'Incorporating oral history recollections ranging from
Mary Gilmore's and
Jack Lang's memories of the 1870s and 1880s, through to the experience of a street kid in the 1980s, this book takes a broad sweep through 200 years of Australian childhood. Along the way it features elements as diverse as the school diaries of
Donald Friend,
Alan Moorehead, and
Ethel Turner, the juvenilia of
Maie Casey,
Dorothy Hewett, and
Kenneth Slessor, and a needlework sampler by
Miles Franklin. Supplemented by a stunning array of images from the Library's Pictorial Collection (including the work of
Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton,
May Gibbs, David Moore, and Wolfgang Sievers) as well as select items from the Newspaper and Ephemera Collections, the book has features on schooling, sport, toys, games and entertainment and children's literature. There is additional commentary on such issues as infant care and health, institutional life, child migration, the Stolen Generations, and the impact on children of the two world wars and the Depression' (back cover).
