'Once there was a boy who had to leave home ... and find another. In his bag he carried a book, a bottle and a blanket. In his teacup he held some earth from where he used to play. This is one boys story of leaving his homeland, surviving a long journey by sea ... and finding a safe, new place to call home.' (Publication summary)
'In this article, I survey eight Australian picture books that seek to redress a seeming absence of care in Australian politics in relation to refugees and asylum seekers: My Two Blankets (2014), Suri's Wall (2015), Ride, Ricardo, Ride! (2015), Mate and Me (2015), Teacup (2015), Flight (2015), Out (2016), and I'm Australian Too (2017). These books depict a healthy community founded upon an ethics of care, and/or a depleted community when care is absent. Although none of these books invokes structural change, all of them demonstrate how relational well-being forms a foundation for civic virtue.'
'This article uses cultural representations to write refugee history. It examines twenty-first-century picture books about displaced children, alongside published responses to them, to explore how refugee experiences and histories are constructed, both for and about children, in an Australian context. The visual literary form of picture books as political texts is examined as a space for discussion and dialogue. Published responses to them, however, more commonly reveal rigid interpretations of imagined readers, invoking binary divisions between displaced and non-displaced children. Through these sources, questions of humanisation and (de)politicisations in refugee history are considered.' (Publication abstract)
'This article uses cultural representations to write refugee history. It examines twenty-first-century picture books about displaced children, alongside published responses to them, to explore how refugee experiences and histories are constructed, both for and about children, in an Australian context. The visual literary form of picture books as political texts is examined as a space for discussion and dialogue. Published responses to them, however, more commonly reveal rigid interpretations of imagined readers, invoking binary divisions between displaced and non-displaced children. Through these sources, questions of humanisation and (de)politicisations in refugee history are considered.' (Publication abstract)
'In this article, I survey eight Australian picture books that seek to redress a seeming absence of care in Australian politics in relation to refugees and asylum seekers: My Two Blankets (2014), Suri's Wall (2015), Ride, Ricardo, Ride! (2015), Mate and Me (2015), Teacup (2015), Flight (2015), Out (2016), and I'm Australian Too (2017). These books depict a healthy community founded upon an ethics of care, and/or a depleted community when care is absent. Although none of these books invokes structural change, all of them demonstrate how relational well-being forms a foundation for civic virtue.'
