Children's literature

A guide to children's literature including resources at the State Library and elsewhere

Finding a known author or title

This guide helps you find fantasy books for children and young adults. Keywords used to find fiction in our catalogue vary and this means that you will need to use a number of search strategies and resources to find fiction books in the theme of fantasy, depending on how much information you have to start with

To find a known title or author navigate to the Library catalogue and enter your terms in the large search box

For example, to find versions of Lewis Carroll's fantasies Alice's adventures in wonderland and Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there enter the author's name plus the term 'Alice' and click search. To see a comprehensive guide to doing research on Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' books see the guide Lewis Carroll and his 'Alice' books

Australian fantasy

To find our holdings of Australian fantasy go to our Library catalogue

Type in the term fantasy and then use the options from Refine results.  These will be retrieve fantasy stories for young adults and children but to identify Australian works of fantasy or science fiction, you will need to search eresources and print indexes

Some Australian eresources and databases include

  • Aurealis is the Australian online magazine for fantasy, science fiction and horror and includes book reviews and awards

Australian Fantasy

The early May Gibbs fantasy set on the rooftops of London About Us

Gibbs' better know gumnut characters in The Wattle babies

Elisabeth MacIntyre's Ambrose Kangaroo: a story that never ends

Bottersnikes and Gumbles by Sid Wakefield, illustrated by Desmond Digby

John Mystery's Adventures of the Woolly Sisters: Pearl and Plain Jane