And how are they? What strikes me most in this collection of ten new children’s non-fiction publications is the variety of the field in relation to authorial voice and sense of purpose, and the differential commitment publishers can offer to production values. The latter criterion seems especially redolent at this historical juncture. We live in an age when the book is repositioning itself aesthetically in response to the massive availability of mostly free, infinitely reproducible, quality digital content.

A page from Sea Creatures

Australian Animals (Australian Geographic, $9.99 pb, 32 pp, 9781742451206) and Sea Creatures (ditto, 9781742451183) appear in Australian Geographic’s All About Australia series. They are intellectual fairy floss, quick to consume, vapid in the mouth. Yes, there are pictures with labels and some classification structures; and yes, the books have an index and glossary. An important aspect of non-fiction texts is the way they offer pathways for children to learn features of text not present in fiction. But the principle supporting a complex multi-modal presentation of content that brings together visual and scientific literacies is that the information is communicated for a purpose and that the channels of communication are clear. At the level of design, these books don’t support knowledge: they are random assemblages of animals; arrows, labels, and diagrams send mixed messages around the relative importance of some facts; and the underlying selection principles for section headings are mysterious. Cheap content, repackaged at speed: not even a library stocking filler, as far as I am concerned.

The Heroes of the Kokoda Track, by Nicholas Brasch (Black Dog Books, $16.99 pb, 32 pp, 9781742031347), is altogether meatier in both style and content. This book is filled with appealing visual elements – photographs, fact boxes, maps – that depict this momentous chapter in Australian military history. The weightier material, however, only increases the moral imperative to build a field and to structure the line of enquiry and, in this, The Heroes of the Kokoda Track fails: reducing the information to small pieces has atomised the big picture. The double-page Kokoda timeline on pages eight and nine is a good example. A timeline needs to give a sense of history through linearity, scale, and meaningful gradation. This one breaks all the rules and defeats its own intent. What is frustrating to an adult is unfair on the child reader, who looks to a text to support his or her meaning making. History as a discipline requires more than this.

The strategy of repackaging and re-purposing material from the National Library of Australia’s picture collections is creatively, culturally, and economically laudable. The Best Nest (NLA, $17.95 pb, 32 pp, 9780642277046) brings together thirteen interesting and finely executed bird details. I enjoyed their stylistic variety and the way that magnification softened their lines, but what a pity that Penny Olsen was instructed to adapt a 1945 text, rather than writing her own. Cooper Cuckoo, Kylie Kookaburra, and Frankie Fairy-wren feel out of step with the times, and the typography is a terrible mélange of colours, point sizes, and fonts. I am unsure of the value of separating direct speech from supporting narrative in this instance.

A page from The Best Nest

A weak poetic text also undermines Incy Wincy Spider (NLA, $19.95 hb, 24 pp, 9780642277169). Again, a fine set of details, but it is a book that doesn’t quite know its audience. Lifting flaps and pulling tabs invites reader interaction, but having established the promise, the book needs to deliver the wow factor. I liked the Did You Know section, but it seems pitched at an older market.

Leigh Hobbs is an illustrator who can capture character, and in Stew A Cockatoo (Little Hare, $24.99 hb, 48 pp, 9781921541513) you are immediately seduced by his style. Once inside, however, you become slightly bewildered. I think children will think this is one type of book and become irritated when it reads as another. Generically speaking, a chef needs a recipe to be clear. It is a procedure, and procedures need to be precise with language appropriately pitched to the target audience. The language load in this book is profoundly adult, and the multiple registers of voice – the recipes versus the commentary – detract from one another. The Aussie vernacular is relentless – too much caricature in here for me.

How do you solve a problem like Andy? Here’s a guy that builds the recital hall, installs the PA, packs the house out, walks to the microphone, looks at the audience, and then says ‘Whatever’. And the crowd goes wild. It would be frustrating if it weren’t fundamentally sincere, but that it is sincere, and that Andy Griffiths is an important part of the comic revitalisation of Young Adult fiction in this country, should be beyond doubt. Here is a writer who has effectively offered a print voice back to a generation. In What Body Part Is That? (Pan Macmillan, $14.99 pb, 180 pp, 9780330403986), Griffiths and long-time collaborator–illustrator Terry Denton continue their investigations into the wonderful world of stupidity. As in many of Griffiths’s books, the anarchic tone conceals the series of formal written exercises that has produced it. This one is a bird spotter’s guide to the body. It is a taxonomic treat, but like all classifications it sacrifices the whole to the exploitation of the parts. The Fun Facts section is fun (though totally fictional). There are many lessons in critical literacy in this book: how do we get clever enough to know what’s what? which facts are worth listening to? which ones are just stupidly, funnily silly?

After Andy Griffiths, reading Booms, Busts and Bushfires (Scholastic, $15.99 pb, 176 pp, 9781741697865), by Jackie French, with illustrations by Peter Sheehan, was like being asked to have an interview with the Principal. It seemed so serious, and not at all stupid. This is the eighth instalment in the Fair Dinkum Histories series, and covers recent Australian history from 1973. A difficult gig in terms of tone and material, but French pulls it off, and it is fascinating to read a historical survey of your own times pitched at children. What struck me most from this volume was the immediacy and power of the parliamentary sphere. It is a good example of how much ‘history’ is made through party political positions and wilful personality.

A page from Can We Save the Tiger?

Can We Save the Tiger? (Walker, $29.95 hb, 56 pp, 9781406319095) is a heady mix of beauty and intellectual reflection. The book is not really about tigers – they get plenty of attention elsewhere. Its contribution to knowledge concerns animals such as the Partula snail, the Kakapo, and the White Rumped Vulture. It is a poignant book, but ‘it’s never as simple as that’, writes Martin Jenkins, quite rightly. The rueful descriptions of human activity don’t censure but explain that activity on its own terms. I delighted in the humanism of this book and its commitment to reproducing complexity. The question is not so fundamentally can but why should we save animals. In a fashion, and maybe in a form not fully intended, Jenkins’s prose combines with Vicky White’s extraordinary illustrations to offer an answer. Sometimes ethical principles lie beyond rational debate. This book creates a space for the just because.

Legendary Journeys: Trains (Walker, $39.95 hb, 32 pp, 9781921720048) gets it all right. This is a treat of a book – no, more than a book. There are so many engaging hooks for the young and enquiring mind. Firstly, there is context: a clear historical development, against which the breakout boxes and visual overlays play, but don’t confuse. Philip Steele’s text is authoritative without being patronising. Sebastian Quigley’s illustrations make poetry of the subject matter. You will learn a lot about trains and history and geography, but your learning will be effortless. In content, it’s a very international affair, but The Ghan rates a mention. The book is crafted to exacting standards, and what pull-outs! The pages extend telescopically: not one page length but two in a manner that mimetically echoes the enormous lengths of trains. If you lift a tab in this book, you will be rewarded for the effort – there are secrets inside. Non-fiction, yes, but also magical and imaginative. This one is bigger and better than a book. It is an absolute trip.

CONTENTS: APRIL 2011