The Tram to Bondi Beach (Australian Children's Classics)

Highly commended - Children's book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year (year?)The illustrations are water-colour wash - very attractive to adults, but I'm not so sure of their appeal to children.The text is quite sophisticated, so in the younger age range (5 -6 or so) it would need to be read aloud. The Bondi Tram was a fairly legendary institution in Sydney, now 40 years or so gone. The story is set in about the 1940s (judging from the fairisle vests worn by the chief protagonist, Kieran. Kieran gets a job as a paper-boy selling papers on the tram. This is a story about another era, populated by characters with Irish and Anglo sounding names. It is interesting from that point of view, and could be of use in introducing topics of history, and especially for Sydney-siders. The story itself is reasonably interesting for children and would have a place in a library or home collection. It is a gentle evocation of another era and could inspire curiosity in the younger child.