Australian children’s classics: Storm Boy’s tough, tender ode to wild childhood will make you cry

Storm Boy, 1976 film ABC iView Storm Boy, Colin Thiele’s much-loved classic, has never been out of print. Its iconic 1976 film version, with David Gulpilil as Fingerbone, turns 50 this year – and it has long been hailed one of Australia’s greatest books. On publication in 1963, the Times Literary Supplement argued for it to earn a place among the few “lasting children’s classics”. Storm Boy, whose mother is dead, lives with his father, an isolated man called Hide-Away Tom, close to nature on…