Penguin

The world bank’s 1993 report, The East Asian Miracle, conveyed the quasi-religious awe prompted by the economic progress of many East Asian societies in the last quarter of the twentieth century. While somewhat self-serving (it was funded by Japanese money), it set the tone for much of the political and economic analysis of East Asia in the 1990s and its prospects. With few exceptions, we were told that the future belonged to Asia, that export-oriented industrialisation and selective liberalisation were the keys to growth, and that Asian societies had certain cultural features which furthered their comparative advantage and questioned the universality of Western notions such as democracy and human rights. This suddenly ended in July 1997 when the collapse of the Thai baht prompted a series of currency crises that produced political and social turmoil across the region. The Asian financial crisis, borne of bad investments, dodgy government–business relations and that favourite of the press, ‘crony capitalism’, raised questions about the foundations of Asia’s strength and the ‘Asian century’.

Ursula Dubosarsky is an original and sensitive author of books for children and young adults, while the inimitable Paul Jennings is the author of many books for younger readers. His books engage readers through their hilarious plots and the insight he brings to the reading experience. Dubosarsky has won many literary awards for books such as the haunting The Red Shoe (2006), while Jennings, whose books have hooked many a reluctant reader, has won numerous children’s choice and other awards for books, including Unreal! (1985). They also have in common a driving passion for words, language, literature, reading and children. Both authors have poured this passion into these non-fiction releases, The Word Spy and The Reading Bug and How to Help Your Child Catch It.

Margaret Simons is a writer familiar to her readers. There she was in Fit to Print: Inside the Canberra press gallery (1999), first driving with her husband and young children to the national capital, then following Michelle Grattan’s blue dress around Parliament House. Here she is again in The Content Makers: Understanding the media in Australia, telling us about her experiences in daily journalism, her move into freelance journalism, writing for the e-mail news service Crikey, and attending last year’s infamous 2006 Walkley Awards dinner.

There is something of the Famous Five about this book, largely due to the central character. It is the 1870s and botanist Ingrid – ‘a woman in trousers’ – is on her horse, Thistle, collecting specimens in Western Australia. She and her father, who dearly misses her back in Adelaide, are writing and illustrating a book on wildflowers. Ingrid is practical and can fix a broken water pump; even though she is considered eccentric, people seek her advice.

It is rare that two books of such quality should appear at the same time, especially on a subject as tragic but absorbing as the fall of Singapore. The reader is reminded immediately of films about the maiden voyage of the Titanic. You know that at the end of the film the ship has to sink: you also know that Singapore must fall with equally dramatic suddenness. Worse, in the case of Singapore, the systematic massacre (sook ching) of much of its overseas Chinese population by the Japanese kempetai (secret police) adds a huge dimension of tragedy to what is already a disaster; as does the fact that the Japanese, unlike most Western armies of the period, had no plans to deal effectively with more than 130,000 Allied prisoners, who were then dispersed and incarcerated in prisoner-of-war camps across South-East Asia and Japan itself. Every so often, these scenes are revisited by sympathetic writing, and also by new evidence and analysis, which is the case here.

In 1936, West Australian MP Leslie Craig stated in parliament that the (then) current figure of Aboriginal ‘half-castes’ in Australia – approximately 4000 – would soon number 40,000 if something were not done to stem the tide of this growing problem. Seventy years later, in 2006, a federal member of parliament has suggested that Australia is in danger of ‘aborting itself out of existence’ and becoming ‘a Muslim nation in fifty years’ time’ – and this only a few months after the Cronulla race riots. It is clear that race-based fears are still prevalent in our predominantly white Australia. Henry Reynolds’s latest book, Nowhere People – like most of his books – is as much an analysis of our contemporary society as it is an historical examination of how international theories of race shaped Australia’s identity over the past 218 years.

‘Time will tell’ is an old adage that, in a peculiar way, links and separates these three different tales. While Victor Kelleher’s moving and poetic Dogboy lures readers into the harsh ‘Dry’ of a time that never was and never will be, Jutta Goetze’s story plunges into snow-bound Bavaria, in a time both familiar and strange to contemporary audiences. Kerry Greenwood, on the other hand, situates her futuristic sci-fi in a place and era at once known and yet irrevocably altered; creating an anachronistic story that is both challenging and exciting. All of these writers rely on temporality to both weave and anchor their stories with differing results.

One walks a fine line between patriotism and claptrap when writing about anything to do with war. Especially when writing for young people, one tries to salute the courage of soldiers and to honour the fallen, but also to instil caution in potential young soldiers; to convey that war is hell and that it shows human beings at their worst. Of course, one wants to tell an exciting story, too, with heroes and villains and suspense – with maybe a history lesson or two thrown in. Two of the following books succeed majestically in this task; the third falls far short.

Families are curious entities. They are, by simple definition, households of individuals bound by common lineage. But they are also complex organisms, as these three novels show. Families nurture the individual and offer a refuge from the problems of the larger world, yet they can also impede the growth of their youngest members, who seek their own place in the world and attempt to shape their own responses to it.