My 12-year old grand-niece has been selected for the Person-to-Person program and will be representing our state next year in Australia for three weeks. She’s a highly-focused honor student who will want to learn all she can about the continent before going. I’d like to buy her a good book about the place, but am clueless. I turn to all of you in supplication.
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. One of the best history books ever written, and both great history and great literature.
Very well reviewed. Would it hold the interest of a bright 12-year old?
Another vote for the Fatal Shore book. It’s packed with facts–many of which are not pretty. But the style is not academically dry.
I was a bright 12-year old when “Lawrence of Arabia” hit the (very big) screen & was inspired to read “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” Hardly “Little Women”–but I enjoyed it.
Let her give it a try.
I would think so. It’s great storytelling, and the second chapter, “A Horse Foaled by an Acorn” is compelling reading (as is the rest), describing the sociological factors that led to the founding of the colony. Hughes is a masterful writer; it reads like a novel.
For something a bit simpler, there’s also Bill Bryson’s “In a Sunburned Country,” a travel book of Australia that’s filled with history. It tells more about contemporary Australia than “The Fatal Shore,” and is also a fine read.
The Last Continent, Terry Pratchett. 
“Terry Pratchett would like it to be known that The Last Continent is not a book about Australia. It’s just vaguely australian.”
–Book blurb
Songlines, by Bruce Chatwin. One of my top 5 favorite travel books of all time.
The Last Continent is not about Austrailia - it’s about the USA. The Australian book is Down Under (“In a Sunburned Country” in the USA).
G’Day America: The Paul Hogan Story.
::D&R::
Bill Bryson is good at getting some of the ethos, but you have to take him with a large grain of salt.
My suugestion is Lonely Planet’s Australian Phrasebook. Not only will it give your grandneice a start t unerstanding some of the strange words and phrases that will be thrown at her (partly to test or joke with her), but it has some useful snippets of Australian culture thrown in there, told from an Australian viewpoint. And it costs less than $6 in the US!
I really enjoyed In a Sunburned Country. I felt like it gave me a sense of what Australia was all about–but I’ve never been there or anything, so maybe it gave me an incorrect impression. 
On the plus side, it was an entertaining and easy read. The chapters can probably be easily read independently, so she could read only the most relevant parts.
I recommend “Culture Shock: Australia”. This is a book about what it is like to live in (move to) Australia. As such, it has LOTS of good, practical information about the people, the language (yes, it’s very different), the attitude, etc.
J.
Absolutely enjoyed In A Sunburned Country. While it’s completely true that you should take Bryson’s work with a grain of salt, he always manages to convey what the place feels like. As well, it’s Bill Bryson; it’s stuffed with enough factoids and humour to hold the attention of any intelligent twelve year old. It is a book that she will laugh at, and enjoy, and take with her.
It is not, however, a guide on what to see in Australia or an authoritative voice on the history of Australia. It is a book about the impression Australia left on someone.
In a Sunburned Country/Down Under is very, very good, and importantly to a brainy kid, full of anecdotes, and funny.
If she were about four years older, I’d recommend Peter Carey, in particular Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda, and The True History of the Kelly Gang. But I think 12 is just a little too young for that particular author’s themes and prose style.
If she wants to watch a movie, though, Muriel’s Wedding is a very good caricature of suburban Aussies.
The Fatal Shore is a great book, but go through it yourself before giving it to your grand-niece (or send it via her parents); it is not necessarily suitable for a 12-year-old. There are some graphic descriptions of floggings and the punishments used on Norfolk Island (the penal colony’s penal colony) that made me wince, and I read forensic textbooks for fun. I can’t remember if it was equally frank about the convicts’ sex lives, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Of course, some 12-year-olds love gruesome stuff, so YMMV.
He was talking about the Terry Pratchett book Last Continent, not Bill Bryson’s Lost Continent.
Thanks, all. I’ve ordered both the recommended books for her, along with “Rabbit-Proof Fence”. Cheers.