I have been asked why I bother to spend my time on one writer who no one knows and has only written three books. Others have been forthrightly incredulous that a University would be remotely interested in supporting ‘my whim’ when the world has so many other pressing problems.
Children’s literature has become the poor cousin in the school curriculum as librarians have disappeared, rapidly replaced by part-time library technicians who cost less. Parents are encouraged to buy through school catalogues delivered by astute publishers to make book buying easy. I question the quality. Nevertheless, I am hopeful that the new Australian Curriculum (AC) may offer a renewed opportunity for literature to be re-established as important. Literature in the AC has its own strand!
Ernst’s stories can be interpreted within the context of her history and I note with transparency of process that I cannot escape my personal perspective. We mirror, Ernst and I: both teachers; writers and mothers. My bias is understandable.
Perhaps it's not surprising that on discovering Olga Ernst’s fairytales that I should be drawn to a writer, who conjured a world for her child readers set in familiar (to me) bush and city locales peopled with adventurous and heroic female fairy creatures. Ernst wrote from her own love of the bush, a response to her country childhood and interest in geology and botany. She included geographical features almost as a travel guide: The Yarra River; The Dandenong Ranges; The Black Spur and beyond the known, the Gulf of Carpentaria.
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