Defending the environmental status quo: an ecocritical analysis of the lived spaces of indigenous animals in contemporary Australian picturebooks

Abstract This article presents an analysis of six contemporary Australian picturebooks featuring indigenous animals, with a focus on how these texts represent the lived spaces of animals and the environmental messages they convey. Using the Australian Children’s Book Council Awards as a source, we employed a range of inclusion and exclusion criteria to identify six narrative picturebooks with Australian indigenous animals as their main characters. Ecocriticism, a theoretical framework that examines the relationship between literature and the physical environment, was employed to uncover the ways in which the picturebooks could possibly shape and influence attitudes toward animals and environmental challenges. Findings suggest that while the books often depict biodiversity and naturalistic animal behaviours, they tend to reinforce human-focused perspectives and offer limited opportunities for critical engagement with environmental issues. This research contributes to the growing body of scholarship on children’s literature and environmental education by highlighting the need for picturebooks that move beyond shallow environmentalism to foster opportunities for supporting deeper ecological awareness in early literacy contexts.