CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

The Junior Judges Award winners are:

• Older Readers: Kill the Possum
• Younger Readers: Then
• Early Childhood: Puffling
  
• Picture Book: Sunday Chutney
  
• Eve Pownall: The Word Spy
  

On Thursday, the longlists for the Inky Awards will be announced in Melbourne. Are you going? We are, even though we are a continent away. Join in the announcement to learn which ten novels have made stage one of the Inky process – five Australian, five international – by following these instructions from Adele, one of the Inky judges. Easy peasy set up with a bit of downloading and testing of settings involved. Bring your students and an interactive whiteboard. It’s all happening at 1.15pm AEST, so that’s 11.15am on this side of the country. And if you are international, here’s a world clock to calculate your time.  That’s Thursday (here in Australia).

The Inkys are a YA-specific award run by Melbourne’s amazing Centre for Youth Literature.

And on Friday, the winners of the 2009 CBCA Awards will at last be known. Although the focus is on winners on Friday, in the long term the other shortlisted titles and the Notable Books (effectively a longlist) are always worth keeping in mind.  These are the last ones standing after hundreds of titles have been considered. The announcement of winners is at 12 noon AEST, so 10am local time. Watch twitter and of course, this space.

Our CMIS take on this year’s CBCA Notable Books (including the Shortlisted titles) is now available. The lists were announced on Tuesday and are just starting to arouse discussion.

The Notable Books are in effect a long list of the very best titles presented to the judges from all the books published in 2008, so are definitely worth considering for your library collections. Reviews of most titles on the Older Readers Notables list can be found on the CMIS Resource Bank.

Older Readers Shortlist 2009

• D.M. Cornish – Lamplighter (Monster Blood Tattoo Book Two)
• Anthony Eaton – Into White Silence
• Jackie French – A Rose for the ANZAC Boys
• Melina Marchetta – Finnikin of the Rock
• James Molony – Kill the Possum [available soon]
• Shaun Tan – Tales from Outer Suburbia

Home and Away the probably controversial Matt Ottley/John Marsden production is short-listed in the Picture Book of the Year category and a notable in the Older Readers category.

Announcement of the contenders for the Book of the Year Awards heralds the countdown to Book Week, which runs from 22-28 August 2009. This year’s theme is Book Safari. The CMIS webpage to support your Book Week celebrations has just been uploaded and will be expanded in the next few weeks. Bookmark it today!

The tension is over for another year. With the announcement this morning of the winners and honour books in the Children’s Book Council of Australia awards, the speculation has ended and the debates begin. Did your favourites get the nod?

Congratulations to all authors and illustrators who have been acknowledged in Australia’s most prestigious children’s book award in the following categories:

Book of the Year – Older Readers

(note that these titles are for mature readers)

Winner : Sonya Hartnett – The Ghost’s Child

Honour Books: John Heffernan – Marty’s Shadow and David Metzenthen – Black Water

Book of the Year – Younger Readers

Winner: Carole Wilkinson – Dragon Moon

Honour Books: Sherryl Clark – Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!) (illustrated by Elissa Christian)

and Odo Hirsch – Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp

Book of the Year – Early Childhood

Winner: Aaron Blabey – Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley

Honour Books: Mike Dumbleton – Cat (illustrated by Craig Smith) and Margaret Wild – Lucy Goosey (illustrated by Ann James)

Picture Book of the Year

(note that some of these titles are for mature readers)

Winner: Matt Ottley – Requiem for a Beast

Honour Books: Li Cunxin – The Peasant Prince (illustrated by Anne Spudvilas) and Colin Thompson – Dust (illustrated by Colin Thompson and 13 other illustrators)

Eve Pownall Award for Information Books

Winner: Frances Watts – Parsley Rabbit’s Book About Books (illustrated by David Legge)

Honour Books: Kaz Cooke – Girl Stuff : Your Full-on Guide to the Teen Years and Peter Macinnis – Kokoda Track : 101 Days

Crichton Award for New Illustrators

Winner: Anna Walker for Santa’s Aussie Holiday (written by Maria Farrer)

We know that Children’s Book Week will be here in two weeks, with the announcement of the winning books on August 14. School libraries everywhere in Australia are busy fuelling the minds of their readers.

But if you are lucky enough to have travel on your mind, or if you are just interested in what is going on elsewhere, there are plenty of other book-related events happening around the world in August. Thanks to the Papertigers site for keeping us informed.

The current issue of Papertigers is devoted to literacy.

Book Week 2008 draws ever closer. CMIS will be interpreting the slogan ‘Fuel Your Mind’ by suggesting that we challenge students to read and respond to literature that might be unusual or a little out of their comfort zone.

The Book Week 2008 pages are still a work in progress, but we have made a start on the lists for Older Readers and the Eve Pownall Award for Information Books.

Logo © CBCA. Used by CBCA Member

The Children’s Book Council of Australia biennial conference has just concluded in an autumnal Melbourne with the theme of All the Wild Wonders, the title of an Elizabeth Honey poem. The opportunity to network with colleagues always enriches the experience of any conference, so break times were also terrific catch-up times.

Three dominant themes seemed to emerge over the course of the three days:

• The importance of having a teacher-librarian in every school in Australia (and an exhortation for each delegate to lobby their member of Parliament over this issue).
• The literacy debate. Time and time again concerns were expressed about the obsession by governments with functional literacy at the expense of real literature. Jack Zipes passionately believes that we are ‘endumbing’ children and teaching them to misread i.e. read non-reflectively for quick absorption of information in order to pass tests.
• The trend in publishing towards sequel literature and multimedia spinoffs such as games and films coming at the expense of quality literature.

Highlights are always subjective, of course, but the standing ovation for Sonya Hartnett after she had opened the conference; Shaun Tan’s illuminating keynote; the enthusiasm of Wendy Cooling and the sheer niceness (not to mention talent) of Neil Gaiman were certainly some. Oh, and some of us learned a lot about manga from Queenie Chan, and we were all blown away by the surprise package that was Bernard Beckett.

And then there was the chance to get up close and personal with Australian and international authors, who patiently and cheerfully signed copies of their books, despite lengthy queues.

In two years, the CBCA moves to Queensland for its 10th national conference that references that Brisbane landmark – the aptly named Storey Bridge. Across the Story Bridge will be held between 29 April-2 May 2010. Make it a diary date claimer.

The countdown to Book Week has begun, with the announcement this morning of the Notable Books in all categories of the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards. Short lists drawn from these notable titles contain the eventual winners, to be announced during August Book Week celebrations.

The Notable Books are in effect a long list of the very best titles presented to the judges from all the books published in 2007, so are definitely worth considering for your library collections. Reviews of most titles on the Notables list can be found on the CMIS Resource Bank.

Book Week 2008 runs from 15-22 August, with this year’s theme ‘Fuel Your Mind’.

The short list for each category usually produces disappointment, with titles missing out that many consider worthy. The judges can’t please everyone, even with their final notables lists, so comment here about titles that made it and those that didn’t is certainly encouraged.

Older Readers Shortlist 2008

• Jackie French – Pharaoh : the boy who conquered the Nile
• Sonya Hartnett – The ghost’s child
• John Heffernan – Marty’s shadow
• Meme McDonald – Love like water
• David Metzenthen – Black water
• Leonie Norrington – Leaving Barrumbi

We are delighted that Matt Ottley’s Requiem for a Beast, our cover book for Issue 3, 2007, has been short listed in the Picture Book of the Year category.