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.
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.
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.
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.
The Reverend Joseph Bowes specialised in chummy stories for boys, among them this and The Young Anzacs (1917).
Wolfgang Grasse's haunting cover image for Ivan Southal's novel about Anzac Day.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The red and yellow tones on this book cover cast a certain lividity across the faces of the soldiers.
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.
Like Candles at Dawn, Evan's Gallipoli silhouettes the solitary protagonist on the cover, making him both unique and Everyman.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
The first volume in the trilogy introduces the Cub, and brings news of his brother's death before his own enlistment.
In the second volume of the trilogy, the Cub goes to Gallipoli.
In this final volume, Brigid ensconces herself in Paris, where the Cub can see her on his irregular leaves.
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.
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.
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.
Another meditation on the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, this one with lavish, brilliant, brutal artwork.
The story of Henri Tovell, nicknamed the 'Young Digger', a French orphan adopted by Australian soldiers and eventually smuggled into Australia.
A third account of the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux, this one with surreal and beautiful illustrations.
An English army deserter in France uses a small silver donkey charm to teach a group of children about courage and loyalty.
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.
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.
In 2010, Random House released a 'younger readers' edition' of this autobiography of a teenaged soldier in World War I.
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.
The story of Gallipoli told for younger readers: so say the blurbs on this 1959 book.
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.
One of many accounts of John Simpson [John Simpson Kirkpatrick], whose donkey is sometimes described as the most famous animal in Australian history.
In this version of the tale, the donkey is given a more prominent role, both in the title and on the cover.
Focusing on the donkey, Jackie French continues the story of the Gallipoli stretcher bearers past Simpson's death.
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.
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.
Flora isn't in Gallipoli–she's in Cairo, to which a stream of soldiers wounded on the Gallipoli peninsula are being evacuated.
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.
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.
Described as a gentle way to explain to very young readers the weight of history behind our recognition of Anzac Day.
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.
Jackie French's picture book follows the Anzac tradition down from Anzac Cove to peacekeeping functions in war-torn parts of the modern world.
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.
Phoebe and her family yearly hunt the shearwaters on Big Dog Island–but how will the war change the rhythms of this life?
In the Adelaide Hills in 1915, German settlers are increasingly being treated with suspicion as the casualty lists continue to roll in.
The story of the 'ANZAC cottage', built in one day in 1916 by volunteers in Mount Hawthorn, Western Australia, for returning soldiers.
Three girls set up a canteen in France for wounded soldiers, seeking to escape the stultifying home-life round of school and Society.
While Michael Delaney is fighting in the trenches 'somewhere in France', family secrets are unravelling back on the home front.
Based on the story of Fay Howe, the daughter of Breaksea Island's lighthouse keeper.
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.
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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