Trina Saffioti, illustrated by Norma MacDonald,
Stolen Girl
Magabala Books, 2011.

Age 7-10

Stolen Girl tells the story of an anonymous Aboriginal Australian girl who is abducted by the “Chief Protector of Aborigines” and sent far away to live in a dormitory and learn the language and ways of whites. Trina Saffioti and Norma MacDonald thus bring alive the story Saffioti imagines about her own grandmother, Rosie, who was part of Australia’s stolen generation.

A foreword explains that “stolen generation” refers to those affected by the Australian policy of forcefully integrating into mainstream white society Aboriginal children who were not “full blood.” An estimated 100,000 children were separated from their families between 1900 and 1969. In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized formally for this government mistreatment.

Saffioti tells of a happy mother and child living in a corrugated iron house in the bush, the mother teaching the girl how to swim, to collect eucalyptus honey, and to hunt goanna, and elders teaching the youths the stories of their ancestors. The girl is abducted on a visit to town while her mother is buying flour.

Life in the camp where she is sent is highly regulated. “They took away the clothes that her mother had sewn, and gave her a faded dress someone else had worn.” When is she going home, she asks, and the older girls tell her, “You ain’t. None of us are.”

But the girl remembers mornings on the veranda, “eating damper thick with golden syrup and drinking sweet milky tea.” She studies and works, but at night she dreams of “running into her mother’s arms.” Singing, she “imagines that her mother can hear her voice echoing off the desert sand.” Secretly she plans her escape. The story ends with her leaving the camp, but it’s not clear whether she makes it home or not.

Norma MacDonald, also of Aboriginal descent, renders the warm, beautiful bush landscape, the unfamiliar routines of camp life and the blue dream life of a homesick young girl in exquisite watercolor illustrations that give a lively, respectful sense of Aboriginal peoples and culture. A treasure for Australian children learning about their own history, Stolen Girl will also help children worldwide to understand the hurt inflicted on native peoples and the importance of efforts to make amends.

Charlotte Richardson
May 2011