Courageous Kids and their Amazing Adventures by Stephanie Owen Reeder and Liz Duthie (illustrator)

Title: Courageous Kids and their Amazing Adventures

Author: Stephanie Owen Reeder and Liz Duthie (illustrator)

Genre: History, Non-fiction

Publisher: NLA Publishing

Published: 1^st November 2023

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 352

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: Stephanie Owen Reeder’s Heritage Heroes series celebrates stories of incredible survival, persistance and resilience by young people. This book binds together the five original, beloved stories with two brand new ones:

• Brave Bee and the Castaway Kids
• Will the Wonderkid and the Elusive Treasure
• Amazing Grace and the Sinking Ship
• Lennie the Legend and the Remarkable Ride
• Marvellous Miss May and the Wondrous Circus
• Clever Quong Tart and the New Gold Mountain
• Valiant Jane and the Disappearing Trail

Liz Duthie’s occasional illustrations give young readers a visual springboard for imagining the story and picturing themselves as these courageous young people.

~*~

Australian history is filled with many stories of courage and bravery, whether in the bush, in war, or throughout the small moments that have defined major events throughout our history. These stories can span cultures, decades, and centuries and show that there has always been a tenacity to survive in Australia, particularly when the people in the story have been thrust into an environment they’ve never been or a situation that sees them forced to do whatever they can to survive. Within these stories are many children who had made their mark on history in big and small ways, sometimes when they are older, sometimes as children. Stephanie Owen Reeder has brought some of these stories together in a new collection called Courageous Kids and their Amazing Adventures.

Courageous Kids and their Amazing Adventures is adapted from Stephanie’s series called Heritage Heroes and brings all the stories together in one book. These stories explore the mid-nineteenth century to 1914 (though no reference to World War One) and 1932, and the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, with a diverse range of kids based on race and gender and incorporates people of all backgrounds who were present for the events and moments explored in the stories. And the kids all have different experiences – shipwrecked kids, kids lost in the bush, kids in the circus, and kids who want to see something special are all in this book, showcasing the range of experiences as well. Not every child will face danger, but they all face a kind of uncertainty. The stories capture what it was like in pre-Federation and post-Federation, what it was like to live in the bush, or to be orphaned, or to be part of a different culture, as well as how various cultures worked together and helped each other – which illustrate that the cultural and racial make-up of Australia has always been diverse and the ways people have interacted with each other and adapted or worked together have also been diverse – depending on the time, what has been going on throughout history and the places people have lived, amongst other things.

I think this worked because instead of seeing Australia in binaries of one group against another, these stories showed how people have come together and tried to understand where they need or want to, or where they have been able to work together and help each other. To me, it was an exploration of humanity and how people responded to a range of situations at times when they had to find ways to survive, as well as showing the complexities of relationships and cultures – how we all see other people and the misunderstandings we have until we can learn more about something new. It shows that there is more to history than we know, and so many more stories to uncover across the board. A book like this is a great way to get kids interested in history in a way that they can relate to with children around their age, and stories that will interest them.