Packaging the past for children: Australian historical novels and picture books for children since 1945

Historians have considered deeply the nature of historical fiction, and the fictional nature of history, but children's historical fiction has received little of their attention to date. In approaching Australian children's historical novels and picture books as a subject for historical analysis, I interrogate the specific cultural, social, political and intellectual contexts of these texts since 1945. I explore how the texts may be considered historical, rather than literary projects, projects that can work to either contest or reaffirm contemporaneous national historical narratives. Fictional representations of the past are an identifiable sub-genre within Australian children's literature, with an estimated 160 historical novels and picture books, on Australian subjects by Australian authors, published since 2000. Building upon a foundation that emerged slowly in the decades following World War Two, contemporary Australian authors are creating fictional narratives for children that encompass an increasingly diverse range of historical subjects and that push at the boundaries of the historical fiction genre. There have also been profound changes in the presentation and marketing of historical novels and picture books, changes that offer an opportunity to understand more about uses of the past in the context of conceptions of childhood in Australian society. My thesis traces the volume and nature of historical novels and picture books published since 1945, explores representations of war, Indigenous history, and emotion through close readings of selected texts, and considers ideas of spectatorship and audience through analyzing the results of a pilot study involving interviews with fourteen children. In doing so, I contribute to conversations about uses of the past beyond the academy and methodologies for researching popular/fictional historiography. I also demonstrate that fictional representations of Australia's past created for children are worthy of historians' attention.