Ethel Turner (1872–1958)

The single greatest work of book-length fiction in 19th century Australia (rivalled only by the short stories of Henry Lawson and Steele Rudd) is a children's book. Ethel Turner's masterpiece haunts me, and I think it always will. Turner saw something in the still nascent Australia and its people, at just the period when the country was breaking free from its imperial roots (but before anyone other than white Anglos were permitted to live there) that I believe helped perpetuate that sense of freedom and difference from Europe. Read passionately by children for a century, I'm not sure if this work will reach the generation now starting school, but I hope so.

Turner says that not one of the seven children "is really good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are... [I]n Australia a model child is - I say it not without thankfulness - an unknown quantity.
It may be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in the sunny brilliancy of our atmosphere. It may be that the land and the people are so young-hearted together, and the children's spirits are not crushed and saddened by the shadow of long years' sorrowful history.
There is a lurking sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischief in nature here, and therefore in children.”

This is a work by a privileged white woman, no doubt, in a country that committed some grave sins in the 19th century. But as a work for Australian children, none of that should matter. Thank you, Ethel.… (meer)

Set mainly in the 1880s—and first published in 1894—this novel is apparently an Australian children’s classic. It tells the story of seven rather rambunctious siblings, the offspring of Captain Woolcott: six by his first (late) wife and the seventh with his very young second wife, Esther, only four years older than the eldest Woolcott child, Meg. They live in a chaotic household called Misrule in Sydney, Australia, and the ringleader of most of their mischief is 13-year-old Judy (known to her brothers as Fizz, and inexplicably called Helen by her stern father), whose antics get her exiled to boarding school. The story is full of difficult family dynamics, but laughter and tragedy as well. A timeless story for middle grades through adulthood.… (meer)