Momo celebrating time to read: CBCA Younger Readers 2000-2024

Thursday, May 29, 2025

CBCA Younger Readers 2000-2024

Here is my post about the 2025 Younger Readers Notables

There has been some discussion about the 2025 CBCA (Children's Book Council of Australia) Younger Readers shortlist. "Entries in this category should be books published for children in the age range from 7 to 12 years (lower to upper primary school level). Books in the category may be fiction, drama, graphic novels, illustrated text or poetry."

Three of six of the books selected for 2025 do not really appeal to me I did, however, like quite a few of the 2025 Notables (you can see them all at the top of this post). I thought I would take a look at past winners and shortlisted books from the 21st Century 2000 - 2024. With each list I have included one or two of my personal favourites.

As I reviewed these lists it was easy to see the books I remember enjoying, and to see the books that were popular with the children in my library, alongside books that did not really appeal to me and so probably languished on the shelves. There were quite a few of the 144 books that I had totally forgotten and books that I could not readily recall the plot or even perhaps had not even read!

It is easy to promote a book with our students that we personally love but this is just a reflection of the way awards are always going to be subjective. I do think that every year there will be shortlisted titles our students really enjoy. It is not realistic to expect young readers to love every single shortlisted title but hopefully book awards like this raise their awareness of other authors and other styles of writing. The issue of gatekeepers also occurs to me - this is beyond the scope of this post but it is worth considering. With adult book awards there are always discussions like this about books we like, books worthy of an award etc. We certainly do not expect every adult to read every award-winning book so nor should this be an expectation for the Younger Readers short list.

As you ponder the 2025 list you might think about the constraints of these CBCA Awards - only six books can reach the short list; the age range for Younger Readers is very broad; there is no separate category (yet) for Graphic novels; the rules around series books are defined but open to interpretation; as Teacher-Librarians and other adults we have no idea about the books that were submitted; the judges for these awards spend hours of their own time (unpaid) reading hundreds of books; judgements about books are always personal and naturally reflect life experiences and more importantly our prior reading experiences.

I was pleased to see so many verse novels on these past shortlists. They are always great to share in a school library. I hope you see some books here that you also remember sharing in your library or books that are new discoveries or author names that either don't surprise you or conversely author names to explore further. Hopefully lots are these are still available in your school library. For myself I plan to re-read the whole Silk Family series by Glenda Millard and then talk in more detail about each of them here. I started this blog in 2008 so that's why I do not have blog links for earlier titles.

You might also think about the range of topics covered in past shortlists from the very simple (The cat on the mat is flat) to almost Young Adult level (His name was Walter) and also books with controversial or complex themes. Here are a few but there are lots more: Hitler's Daughter and Within these Walls and Once (holocaust); My Dog (atrocities in war); The Naming of Tishkin Silk (still birth); A horse called Elvis (family violence); Helicopter Man (mental illness in a parent); Toppling (serious illness in a child).