It’s that time of the year again when the great and the good gather together to witness the awarding of the ultimate prizes in Children’s Literature in New Zealand. Last night they gathered in Auckland for the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards 2010.
The annoying thing about the awards is that they can’t give great cash prizes to all the finalists...because they were all so good.
Every year Children’s Choice seems to up its profile and that is as it should be because we write for the children.
This year the Children’s Choice overall winner was Wonky Donkey By Craig Smith Illustrated by Katz Cowley
The winner of Children’s Choice Young Adult was Brainjack By Brian Falkner
The winner of Children’s Choice Junior Fiction was Friends By Joy Cowley Illustrated by Gavin Bishop
The winner of Children’s Choice Non Fiction was Dear Alison edited by Simon Pollard.
As an interesting side note none of these books took out the top prize in their respective category.
Melinda has a great run down of the winners so you can jump over to her blog to satisfy your curiosity.
Thanks to the power of text and friends I was kept up to date as the awards were announced in Auckland and due to the power of email and friends the results were soon posted up on The Wellington Children’s Book Association website...almost in real time!!!
A nice golden glow was provided by Mandy Hager, her book ‘The Crossing’ was launched at Spinning Gold last Year and who won the Young Adult category.
As I have said before we must celebrate the brilliance, not only of the winners, but of the finalists because it was a truly hard task to separate them out.
I have been thinking lately that it is about time New Zealand woke up to the fact that we have world class GENRE writers in this country who quietly get on and do the business and never get acknowledged by the literati or CNZ....This would be a great profile push for New Zealand Book Month.
Who are our unsung heroes in GENRE FICTION in this country?
A good pointer to the answer can be found in the nominations for The Julius Vogel Awards for New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Nalini Singh has two novels and a novella entered...She is a New York Times Bestselling Author and Yes she is one of our top Romance authors. If you look down the Julius Vogel list you will see familiar names from the New Zealand Post Children’s Book finalists this year.
OK rant over (...well muted)
In other news... recently Booktalks was launched. This lovely initiative was sparked and germinated at the Spinning Gold Conference last year. The website, where Schools, Authors and Illustrators can hookup through Skype is up and running. New Zealand yet again is among the leaders in using this technology. This week I came across a great little blog Picturebook Junkies (five PB authors) extolling the virtues of Authors skyping into schools in the US and thought yep we’re doing it... only we are more organised.
Nathan Bransford has a great little poll on his blog at the moment - Which fictional land would you like to live in? No prizes for guessing the most popular...although quite a few authors were extolling the virtues of their own created fictional worlds...heeheehee....
On Craicerplus (my Amplify page) I have links to articles on
Defending Teen Fiction
The Big Digital Issues in 2011
Humanoid Robot in Space...Go R2 (a nod to my geek side)
The Children’s Lit Conference programme...ax murderers, sexism, Pulman and fairytale fallout (this one has generated a few comments on Facebook)
The pic is The New Zealand Post Children’s Book of The Year 2010 Old Hu Hu. Congratulations Kyle Mewburn and Rachel Driscoll.
I can't think of a better pic to celebrate my 100th Blog Post.
maureen
So which fictional land would you like to live in? If you said Middle Earth we'll make room for you in Central Otago where Kyle lives....
So which fictional land would you like to live in? If you said Middle Earth we'll make room for you in Central Otago where Kyle lives....
