Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper examines the effects of curatorial processes used to develop children's literature digital research projects in the bibliographic database AustLit. Through AustLit's emphasis on contextualising individual works within cultural, biographical, and critical spaces, Australia's literary history is comprehensively represented in a unique digital humanities space. Within AustLit is BlackWords, a project dedicated to recording Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytelling, publishing, and literary cultural history, including children's and young adult texts. Children's literature has received significant attention in AustLit (and BlackWords) over the last decade through three projects that are documented in this paper. The curation of this data highlights the challenges in presenting ‘national’ literatures in countries where minority voices were (and perhaps continue to be) repressed and unseen. This paper employs a ‘resourceful reading’ approach – both close and distant reading methods – to trace the complex and ever-evolving definition of ‘Australian children's literature’.'

Source: EUP.

In this article Amy Cross draws upon two Australian historiographic metafictive texts, Into White Silence and The Lace Maker's Daughter, to demonstrate how particular narrative strategies destablise the relationship between history and fiction and the past and the present, and can invite readers to consider their own roles as meaning makers - of history and of their individual selves.

This Research Exhibition identifies children's literature across different forms and genres in Australia where discussions of environmental waste, climate change, species endangerment, ecocitizenship, and the effects of globalisation on the environment are major concerns.The Exhibition provides a space for researchers and students to access and engage with bibliographical data on a range of literary and critical texts that provide various environmental perspectives of contemporary Australian children’s literature.

There is a common belief that science is about objective facts while literature expresses subjective opinions and emotions. Increasingly the gap between science and literature is becoming smaller as artistic imagination and scientific inquiry enjoy unprecedented attention in the publishing world and in the media. Picture books that engage with science offer children and teachers ways of understanding science differently. This chapter will use a number of picture books to illustrate how texts for children are opening up artistic ways for developing science understanding in content areas and encouraging general capabilities with respect to information and communication technology, critical and creative thinking, and possibly numeracy. It will also demonstrate the many common features that science and literature share such as communicating curiosity, passion and awe to inspire and instruct young readers about scientific discoveries and the wonders of the world in which they live.

'Australia’s relationship with Asia has always been a focus for heated debate and, often, misunderstanding. What role do books play in moulding this relationship?'

This essay considers a specific digital ‘archive’ of early Australian children’s literature, known as the Children’s Literature Digital Resources (CLDR), which is located in AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. Our paper discusses how early Australian children’s literature included in the CLDR collection rhetorically constructs nation and place, and in so doing constructs an Australian identity for its implied readers.

Source: Author's abstract.

This Trail accompanies the AustLit dataset Asian-Australian Childrens' Literature and Publishing and provides a discussion of manga in Australia, as well as examples of children's and young adult manga, and its connection with graphic novels.

Children's Literature Digital Resources, or, CLDR is a full text digital repository of Australian children’s literature from 1830 to 1945. Users can read online the complete texts of a selection of early Australian children’s literature, both popular and rare.

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.