Children’s voices from the past: New historical and interdisciplinary perspectives. By Kristine MoruziNell  Musgrove and Carla  Pascoe Leahy (Eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, 2019 ISBN 978‐3‐030‐11895‐2, XIX, 342 pp., £99.99 (hb)

From the start, the editors of Children’s Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives set out their argument that the voices of children in the past can be heard best when methodological approaches are applied that attune the researcher to the ways children express their thoughts and feelings both in word and behaviour. This book provides 13 chapters of individual studies that vary in approach and represent both historical and interdisciplinary research. Each chapter, with its own topic and theme, centres the question of how to ‘hear’ children given the challenges posed by the passing of time, social and cultural marginalisation and a general disregard for children’s perspectives. This collection is a contribution to the field of histories of childhood and young people as it provides rich and diverse examples of how researchers can engage with the many voices of children in creative and innovative ways. Young people’s voices are found by these scholars in written documents, images, oral histories and other observations of behaviours and actions of dissent. In the introduction, the editors outline the development of debates around voices of the marginalised and specifically those of young people. They provide a useful summary of some dominant discussions concerning where to find children’s voice in sources. Importantly, the editors also outline the scepticism many scholars have as to whether children’s voices from the past can ever really be known given the adult mediation of so many sources as well as the passage of time that relegates experiences into curated expressions or memories about the past. Children’s Voices from the Past disrupts and continues this debate by showing new ways that researchers can adapt their methods to effectively engage with the ways children of the past communicated. Highlighting just two studies in this book helps to illustrate the edited collection’s value. In her chapter on uses of a Nom de Plume by New Zealand youth between 1880 and 1920, Anna Gilderdale explores how anonymity can provide a means for creating a distinctive social self as opposed to providing merely public concealment (58). Instances of hidden gender and ethnicity illuminate the many ways that young people’s identities were constructed to serve the writers’ aims. Focusing on historians’ relationship with their sources, Deidre Michell’s chapter challenges the researcher, specifically oral historians, to consider how they act as witnesses to their historical subjects. Michell presents a case for historians to act as ‘enlightened witnesses’ towards their participants that may help participants, who were previously victimised, to reconceptualise themselves as historical actors ‘contributing to an improved world’ (218). Rather than providing concrete universal conclusions, this edited collection contributes to important discussions and encourages historians and other interdisciplinary researchers to keep up the good fight in terms of locating and listening to children’s expressions whether they be opinions, emotions or disclosures from the past. This is an excellent resource for both early career and established researchers investigating the lives of children and youth in the past. The chapters are engaging and relatively short. The diversity of the themes represents the wide-ranging issues and locations of focus. Countries including Senegal, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Britain and the People’s Republic of China all feature. The locations and differing chronologies allow for shifting research perspectives and methodological approaches. While this may not be a change the editors could have facilitated given the current priorities for many researchers, more examples of children speaking to one another would be a welcome addition. Peer-to-peer correspondences, though difficult to find, would be illuminating to understand how socialisation is controlled in peer relationships where the power dynamics are more equitable. Children’s magazines or letters come to mind as some possibilities, though these are all too rare a treasured relic in the archives. This book exemplifies multifaceted approaches for writing histories of young people. Children are heard all throughout this edited collection in ways both known and previously unconsidered by me. Perhaps most importantly, I appreciated the ways that examples of complex and intersecting marginalisation featured all throughout. These children are not presented as powerless. Each of these studies highlights the ways children have and continue to speak out and challenge or cooperate with their social worlds.

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