I’m happy today to welcome Tania McCartney to my blog, here to talk about her excellent new book Australian Story. Over to you, Tania.
I adore non-fiction books. Always have. And I’m particularly obsessed with history books . . . anything from fat, scantily-fonted tomes on Julius Caesar through to Horrible Histories laugh-fests for 8- to 12-year-olds. I love them all – and, having studied modern history at uni, it’s forever been a pipedream of mine to pen something of a historical nature.
Isn’t it so lovely when pipedreams come true?
It was both heartening and heart-wrenching penning a concise history of our country for AustralianStory. The one thing that struck me about its compilation and composition was how utterly emotional the process was. I thought I knew a thing or two about Australian history, but let me tell you, I learned plenty during the hefty research processes undertaken for this book. Plenty that shocked, plenty that made me laugh, plenty that made me sit in wide-eyed wonder, and plenty that made me bawl like a baby.
Because this book is aimed at primary school aged children, it was important to research events that appealed to the very young. Naturally, there were some events deemed too graphic or inappropriate for this age group, and there were some deemed too ‘boring’ or ‘convoluted’, but all of the larger events that helped shape our country – such as major wars – were left in.
My first draft for Australian Story was 19 pages long and over a third of this text was cut for the final draft. Culling these entries was tough. The text then had to be simplified, shortened, clarified, and sent to professionals like historians, teachers and Indigenous advisors for accuracy. Once this was done, proofreaders then set about aligning the text and its ‘voice’, fixing any possible nuance that could cause altered meaning.
It was a laborious process, but an important one. Accuracy and clarity was paramount with this publication, and it took many people to ensure it was done well.
I’m sure all writers of non-fiction books have a process they use to get through the many elements that comprise this type of work. For Australian Story, I kept spreadsheets that could be crossed-checked with running Word documents and I created the manuscript in several drafts to avoid anything being lost or missed.
Being organised overall was high on the priority list for this book, because not only did I have a heck of a lot of historical research to complete, I had visuals to sort through, too.
Australian Story is essentially a visual timeline of our country’s past, from the dawn of time to our very first saint. It encompasses a wide variety of themes, from politics to entertainment, invention to war, land formation to land rights. In order to illustrate the complex tales of our past, I needed to use a variety of images from the National Library’s vast Digital Collection. These images include photographs, paintings, sketches, maps, diagrams and ephemera – and number almost 130,000, and counting.
Sifting through this Collection was a lengthy but inspirational process. After finalising the historical text entries for the book, I began looking through the Collection for inspiration, and quickly found many wonderful examples I wanted to use.
Alas, wanting to use images and being able to use them, are two different things. This is for many reasons, but the main ones were copyright issues and whether the image was able to be adequately digitised for book use.
Finding age-appropriate images was also prohibitive – and of course, we wanted to use bright, colourful, attractive pictures wherever possible. This necessitated the use of a handful of images that were sourced outside the Collection – some sourced by me, some suggested by book designer and illustrator Peter Shaw, and some by the library staff, historians or other professionals.
Once the images for the book were approved (this often involved lengthy processes), the book layout began. Although Peter took control of this, I was fortunate to have running input in regard to the design – and so Australian Story became a true collaboration. As the book was put together, I was also called on to help finesse and fact check and hone this amazing timeline, and so was able to be involved in virtually every part of its creation.
I’m phenomenally proud of Australian Story and although it was, by means of creation, a lengthy process, I loved every minute of it. I not only learned more about the history of our extraordinary country, but I learned even more about the processes of book creation and design – something I’m passionate about.
As Australian Story hits bookstores and libraries and schools, I’m hoping the hard work and collaborative effort will be appreciated by those I wanted to impress the most – kids. Yes, this book has romance. Yes it has rollicking adventure, controversy and struggle. Yes it has celebration and sporting triumphs. It may be just a ‘history book’ but boy am I hoping it makes history ‘cool’.
Book Details
Take a trip into the past––from the explosive beginnings of our planet to modern day Australia, in this fascinating journey through time. Featuring succinct entries on historical moments over the past 47 billion years, Australian Story covers ecological change, politics, invention, war, immigration, celebration, culture, modern technology and more.
Illustrated with a striking collection of photographs and images from the NLA’s digital collection, this is history for children like never before, and is a fascinating snapshot of our country. Australian Story tells who we once where, who we are today . . . and where we are going. Australian story is aimed at children in both Key Stage I and II.
AustralianStory: an illustrated timeline (1 March 2012), $24.95
National Library of Australia, ISBN: 9780642277459
About the Author
Tania McCartney is an author of children’s books and adult non-fiction. Her works include You Name It (Hodder Headline 1995), Handmade Living: a designer collective (Handmade Press 2010) and the Riley the Little Aviator series (latest title: Riley and the Grumpy Wombat: A journey around Melbourne, Ford Street Publishing 2011). She is also an established magazine writer, editor and blogger, and is a NYR12 ambassador for the ACT. She lives in Canberra with a husband, two kids and a mountain of books (especially history books). www.taniamccartney.com
If you want to learn more about Tania and her new book-baby, you can follow her tour at the following blogs and sites:
Australian Story Blog Tour, March 2012
Monday 5 March
Blog Tour Schedule and Book Giveaway
Kids Book Review
Book Launch Party Wrap-Up
Tania McCartney’s Blog
Book Giveaway
Alphabet Street
Tuesday 6 March
Book Review
Buzz Words
Australian Story Research Process
DeeScribe
Book Review and 10 Reasons Why History is Exciting
Soup Blog
Wednesday 7 March
Australian Story Teaching Notes for Key Stage I
Sheryl Gwyther’s Blog
Book Review and Teaching Notes Ideas for Key Stage II
The Book Chook
Book Review
Kids’ Book Capers
Image-Sourcing for Australian Story
Blue Dingo
Thursday 8 March
Book Review
Reading Upside Down
Book Review
Pass It On
Book Review
Bug in a Book
Friday 9 March
Book Giveaway
HerCanberra
The Writing Process for Australian Story
Sally Murphy’s Blog
Book Review
Books for Little Hands
Book Review
ReadPlus
Saturday 10 March
Book Review
Kids Book Review
Book Giveaway
Posie Patchwork Blog
Book Review
Suite 101
Sunday 11 March
Book Review
My Little Bookcase
Book Giveaway
Australian Women Online
Blog Tour Wrap-Up
Tania McCartney’s Blog
Congratulations Tania. What a mammoth undertaking. And worthwhile resource. I was forced to cut subjects from my last non-fiction book as you did and almost cried at the loss… and the work. Maybe you have another book in the cuts? Well done
Thanks for dropping in Sally, Cat and Jackie. It is a great book – very well put together. And thanks again for sharing it with us, Tania.
You should be proud Tania. Putting this book together would have exhausted me.
I imagine the culling would have been difficult.
I wonder if you could create a book for adults with all of the research you found shocking, confronting and age-inappropriate.
Tania your book sounds fascincating can't wait to read it. Also interesting to hear how much research goes into writing something like this and the selection process aobut what goe in and what goes out.
Brilliant book for the classroom or for gifting, Tania. I understand some of the problems of this; when I wrote The Children's Book of Australia I continually found that "names" I meant to include were not (by our standards) worthy folk at all. In fact, many of the iconic folks of the past would have been MUCH better NOT to have done what they did. Hindsight is a glorious thing, but