There is an almost overwhelming tide of historical texts for young people being published at the moment. Fictional accounts of actual events are enormously popular, and frequently the diary form is used, as this is felt to be more accessible to young people, and also gives the writer licence to use the historical present tense with impunity.

Gary Crew and Mark Wilson have collaborated on Young Murphy: A Boy’s Adventure, which presents a diary in a picture-book format. John Murphy was a fifteen-year-old boy who was part of Ludwig Leichhardt’s expedition to find a route through the Darling Downs of south-east Queensland to Port Essington, near present-day Darwin. During the expedition, Leichhardt’s incompetence as any kind of navigator or leader led to the loss of supplies and transport, serious altercations with Aborigines and, ultimately, death and disability for team members. Crew presents Murphy’s diary in spare and period prose. Murphy’s devotion to his new father figure, John Gilbert, is seen in his increasing interest in botany and drawing, as well as in the necessary questioning of his childhood beliefs. His disgust with Leichhardt’s leadership is evident in his sorrow at the loss of John Gilbert and in his boyish outrage and helplessness in the face of cruelty to animals.