Extended reading programmes (or enrichment reading, or whatever) in secondary schools require children to study, presumably for enjoyment, a number of novels written or published expressly for them. Books like I am David, The Pigman, or The Chocolate War are by now deservedly well known and their use widespread. However, there is a good deal of Australian writing which is suitable for inclusion in such lists and it is about time that English teachers got to know it better by reading widely through a course of self-administered ‘extended reading’ of the local product.

The Australian forte is realism. At least until recently, our Australian children’s writers, like their U.S. counterparts, have little use for Celtic Twilights or endlessly renewable Middle Earths or Mabinogians. Rather, they tend to represent ordinary everyday situations in which personal but universal problems arise, the drama of being in their resolution. Hence a lot of Australian material can be said to be generally ‘relevant’ – an important attribute for many young readers who want to seek out books about people very much like themselves, perhaps as an aid to growing up as much as for relaxing reading, for what these books often show their readers is that their problems are not unique, and furthermore are solvable.

In U.S. publishing, probably the big­gest growth area is in the teenage market, especially in the genre called the Young Adult Problem Novel. Smart and trendy young writers like Nat Hentoff, Judy Blume, M.E. Kerr, Susan Hinton and Paul Zindel produce novels with snappy titles like I’ll Get There, it Better be Worth the Trip; I’m Really Dragged but Nothing Gets me Down or This School is Driving me Crazy. The best we have managed is Elisabeth MacInty’s It Looks Different When You Get There.

Curiously, Australian writers have neglected this particular genre. Their realism is not the calculated cynicism of Paul Zindel, who gets the kids on-side by exploiting their growing rebelliousness towards adults, or the tough modern violence of S.E. Hinton or the zealous urge to be helpful by imparting within her fiction, objectively and accurately, a wealth of information about a range of sexual matters, as does Judy Blume in, say, Forever. The English critic John Rowe Townsend describes U.S. adolescent literature as being preoccupied with pot, the pad, pregnancy and the pill.

Our writers are more protective, more paternal, more ‘literary’. Perhaps the difference is a cultural one, and says much about the way we regard our young. I have just completed a book of critical essays on the work of the eight leading Australian children’s writers (Innocence and Experience to be published by Nelson later this year) and this question intrigued me until I calculated that the combined average age of my subjects is now sixty-two. Perhaps they are too far removed from contemporary teenage sub-culture to be able to identify it, let alone understand it and interpret it. However, because they are not deliberately writing for a clearly perceived market in a particular time and place, their work has more chance of remaining universal. It never was trendy in the first place. Townsend says of it: ‘Outside the United States and Britain, the most impressive contribution to English language children’s literature in recent years has, been made by Australian writers. Indeed proportionately to population, the Australian achieve­ment has probably been more note­worthy than the American or British’.

Having acknowledged that many excellent modern Australian children’s books exist, this article attempts to bring to the notice of adults interested in reading for the young – particularly to teachers – information about some particular books which might provide enjoyable and rewarding reading for themselves and, in tum, to children at home or in school. There is nothing childish or condescending about modern children’s literature; today’s writers ‘talk down’ to children at their peril. There is no book worth reading at ten that isn’t worth reading again at forty and many adults are turning to today’s high quality children’s literature, find­ing in it a rich source of pleasure and insight. Children’s writers have few of ‘the constraints that bedevil others – arbitrary sex, violence and sensationalism aren’t obligatory for them – and they have far more freedom to experiment and explore.

The lists which follow are descriptive rather than prescriptive. Nobody can accurately or reliably put an age-label on any book. I know of eight year olds who know Tolkien backwards and teenagers who can’t yet manage Noddy. At the very large school my children go to there is said to be virtually no reading problem, whereas for many schools illiteracy is a formidable problem, a barrier to personal and educational development. The reader is asked to make his own considered judgements about the suitability for his own situation of particular items listed, once he has read them. But beware of labels. If you are over forty, do you go to libraries or book shops asking for something suitable for a middle-aged reader?

As most librarians know, teenagers will choose a paperback over a hard bound copy every time, all other things being equal. For them, the medium is part of the message. The more intimate, casual format itself is an anti-establishment symbol with which they can identify. They are also convinced that the paperback is somehow shorter. And of course, if properly done, they have such marvellous covers.

Many of the listed books are available in paperback and astute publishers ought to consider snapping up any that aren’t. This would be a pleasing result of this article, just as would be the re­issuing of those titles which are currently out of print, and the maintaining of worthwhile backlists. Something as superb as, for instance, Margaret Balderson ‘s When Jays Fly to Barbmo, ought to be around and selling for decades to come, but who is going to buy what doesn’t exist, or is invisible?