Background Information: This book was written for children and first published in 1933. Both the author and illustrator were better known for producing work for adults but they combined their talents to produce this work for children. It includes 25 different verse with accompanying illustrations for most of the poems. Banjo Paterson has focused on characters found in the Australian bush such as emu's, kangaroo's, koala's and platypus as subjects in the poems, while Norman Lindsay produced simple pen sketches to illustrate the verse.

Strengths of Resource: This is a fantastic early Australian picture book for children as it is an example of the kind of literature available at the time for young readers. The book was largely produced in the form of text with minimal illustrations, this is a typical feature of early 20th century literature for children. This work was produced to entertain children, a relatively new approach to children's literature. It is not trying to impart morals or values onto young readers and is designed for children to enjoy.

Illustrative style: Simple sketches are used throughout the book. Black ink was used by Lindsay and he has created reasonably detailed images. There is no background/foreground in the images as they are single sketches of characters.

Layout: There is a simple layout of text and illustration that implies a traditional approach was used to produce this book. Text is printed in the center of the page with each verse defined by spaces in between. A single illustration has been placed at either the bottom or side of the page, with no background images present. The illustrations are generally small and do not include whole page spreads.

Colour: No colour images. The book was printed without any colour and is entirely produced in black ink on clear white backgrounds.

Text: The text appears to have been printed in a size 16 font and is easily readable. Each verse is reproduced clearly with the title of the poem at the top left hand corner of the page.

Weakness of Resource: This picture book is over seventy years old and can now be described as classic children's literature. As it was produced simply with black and white images and large portions of text, it can be view as reasonably out of date to most young readers in the 21st century. Children are unlikely to find this book appealing as it contains none of the elements found in postmodern literature for children, such as colour or layout design.

Links to other Resources: 'The Animals Noah Forgot' was analysed to show the enormous differences between literature produced in the early 20th century and the picture books that are available for young readers now. This picture book includes sketched images on plain backgrounds, an illustrative style not widely used in picture books produced in the later part of the 20th century.

Comparison between old and new literature:

Changes can be seen in the layout and design of picture books created in the 21st century as distinctive illustrative styles and exciting colour's bring new elements to the production of literature for children.

The layout of illustrations is often a more predominate feature of the 'new' books than text is. Techniques such as 'bleeding' of pictures allows illustrators to use entire pages to portray visual meaning and draw the reader into the story more. This has resulted in limited amounts of text on most pages, as in the case of Mulga Bill's Bicycle. In Mulga Bill, it is the illustrations that are the focus and the Niland's have produced expressive images that convey much of the meaning of the written text. In 'The Animals' very little meaning is taken from the illustrations alone and children must read each verse to have a significant understanding of the text. The illustrations are limited to small pictures and the book is largely print based.

The most significant differences between the old and new literature center on the illustrative style being used. New adaptations of the traditional works rely heavily on illustrations to capture the attention of the reader. In both Waltzing Matlida and Mulga Bill, the reader is immediately interested in the book as the front covers do not imply the text will be traditional verse. From the exciting covers, children would assume these works are story books and proceed to read them in such a way, thus discovering new literature.

The original verse's are not changed in terms of the words used, these remain the same as previous versions. However, the text dose not follow a traditional layout of verse after verse, page after page. Instead, the adaptations of traditional literature use text in a non traditional way. Single lines of verse appear on the pages and are placed in various places on the page, often at the top, side or bottom of the page.