Convicted! The Unwonderful World of Kids, Crims An

Dr Anna Clark is one of Australia’s most exciting and prominent historians. At just 27 years of age she has already obtained her PhD in history from the University of Melbourne, and will be taking up her postdoctorate at Monash later this year. Dr Clark is also co-author of the highly acclaimed, deliciously controversial and multi-award-wining book, The History Wars (by Stuart Macintyre). It’s enough to make anyone feel lazy! Dr Clark’s PhD looked at the way history is taught in Australia (the much more serious but slightly less catchy official title being ‘Teaching the Nation: Politics and Pedagogy in Australian History’). ‘I wrote Convicted! Because I wanted to make history fun for kids. History doesn’t have to be boring to have integrity.’ Well, the paint has just dried on the book, and luckily for kids around Australia, Dr Clark is wickedly funny. Convicted! Is an important and very funny book. Really, we could keep going on forever because Dr Clark has received more awards and given more lectures than you can poke a stick at. She’s not half as annoying as she sounds on paper, honest.

Kate Cawley is an incredibly funny woman with a strange, graphic pen in her hand. When Kate is NOT illustrating cannibalism and floggings, she is an award-winning animator and RMIT lecturer in animation and interactive media. This means she is shaping the minds of Australia’s most promising young animators and film-makers. Her animated films have won awards in Australia and Europe, and have screened on TV and in film festivals around the world. She is currently working on a children’s series for Canadian and Australian TV. This is her first children’s book. ‘As an animator, I am used to working with 25 frames per second! It was wonderful – but challenging – to use only one image to communicate a concept. I loved the idea of working on this book with Anna Clark because she communicates brilliant information in such an irreverent way. The process of distilling complex ideas into a single drawing for kids was very exciting for me.’ In illustrating Dr Anna Clark’s text for Convicted!, Kate manages to see the humour in the darkness – from the terrible miscommunication between the First Fleet and the Aboriginal people (bearing in mind that ‘worra worra’ means ‘go away’) to the convicts’ penchant for home-made rum. Kate’s hilarious illustrations are fresh and original and – it must be said – deeply twisted. Just in case you are not yet convinced of this, have a look at Kate’s take on the shipwrecked supply ships that left the new colony fighting against starvation.