Four-time winner of the Australian Children's Book of the Year Award and recipient of the 1986 Hans Christian Andersen Medal, Patricia Wrightson is one of Australia's best-known writers for children and young adults. She has earned critical acclaim and has gained an international following for her books, most of which are fantasies that draw upon ancient Australian myths. According to Zena Sutherland and May Hill Arbuthnot in their Children and Books, "Wrightson has been a channel through which children of her own and other countries have learned the beauty and dignity of the legendary creatures of Aborigine mythology." The author's works of fantasy, which draw on the folklore of Australia's indigenous people, have helped, as a contributor for the St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers put it, to "change . . . the literature of . . . [her] country." Wrightson's benchmark 1972 novel, The Nargun and the Stars, marked the beginning of her reality-based...