Today the CBCA announced the winners in six categories for our prestigious Australian Children's book awards. SO how did I go with my choices?
- I did predict Scar Town to be a winner in Younger Readers - such a brilliant book and in my view 'streets ahead' of the others in that category.
- I did predict Hope is the thing would win New Illustrator - I loved the art from the moment I saw this one BUT I am sorry to say I think the cover lets this one down.
- I did not read all of the Older Readers shortlist as they are beyond the scope of this blog but by chance I did read Grace Notes and so I am very happy to see a prize given to a verse novel.
- Timeless is really good and certainly contains lots of things you can discuss with your readers but I thought Bowerbird Blues would win or at least gain an honour award and I was sure Every Night at Midnight would also gain an honour.
- I am disappointed to see Bob Graham (The Concrete Garden) did not make the official prize list It was the Shadow Judges choices. Shadow Judges are groups of children who focus on one category using an abridged set of judging criteria. I talked about this here.
- I did talk in glowing terms about Australia Colour of Country - Eve Pownall honour book. It is a fabulous book and one I would happily gift to children who do not live here in Australia. I did not get the chance to read other books in this category.
- I did like Gymnastica Fantastica but the clever dual story lines (visual and in text) used in One Little Duck mean it surely was worthy of an honour. It is good to see heartwarming sentiment of Bear and Duck are Friends rewarded with an Early Childhood Honour.
Here are the Shadow judges' choices.
I am very happy that The Concrete Garden has some level of acknowledgement, but I do think the Shadow Judging should be announced separately - it is very confusing and to my mind (sorry for the unpopular opinion) this takes away from the serious work done by the adult judges. This is a literary award not a children's choice award - we have lots of those in our Australian states such as KOALA here in NSW. I think it was better when the shadow choices were announced about a week after the main awards announcement. I do hope the CBCA Awards committee reconsider this decision for the 2025 awards.
I did the NCACL (National Centre for Australian Children's literature) notes for Every Night at Midnight.
Here are the 2024 short lists. Pop each title into my side bar to read more about nearly all of these:
Younger Readers
Early Childhood
Picture Book of the Year
Eve Pownall (Non-Fiction)
New Illustrator
Here is a comment from winner Tristan Bancks for ABC News:
"I don't think kids bump into books perhaps as easily as they used to. It takes teacher librarians, educators and booksellers that work so hard to just make people aware [of books]. There's not as many column inches for books anymore. There's never been a more important time than for something like the CBCA (awards) to highlight books and to celebrate what reading can give you that perhaps other forms of entertainment can't."
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