Australian Children's Books Volume 3: 1980-2000

Australian Children's Books is an essential reference for librarians, book collectors, specialist and antiquarian booksellers, scholars, and everyone with an interest in this important aspect of Australian cultural history. Together with volumes 1 and 2, this bibliography forms a body of information that will enable readers to plot the development of Australian publishing for children. They can follow the continuing careers of such authors as Mem Fox, Bob Graham, Robin Klein, Paul Jennings, Colin Thiele and Patricia Wrightson and track the remarkable diversity of Australian and overseas editions. They can trace changes in the popularity of specifically Australian themes and settings, and identify publishing trends including variations in the physical appearance of books. Globalisation, commercialism, the rise of the middle class in Asia, desktop publishing, outcomes-based school curricula and the modern obsession with 'celebrities' - all these varied cultural aspects of present-day life, and many others besides, are reflected in the type and quantity of books produced by Australian writers and publishers.