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The bunyip’s international exposure via Australian children’s literature continues into the new millennium.

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To date, the most successful Australian children’s picture book to feature a bunyip remains Jenny Wagner’s The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek (1973). Ron Brooks’ sombre choice of colours and his minutely detailed illustrations evoke a creature of the night, both haunting and yet strangely endearing at the same time.

Patricia Wrighton's novel The Ice is Coming (1977) provided one of the most powerful depictions of any bunyip character in our literature:
It was a thing of many kinds that could not be truly seen, but its red eyes were like death and its bellow was like fear. It was like a calf, like a seal, like a man; it was white, it was black … It was all these things, together and separate, in one fearful beast … It was feathered, or furred, or scaly. You could not tell what it was except that it was dreadful …

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The bunyip continues to make an appearance in children’s literature. The most celebrated examples are The Ballad of the Blue Lake Bunyip (1982) and Black Duck and Water Rat (1988). The first is a rollicking verse narrative, the second returns to the world of the Dreaming for a powerful retelling of an Aboriginal legend.

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The bunyip best known to young Australian readers today is a whimsical character called Alexander Bunyip.
The Alexander Bunyip series was created by Michael Salmon. The character first appeared in 1972 and rampaged through our national capital in the picture book, The Monster Who Ate Canberra.

Creeping, rollicking or dancing, bunyips continue to play a vital role in modern children's imagination. Bunyips Don’t, The Ballad of the Blue Lake Bunyip and The Bunyip and the Night describe three very different creatures lurking in children's books.

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