Coming home from a friend’s house one Sunday afternoon, Thomas came across a street full of rubbish. Piles of it in front of peoples’ homes. It was a council clean up. Thomas peered into the heaps of stuff … and then something caught his eye on one of the untidy piles: a small, brown album full of old photos. It would take him back to the 1930s and a series of amazing mystery hikes. Halstead Press presents Paul Ashton’s series of short texts designed to integrate with the Australian Curriculum for Humanities and Social Sciences and English, each focussed on the role that accident and serendipity play in the past and making history. Each short story provides an opportunity for students to engage with history while improving their core language, research and critical thinking skills. They allow for students to understand how that history is not just something that can be found in textbooks, but rather that it is something which is constantly being made around them, and that they are creating their own histories every day. The stories are being written by Paul Ashton, a historian who has published ten history textbooks for Australian schools.
