A new edition of this classic title.

Essays in which happiness becomes a magic carpet, lifting readers above momentary fret and making the ordinary appears wondrous.

Lazy Bottersnikes in outback rubbish tips, Sir Pronoun's dilemma about standing in Miss Noun's place and the story of how Jack built a house, a hut or a shack are all to be found in this treasury of Australian children's books. This book illuminates the icons of Australian children's literature from Gibbs and Outhwaite to Shaun Tan.

In this, the first collection of ecocritical essays devoted to Australian contexts and their writers, Australian and USA scholars (settlers, invaders, temporary visa holders) comment on the transliteration of sea, land and interior through the works of major and minor authors and through their own experience with the bioregion. The littoral zone is the starting point in this fresh approach to reading literature and is organised around the natural environment - rainforest, desert, mountains, coast, islands, Antarctica. There's the beach where sexual and spiritual crises occur; the Wheatbelt area - the most visible clearance line on the planet; desert literature, camel trekking, and the transformation of a salt flat into an inland island. New Age literature that 'appropriates' Aboriginals and their cultures as the healing poultice for an ailing and dispirited West; a re-examination of pastoralism, and "the feet of millions of sheep . that] have done unspeakable damage to soils"; an inquiry into whether Judith Wright's work can "persuade us to rejoice" in the world; an investigation of the Limestone Plains, home of the bush capital and the bogong moth; of bananas, cane toads and the Great Barrier Reef in tropic Queensland; of national parks and guesthouses where "the mountains meet the sea"; a discursive approach to temperate islands that covers sealing, Soldier Settlement, and sea country pastoral; and finally to Antarctica, where an initial utopian approach gives way to an emphasis on its stark, 'timeless' icescape as a minimalist backdrop for human dramas. The author-terrain is no less grand in its scope: poets, playwrights, novelists, and non-fiction writers are discussed across the broad range of contexts that constitutes the littoral zone known as 'Australia'.

What are some of the connections that bind us to the stars? How have these connections been established? And how have people all around the world and throughout time reacted to the night sky, the sun and moon, in their poetry, mythology, rituals, and temples? This book explores the influence of the sky on both ancient and modern civilization, by providing a clear overview of the many ways in which humans have used the stars as an ordering principle in their cultures, and which today still inspire us intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. The book explores constellation lore from around the world, celestial alignments of monuments and temples, both from ancient and modern civilizations, and the role the sky has played in the cultures of the Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, Native American, Chinese, Mayan, Aztec, and Inca. Models of the universe from each of these cultures are described clearly, and each culture’s explanation of the stars, planets, and other celestial objects are described. The roots of astronomy and astrology are presented with original imagery and reproductions of ancient manuscripts that portray the structure of the physical universe as conceived by a diverse array of human cultures over the centuries. Our own scientific Big Bang cosmology and the origin of stars and elements are discussed in a philosophical context, to explore how we as modern people learn about the Universe, and incorporate the findings of science into our world views. A concluding chapter provides a summary of modern science's effort to unlock the celestial secrets from the sky and from past civilizations, and what these answers mean for us today.

"By the Book is an indispensable history of the literature of Queensland from its establishment as a separate colony in the mid-nineteenth century through major economic, political and cultural transformations to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Queensland figures in the Australian imagination as a frontier, a place of wild landscapes and wilder politics, but also as Australia's playground, a soft tourist paradise of warm weather and golden beaches. Based partly on real historical divergences from the rest of Australia, these contradictory images have been questioned and scrutini.

Centers on the particular contribution minority groups make to children's literature.