Tour of the National Centre for Australian Children's Literature

Emeritus Professor Belle Alderman AM selects her favourite books from a collection of 58,000 Australian children's literature.

Transcript

00:00 This way.

00:02 Oh no, oh no, everybody gets like, whoa, my God, whoa.

00:08 Here we are in the National Centre for Australian Children's Literature

00:16 and our home is at the University of Canberra where we've been since 1980.

00:25 It was del Toro Quest and her collection starts there, it ends up here. So this is the biggest

00:35 collection of Emily Rada and we have her papers and manuscripts. There's seven boxes of fan mail

00:42 from children around the world because she's translated. It's absolutely one of my favourite

00:48 books. It's been around for 40, 40 some odd years and it's still being read by multi-generation.

00:55 Ivan Southall is well known around the world. He's one of the first Australian children's

01:00 authors to be translated into different countries and that's one. Possum Magic,

01:05 who doesn't know Possum Magic? And Possum Magic of course travelled around Australia eating various

01:10 kinds of foods and in the American edition they had to add a map and they had to explain what

01:16 Pavlova was and what a lamington was. So Possum Magic has been translated many, many times. It's

01:22 been recast into baby books, board books, big books, little books like this and translated into

01:30 many different languages. So a book that was published in 1981 which is still much loved

01:37 and a classic today. How important is it to have books where you see yourself in the book?

01:43 This is a story about refugees and a girl who comes from a country where when she comes to

01:50 Australia everything looks different. This is where she originally lives, where her culture

01:56 and her language, her food, where she lives is very much part of her and then she comes to Australia.

02:04 She doesn't know anybody. All the sounds are different. The air is different. The food is

02:09 different and she feels so bereft and so without any friendship but she befriends a little girl

02:16 in the park who shares friendship with her and she feels more at home. And this book is

02:26 illustrated by Freya Blackwood who's won multi awards around the world and it's written by a

02:32 refugee who came to Australia and wanted to tell her story and her name is Irena Cobol.

02:38 So I love this book.

02:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]