Australian not by blood, but by character: Soldiers and refugees in Australian children's picture books

Title
Australian not by blood, but by character: Soldiers and refugees in Australian children's picture books
Publication Date
2018-12-05
Author(s)
Kerby, Martin
Baguley, Margaret
Lowien, Nathan
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8907-2198
Email: nlowien2@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:nlowien2
Ayre, Kay
Editor
Editor(s): Martin Kerby, Margaret Baguley and Janet McDonald
Type of document
Book Chapter
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan Cham
Place of publication
Switzerland
Edition
1
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-96986-2_18
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/70762
Abstract

In recent years, Australian children’s picture books dealing with the First World War have balanced the increasingly sentimentalized construct of the Australian soldier as a victim of trauma and the traditional use of Australian war literature as a means of exploring national identity. It is an approach that has proved quite malleable, for variations of it have been used in children’s picture books dealing with the far more polemic issue of refugees. By drawing on this framework, authors and illustrators position refugees as victims of trauma who have displayed qualities that are entirely consistent with a construct of national identity grounded in martial achievement. Readers of these texts are encouraged to welcome these arrivals at a literal level as new citizens and symbolically as new inductees into a pervasive construct of national identity.

Link
Citation
The Palgrave Handbook of Artistic and Cultural Responses to War since 1914: The British Isles, the United States and Australasia, p. 309-326
ISBN
9783319969855
9783319969862
Start page
309
End page
326

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