases a dynamic image of boy and horse, presumably in combat. The movement of this image is in direct contrast to the staticity of the cover of Lighthouse Girl.
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Mightnight: The Story of a Light Horse (2014)
In contrast to Dianne Wolfer's Light Horse Boy, the focus in this cover is very much on the light horse itself: Midnight's rider, Lieutenant Guy Haydon, is entirely absent from the image.
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Lone Pine (2012)
The beautiful, painterly cover of Lone Pine combines the abstract but familiar Gallipoli symbol of the lone pine with the equally powerful symbol of a sunset.
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Gallipoli (2014)
Annie White's cover for Kerry Greenwood's again uses the image of the Lone Pine, but in this example it dwarfs two soldiers in khaki, and the washed-out colours of the image add a melancholic tinge.
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Memorial (1999)
Shaun Tan's gorgeous cover for Gary Crew's book shows children scrambling into the branches of a tree planted as a memorial by returning soldiers nearly a century earlier.
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My Mother's Eyes (2009)
Sub-titled 'The story of a boy soldier', My Mother's Eyes illustrates the story of sixteen-year-old soldier William with a black-and-white drawing of a disturbingly young face.
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Jack's Bugle (2014)
Another disturbingly young face, but the focus in this cover is on the bugle itself, the inanimate object that comes to stand in for the absent Jack.
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Do Not Forget Australia (2012)
One of many works that tell the story of the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, when AIF soldiers suffered heavy casualties in re-taking the town from the German army with, as the town's mayor noted when unveiling a memorial in 1919, 'the spontaneous enthusiasm and characteristic dash of their race'.
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The Promise: The Town That Never Forgets (2013)
Another picture book exploring the aftermath of the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux; in this example, the sharing of national identity is literalised in gorgeous, surreal illustrations.
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In Flanders Field (2002)
Brian Harrison-Lever's cover for Norman Jorgensen's story of a soldier who crawls out into no man's land to rescue a trapped robin uses the bright red of the robin (and of Flanders poppies) against a sombre background.
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The Poppy (2014)
A third account of the Second Battle of Villier-Bretonneux, The Poppy makes an ever more dramatic use of the bright red of Flanders poppies.
(Display Format : Portrait)Illustrating the War: Picture Books
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The Cub Trilogy (1915-1918)
Ethel Turner wrote several war stories, among them this trilogy centering on 'the Cub', the younger son of an Australian family, who enlists after the elder son and heir is killed on the battlefields.
Turner is best known, of course, for Seven Little Australians (1894), and was still a highly successful author twenty years later when this trilogy appeared.
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6133736620677721697.jpg6797673852573638303.jpgThe Cub : Six Months in His Life : A Story in War-Time Ethel Turner , 1915 single work novel
The first volume in the trilogy introduces the Cub, and brings news of his brother's death before his own enlistment.
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In the second volume of the trilogy, the Cub goes to Gallipoli.
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In this final volume, Brigid ensconces herself in Paris, where the Cub can see her on his irregular leaves.
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Stories of the Western Front
The works listed here are all set 'somewhere in France' (or Belgium) during World War I.
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A story unravels in two time periods: in 1916, twin brothers leave behind the girl they both love to march off to war, and nearly a century later, a forensic anthropologist uncovers family secrets among the bodies of lost Australian soldiers.
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This picture book re-tells the story of the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, in which over 1000 members of the the Australian Imperial Force were killed.
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Like Ronan's Echo, Boys of Blood and Bone takes place in two time periods, as a contemporary law student is given the diary of a digger who died in France.
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Another meditation on the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, this one with lavish, brilliant, brutal artwork.
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2320887233562179876.jpg1835712649267019344.jpgYoung Digger Anthony Hill , 2002 single work biography
The story of Henri Tovell, nicknamed the 'Young Digger', a French orphan adopted by Australian soldiers and eventually smuggled into Australia.
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the-promise_FX[h.jpgThe Promise : The Town That Never Forgets : N’oublions Jamais L’Australia Derek Guille , Anne-Sophie Biguet (translator), 2013 single work picture book
A third account of the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, this one with surreal and beautiful illustrations.
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3414787289608734401.jpg8426087026761874212.jpgHartnett_SilverDonkey2007_FVDn.jpg5809178977957961547.jpg6199381919092908472.jpg8624284152750356880.jpgThe Silver Donkey : A Novel for Children Sonya Hartnett , 2004 single work children's fiction
An English army deserter in France uses a small silver donkey charm to teach a group of children about courage and loyalty.
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When Marie and her mother stop getting postcards from Marie's father, who has been two years in the Somme trenches, they travel to France in search of him.
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Rather than focusing on trench warfare, Tank Boys focuses on the new weapon that the stalemate and mass attrition of trench warfare created: the tank.
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7955984548895320444.jpgSomme Mud : The War Experiences of an Infrantryman in France, 1916-1919 E. P. F. Lynch , 2006 single work autobiography
In 2010, Random House released a 'younger readers' edition' of this autobiography of a teenaged soldier in World War I.
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Billabong at War (1915-1919)
In three novels published between 1915 and 1919, Mary Grant Bruce takes the characters she invented for her popular 'Billabong' series and puts them in service to the Empire.
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In this first volume of the war-time Billabong stories (the fourth volume of the Billabong series), the Billabong folk pack up and move to London when Jim and wally decide to enlist.
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An encounter with gas in the trenches of France sends Jim and Wally off the Ireland to recuperate, do a little trout fishing–and run across a German submarine.
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Jim's exuberance wins him a captaincy–but what will it end up costing him, when the Billabong boys go back to the trenches.
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Stories of Gallipoli
These works are all set in and around the Gallipoli peninsula.
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2537925121351673824.jpgA Child's History of Anzac Ernest Charles Buley , 1916 single work children's fiction
Certainly one of the earliest 'child-friendly' accounts of the Gallipoli campaign, Buley's work was published in the same year in which Anzac troops were finally completely evacuated from the peninsula.
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The story of Gallipoli told for younger readers: so say the blurbs on this 1959 book.
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Reminiscent in some ways of Puck of Pook's Hill, The Unknown Australian Soldiers brings forth the ghost of the eponymous digger, who gives two children a first-hand glimpse of the battlefields of World War II–including the Gallipoli Peninsula.
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5476385274532845276.jpg8690230404452136406.jpgSimpson and His Donkey Mark Greenwood , 2008 single work picture book
One of many accounts of John Simpson [John Simpson Kirkpatrick], whose donkey is sometimes described as the most famous animal in Australian history.
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4828810015636083735.jpgSimpson's Donkey : A Wartime Journey to Gallipoli and Beyond Peter Stanley , 2011 single work children's fiction
In this version of the tale, the donkey is given a more prominent role, both in the title and on the cover.
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1057777507645203316.jpgThe Donkey Who Carried the Wounded Jackie French , 2009 single work children's fiction
Focusing on the donkey, Jackie French continues the story of the Gallipoli stretcher bearers past Simpson's death.
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In Starke and Holfeld's graphic novel, the diggers on the Gallipoli peninsula are realised in the form of kangaroos and other native Australian animals.
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2096873396233776977.jpg2595092348279309728.jpgGallipoli Alan R. Tucker , 2013 single work children's fiction
The fictional diary of Victor Marsh, fourteen-year-old Anzac and among the first soldiers to land at what will later be called Anzac Cove.
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Flora isn't in Gallipoli–she's in Cairo, to which a stream of soldiers wounded on the Gallipoli peninsula are being evacuated.
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Stories of Anzac Day
These stories all take place on that 'one day of the year': Anzac Day.
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lucky-dozen_FHtd.pngThe Lucky Dozen : Real Life Stories For Boys and Girls Isabelle Moresby , 1940-1949 selected work children's fiction
This anthology, published in the 1940s, includes the story 'Children of Anzac', in which children contrive to enable their ex-serviceman father to attend the local Anzac Day march.
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Southall's protagonist vibrates between the perspective of his grandmother (who never misses an Anzac Day march) and his ex-serviceman father (who never attends one), until one Anzac Day he meets two people who show him yet another perspective.
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4716840845070296882.jpg7064402119403046077.jpgMy Grandad Marches on Anzac Day Catriona Hoy , 2006 single work picture book
Described as a gentle way to explain to very young readers the weight of history behind our recognition of Anzac Day.
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Written by a military historian, Death between the Lines blends a question of fraud in a regimental mess in 1918 with murder at an Anzac Day march in 1930.
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6214862663462459603.jpg7474110682677470045.jpgA Day to Remember Jackie French , 2012 single work picture book
Jackie French's picture book follows the Anzac tradition down from Anzac Cove to peacekeeping functions in war-torn parts of the modern world.
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Stories of the Home Front
These stories concentrate as much–and sometimes more–on those left at home as they do on those who march away.
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The departure of all the young men for the front lines would be bad enough–but their going leaves behind anxiety that begins to crystallise into strong anti-German sentiment.
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Phoebe and her family yearly hunt the shearwaters on Big Dog Island–but how will the war change the rhythms of this life?
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9040508161139658322.jpgOur Enemy, My Friend : The Diary of Emma Shelldrake, the Adelaide Hills, 1915 Jenny Blackman , 2005 single work children's fiction
In the Adelaide Hills in 1915, German settlers are increasingly being treated with suspicion as the casualty lists continue to roll in.
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4983964679780135714.jpgThe House That Was Built in a Day : Anzac Cottage Valerie Everett , 2007 single work picture book
The story of the 'ANZAC cottage', built in one day in 1916 by volunteers in Mount Hawthorn, Western Australia, for returning soldiers.
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Three girls set up a canteen in France for wounded soldiers, seeking to escape the stultifying home-life round of school and Society.
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While Michael Delaney is fighting in the trenches 'somewhere in France', family secrets are unravelling back on the home front.
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Based on the story of Fay Howe, the daughter of Breaksea Island's lighthouse keeper.
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Rachel uses the Anzac biscuits she sends to her father, cold and hungry in the trenches, to imbue him with all the warmth and comfort of home.
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An unusual home front story. It's 1916. Brothers Dan and Eddie, seeking their lost mother, are taken under the wing of would-be soldiers marching to enlist.
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You might be interested in...
- Introduction
- Anzac Field Theatres
- Children's Literature
- Conscription
- Dissenting Voices
- Films from 1914 to 2014
- Gertrude Hart: The War after 1918
- Indigenous Diggers
- Professional Digger and Post-war Entertainment (1916-1935)
- Recruiting and Enlistment
- Research Insights
- Search and Explore the Data
- Soldier and Nurse Writers
- Sumner Locke: War Romances
- The Anzac Book
- The Anzac Memorial
- The Kia-Ora Coo-ee
- Women Writing Women's Roles
- External resources
- Introduction
- Anzac Field Theatres
- Children's Literature
- Conscription
- Dissenting Voices
- Films from 1914 to 2014
- Gertrude Hart: The War after 1918
- Indigenous Diggers
- Professional Digger and Post-war Entertainment (1916-1935)
- Recruiting and Enlistment
- Research Insights
- Search and Explore the Data
- Soldier and Nurse Writers
- Sumner Locke: War Romances
- The Anzac Book
- The Anzac Memorial
- The Kia-Ora Coo-ee
- Women Writing Women's Roles
- External resources