AustLit

Bradford documents the life of Chinese-Australian writer Sylvia Chew and highlights what she sees as 'a significant comparison... between the Chinese characters and settings of the book and the predominantly Anglo-Celtic charatcers and settings of picture books of this period' (80). She discusses the series of Little Chiu picture books and the collaboration with Jean Elder in the first book of the series, as well as the frustrations experienced in attempting to have the remainder of the series published. Bradford argues that Chew 'was ahead of her time as a writer representing cultural diversity' however despite the existence of multicultural picture books, Bradford says 'Australia still has a long way to go before it adequately represents children of cultural backgrounds other than Anglo-Celtic' (82).