Why Leunig Can Be Hard to Start
A reader who picks up a Michael Leunig collection for the first time often encounters a problem that has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with multiplicity. Leunig does not write or draw in a single mode. Across decades of public work that runs from the 1970s into the 2010s, he has been a newspaper cartoonist, a poet, a maker of prayer-like fragments, an author of epistolary whimsy, and the subject of retrospective compilations that fold all of these voices together.
So the honest question is not "which Leunig book is best?" It is "which Leunig do you want to meet first?"
Someone drawn to the public satirist wants something different from a reader looking for the private mystic. The person who responds to compressed, prayer-adjacent verse will find a poetry collection more hospitable than a volume of sharp civic cartoons. This guide separates those doorways deliberately. It frames the work around nine books, not an open-ended bibliography, and it makes no attempt to rank Leunig's output by greatness, rarity, or resale value. The aim is simpler and, I think, more useful: to help a new reader find a productive entry point and avoid the disorientation of starting in the wrong room.
Criteria for Selection
Before the list itself, it is worth showing how the shelf was assembled. A curated set is only as trustworthy as the principles behind it, and stating them lets you disagree with my reasoning where your needs differ from the average first-time reader.
Four criteria shaped the nine titles.
- Breadth. I favoured books that display several Leunig modes rather than a single narrow phase, so a newcomer can sense the range before committing to a specialism.
- Accessibility. A first-time reader should be able to enter the book without already knowing the newspaper context that produced many of the cartoons.
- Form. The set deliberately mixes cartoon collections, selected poems, prayer-like writing, and at least one formally unusual work, so the doorways stay distinct.
- Teaching and research value. Several titles earn their place because they work well in a classroom or a study, where comparing the cartoon voice against the poem and the prayer becomes its own lesson.
Working from these criteria, the final nine include one broad survey, two early-cartoon entry points, a poetry-focused collection, a spiritual or prayer-focused volume, and a formally unusual book. I have avoided claims about sales, circulation, or popularity throughout, because such figures belong with a named catalogue or archive rather than an editorial guide.
The Starting Shelf: 9 Leunig Books to Try First
The list moves from the broadest entry point toward more specialised modes. Read it as a spectrum, not a leaderboard.
1. The Essential Leunig
Best for: a first survey.
This is the broadest first encounter, and that is precisely its value. A new reader gets a cross-section of the cartoon voice in one volume: the recurring figures, the visual spareness, the moral unease, the domestic tenderness, and the public satire all sit side by side. You can watch Leunig move from a quiet image about loneliness to a barbed comment on civic life within a few pages. It will not give you the full depth of any single mode, but it gives you the map.
2. The Penguin Leunig
Best for: early cartoons.
For readers drawn to the sharper public satirist, this collection carries the immediacy of the newspaper-cartoon years. The energy here is more outward-facing, more concerned with the absurdities of public and political life. Published by Penguin Books Australia Ltd, it is a strong way to see the cartoonist as a working commentator rather than a contemplative artist. I avoid stating exact publication years here, since those belong with verified catalogue records rather than memory.
3. The Second Leunig
Best for: more early-cartoon energy.
A natural companion to the previous entry, this volume extends the early newspaper voice. If the public satirist is the Leunig you came for, reading these two in sequence lets you feel how the cartooning instinct sharpened across a body of topical work.
4. The Bedside Leunig
Best for: gentle, episodic reading.
This collection suits the reader who wants Leunig in small, unhurried doses. It rewards the habit of one cartoon at a time, which is arguably the way his work was always meant to be received.
5. The Travelling Leunig
Best for: wandering and travel themes.
Here the recurring preoccupation with journeys, movement, and displacement comes forward. It is a thematically gathered selection, useful for a reader who responds to Leunig's restlessness and his sense of the human figure adrift in a large world.
6. Curly Verse: Selected Poems
Best for: poetry readers.
This is not a supplement to the cartoons but a body of work in its own right. The poems live in cadence and compression; the whimsy is real, yet so is the overlap between poem and prayer. Read it for the way a short stanza can hold both a joke and a quiet ache. A literature teacher might reasonably make this the starting point rather than any cartoon collection.
7. When I Talk to You: A Cartoonist Talks to God
Best for: spiritual reflection.
This is the prayer-focused Leunig, the private and devotional voice that surprises readers who know him only as a satirist. The book gathers prayer-like writing that is humane, searching, and unembarrassed by tenderness.
8. The Curly Pyjama Letters
Best for: epistolary oddity.
The most formally unusual entry on the shelf. Built as a correspondence of whimsical letters, it shows Leunig working in a structure that is neither cartoon nor poem. For a reader who enjoys playful, invented forms, it is a delight.
9. The Wayward Leunig
Best for: Australian culture research and collectors.
A retrospective gathering that rewards readers studying Leunig as an Australian social observer. As with any compilation, the contents can shift between editions, so treat it as a rich survey rather than a fixed canon.
Scope and Limitations of This Reading Guide
This guide is a reading pathway, not a complete bibliography of Leunig's publications. He has produced far more than nine books, and a comprehensive list would serve a different purpose than this one.
Because the article makes editorial judgments about where to begin, I want its authority to stay modest and traceable. Editions, subtitles, availability, and the contents of omnibus or retrospective volumes can vary between printings. If you are using this guide for teaching or citation, verify the exact copy you hold against library catalogue records before quoting any subtitle, date, or omnibus content. The National Library of Australia catalogue records are a sound place to confirm such details.
Title styling, publisher fields, and edition contents deserve a final check against a catalogue rather than second-hand bookseller descriptions. This is most important for the retrospective volumes, where contents shift between reprints.
Risk Factor: the guide is dependable as a route into the work, but it is not a substitute for a full bibliographic record when a teacher, librarian, or researcher needs edition-specific citation data.
How to Choose the Right First Book
The list becomes useful once it turns into paths. Decide which doorway you want, then follow the matching route.
- If you want a single book: choose The Essential Leunig. One volume, the widest view.
- If you want the newspaper cartoonist: start with The Penguin Leunig, then move to The Second Leunig.
- If you want the reflective or spiritual Leunig: begin with When I Talk to You, then read Curly Verse: Selected Poems.
- If you are teaching or researching: pair one broad collection with one form-specific book, so students can compare the cartoon, the poem, and the prayer as distinct voices.
That last pairing is where the guide earns its keep in a classroom. A researcher studying Australian newspaper cartooning will get more from The Penguin Leunig and The Second Leunig; a literature teacher may well open with Curly Verse instead.
Critical Insight: the best first Leunig book is not a fixed title — it depends entirely on the reader's preferred doorway into the work.
A Better Way to Read Leunig
Once you have chosen a book, the reading itself matters more than the choice. Leunig rewards slowness. Take one cartoon, one poem, one prayer, or one letter at a time, and resist the urge to consume a collection in a single sitting.
Watch for the features that recur across every mode: the white space that does as much work as the line, the simplified figures, the characters who return from book to book, the contradictory moods that sit inside a single panel. Notice the quiet punchlines and the moral tension Leunig leaves unresolved. These are not flaws to be smoothed over; they are the substance of the work.
Read this way, his published output starts to feel less like a stack of separate books and more like an archive of recurring gestures — silence, tenderness, melancholy, civic absurdity. That is what this guide has tried to offer: not a shopping list and not a ranking, but a route map through several creative selves, so you can decide which one you would like to meet first.
