Hidden in Plain Sight: Child-authored Material in Australian Museums and Archives

Abstract: Since the history of children and youth gained momentum in the 1970s, historians have expressed frustration over the difficulties of locating children's voices in archives. While the availability of child-authored material presents a major challenge for many children's historians, not all are destined to work with lost or fragmentary evidence. By examining holdings of child art and writing in Australian collections, this article resists the assumption—common in the historiography of children and youth—that only fragments of child-authored material have survived in archives. In Australia, children's documentary records are far more voluminous than many scholars have previously acknowledged, comprising a surprisingly large array of children's art, writing, audiovisual and material culture.