Like a party where you hope to see famous faces, this exhibition offers the familiar – the Green Sheep, the wombats, the Magic Pudding – but also the chance to meet half-remembered friends and to make new ones. Story Time: Australian Children’s Literature, the result of three years’ work by curator Grace Blakeley-Carroll, features works from NLA’s collection and beyond. In the exhibition’s companion book, Story Time Stars, Blakeley-Carroll writes that, ‘regardless of whether we have children in our lives, we were all once young and many of us hold dear the stories of our childhood’.

Original artwork is essential for an exhibition of this scale. The scope ensures that displayed items include manuscripts, hand-written and typed; artist’s dummies, roughs and proofs; printed editions of the same work with different illustrators, in diverse languages and different media; promotional material and realia such as toys, figurines, clothing, and puppets; and even a windcheater (featuring Snugglepot and Cuddlepie).