Bart Ziino's "'They Seem to Understand all about the War': Australian children and the First World War,” has been judged by an independent committee as the best article appearing in the Journal of The History of Childhood and Youth during 2018. You can find it in volume 11, no 2, pages 227-247.
The committee wrote: "Ziino’s article makes complex use of a unique range of child and adult produced sources which enables readers to more fully understand child and adult perspectives on war. Ziino’s documentation includes children’s private writing, play and memoirs, and parents and teachers reflections and correspondence on turbulent family life and children’s behaviour. This erudite technique probes the meeting-points between adult attempts to influence children’s patriotism and children’s own experiences of lost in wartime. It is a methodology that might be effective in other studies of how children negotiate growing up in times of social stress, unrest and turmoil."
Linda Mahood, JHCY Editor
Tamara Myers, SHCY President