Australian cookbooks for younger readers : from Flora Pell to Junior MasterChef

Food writing has become a significant genre of contemporary writing, comprising a surprising proportion of the texts written, published, sold and read in English today. In term of writing for young people, cookbooks purporting to address children's obesity, diabetes and diet in general take a prominent place. Beside these, there is a growing sub-genre of cookbooks intended as guides for children to use themselves while preparing food. Working from a selection of Australian cookery books such as those for girls by Flora Pell in the first half of the last century, through Margaret Gossett's landmark Children’s Picture Cookbook (1947) to today's plethora of children-targeted volumes, this paper will address this Australian publishing phenomenon.