Guest Post: Q & A With Dr Kylie Soanes Nature Book Week Judge

Today we are mega excited to welcome Dr Kylie Soans - one of the judges for this year's 2024 Environment Award for Children's Literature judges. 

These awards coincide with Nature Book Week, an incentive facilitated by The Wilderness Society to celebrate the best in nature-themed children's books. 

Enjoy this exclusive Q & A with Kylie and don't forget to enter our Nature Book Week Giveaway running this week until Saturday!

What is your favourite book about nature? And what’s your favourite nature book to read or share with your kids?
I really enjoyed Marty Crump's Headless males make great lovers: and other unusual natural histories. It's such a fun insight into the fact that the living world is, well, kind of bizarre, and that's a good thing.

Giveaway: Nature Book Week Prize Pack!

In celebration of Nature Book Week, hosted by the Wilderness Society, we’re excited to offer a fantastic kids nature book prize pack!

• The World's Most Atrocious Animals - Philip Bunting
• Australian Animals: From Beach to Bush - Brentos
• Hope is the Thing - Johanna Bell & Erica Wagner 
• The Turtle and the Flood - Jackie French and Danny Snell 
• Tamarra: A Story of Termites on Gurindji Country - Violet Wadrill, Leah Leaman, Topsy Dodd Ngarnjal

For your chance to win a copy of this outstanding nature inspired prize pack bundle of books, simply tell us in 25 words or less what is your favourite nature book and how has it inspired or influenced you?

Review: The Book Star

Written by Bec Nanayakkara and illustrated by Joanna Bartel, The Book Star is a story which will resonate with many children and parents. 

Grace has lots of books about her favourite subject, space. She can tell you all about planets, stars, and the solar system. She'd love to travel into space, too.

When it's time for Book Week, and everyone is asked to come to the school party dressed as something bookish, Grace is inspired.

Guest Post: Teacher Librarians: The Aunty Of The School

With Book Week a mere week or so away, we welcome back, Cherie Bell to discuss the importance of not only school libraries but those special individuals that run and man them: teacher librarians. 

If the classroom teacher is the ‘school parent’, then the teacher-librarian is an aunty. They are a caring, supportive presence in a child’s life. A person with responsibility and a high level of investment in the child, they are a central part of the safety net all kids need from time to time.

Guest Post: Jon Appleton on Connecting with Creatives

Author! Author!

There weren’t many pleasures during the Coronavirus lockdowns but one of them was seeing children connect with their favourite writers: hearing books read aloud – in the author’s own voice! – chapter by chapter over successive days, or participating in webinars or chats over Zoom. 

Never mind the children, I relished the opportunity to hear Nadia Wheatley talk about the genesis of My Place, her classic picture book collaboration with Donna Rawlins, and seeing her early sketches and notes. (I’m 47.) Children’s authors have never seemed so accessible to their readers.

It was a little different in my own childhood in the 1980s. There was no internet, of course, but we got to meet authors each winter during Children’s Book Week, perhaps in our school library or at the Children’s Book Council book fair which in NSW was held at the State Library and for me was an unmissable event. (I went on both days of the weekend and soaked in as much as I could.)

Review: The Wildest Book Week Ever

Parents, kids and teachers all know the wild and wacky experience that can be Children's Book Week.

This annual celebration of children's books is depicted in The Wildest Book Week Ever! by Heath McKenzie.

It begins with an intrepid journalist reporting what he sees in the wild (playground) as children arrive on the day of the annual Book Week parade. 

He's a clever combination of a young student and David Attenborough.

Some students are decked out as classic literary characters you will recognise. Others are not so obvious.

Guest Post: Adam Wallace on School Visits As An Author

Creating books for kids is amazing, the best. But what do you do once they’re created? What then?

Well, this is where the fun begins. Because now it’s time to get kids excited about your book, and excited about reading and writing and drawing and books in general! And so it’s time for … drum roll please … school visits!!!!

I mean, you don’t have to do them, but hopefully after reading this you will see that there are 72 gazillion benefits to an author or illustrator doing school visits. I’m not going to list all of them. Just five. We can chat about the rest.

Here we go then!

Winners: Noodle Bear

And our lucky winners are...

Hayley Spark, NSW
Sharon Hammad, NSW
Mel Sajeva, VIC

Congratulations!

You have each won a copy of the delightful, Noodle Bear.

We hope you enjoy this prize as much as Bear enjoys noodles and have oodles of fun reading it!

Thank you to ALL who entered. We can say we agree with at least one of these answers as to the one food we could eat for the rest of our lives...!

Giveaway: Noodle Bear

Noodle Bear, the new picture book by Mark Gravas, is a hilarious story about a bear who becomes obsessed with noodles, and ultimately is a tale of friendship and discovering what’s truly important in life, on a journey to noodle-filled fame, and then back home again.

Noodle Bear is crazy about noodles. His best friend, Fox, brings him other delicious treats when he's a no-show at her party but he's so noodle obsessed that doesn't he notice them. And when he's run out of noodles, his only thought is to go to the big city and become a contestant on the TV game show, "Noodle Knockout". Of course, he becomes a surprise star with more noodles than he can eat. But no amount of noodles and fame can fill the empty space where home and friends should be.

Thanks to the delicious people at Walker Books Australia, we have three copies of this brilliant book to give away!

To enter, simply tell us in 25 words or less if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

It's Book Week!

It's Book Week here in Australia - our favourite week of the year! and we are set for a wonderful week of celebration following the Book of the Year announcements last Friday. Just a little refresher - here are the nominees for Book of the Year in five categories, with our winners highlighted in red. This week we'll also be reposting the reviews of the books we've featured here on KBR.

See the Children's Book Council of Australia website for more information on the Notable Books and Chrichton Shortlist for new illustrators.

Book of the Year: Older Readers
Crowley, Cath	Graffiti Moon	Pan Macmillan Australia
Hartnett, Sonya	The Midnight Zoo	Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Horniman, Joanne	About a Girl	Allen & Unwin
MacLeod, Doug	The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher	Penguin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Marchetta, Melina	The Piper’s Son	Penguin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Wood, Fiona	Six Impossible Things	Pan Macmillan Australia

Book of the Year: Younger Readers
Bauer, Michael Gerard	Just a Dog	Omnibus Books, Scholastic Australia
Bongers, Christine	Henry Hoey Hobson	Woolshed Press, Random House Australia
Branford, Anna Ill. Sarah Davis	Violet Mackerel’s Brilliant Plot	Walker Books Australia
Carmody, Isobelle	The Red Wind	Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
McKinlay, Meg Ill. Leila Rudge	Duck for a Day	Walker Books Australia
Murphy, Sally Ill. Rhian Nest James	Toppling	Walker Books Australia

Book of the Year: Early Childhood
Champion, Tom Niland & Niland, Kilmeny Ill. Deborah Niland	The Tall Man and the Twelve Babies	Allen & Unwin
Dubosarsky, Ursula Ill. Mitch Vane	The Deep End	Puffin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Lester, Alison	Noni the Pony	Allen & Unwin
Niland, Deborah	It’s Bedtime, William!	Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Norrington, Leonie Ill. Dee Huxley	Look See, Look at Me!	Allen & Unwin
Ormerod, Jan Ill. Freya Blackwood	Maudie and Bear	Little Hare Books

Picture Book of the Year
Baker, Jeannie	Mirror	Walker Books
Bancroft, Bronwyn	Why I Love Australia	Little Hare Books
Greenberg, Nikki	Hamlet	Allen & Unwin
Kane, Kim Ill. Lucia Masciullo	Family Forest	Hardie Grant Egmont
McKimmie, Chris	Two Peas in a Pod	Allen & Unwin
Riddle, Tohby	My Uncle’s Donkey	Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)

Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Brasch, Nicolas	Theme Parks, Playgrounds and Toys	Macmillan Education Australia
Brooks, Ron	Drawn from the Heart: A Memoir	Allen & Unwin
Davidson, Leon	Zero Hour: The Anzacs on the Western Front	The Text Publishing Company
Dubosarsky, Ursula Illustrated by Tohby Riddle	The Return of the Word Spy	Viking, Penguin Group (Australia)
Lloyd, Alison Illustrated by Terry Denton	Wicked Warriors & Evil Emperors: The True Story of the Fight for Ancient China	Puffin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
One Arm Point Remote Community School	Our World: Bardi Jaawi: Life at Ardiyooloon	Magabala Books

Book Week Celebrations with The Book Chook

On Monday 22 August, Australia will go into literary mode, as schools, libraries and organisations all over the country travel the world for this year's Book Week - One World, Many Stories.

The lovely Susan Stephenson, a.k.a. The Book Chook, has come up with the perfect way to make the most of Book Week celebrations. Check out this super creative ways to entrance the children (ad adults!) in your life during KBR's favourite time of year.

Do you love to read? I do! Each day I'm grateful for the gift of reading. I read to learn, to explore new worlds and to enjoy myself. When I imagine a life without reading, all the colour seems to drain out of my day.

Book Week is a special time we Australians have when we celebrate books and the gift of reading. It's later this month, August 20 - 26. The theme of Book Week 2011 is One World, Many Stories. This is a great theme to introduce your children to literature from other cultures. I thought I'd help you get organized ahead this year, so you can plunder the library and plan your celebrations!

Ideas for celebrating Book Week

We had some great ideas in a guest post from Nicole Avery from Planning with Kids for Book Week last year, and be sure to check out Nicole's 2011 post on ideas for using CBCA short-listed books. Here are some Book Chook ideas for ways to make Book Week special, both with individual kids and with groups:

• Revisit a selection of books you and your kids/students have enjoyed. Sometimes kids just need to re-find old favourites to fall in love with a book all over again.
• Have a teddy bears picnic in the park and read some books to the bear friends. Honey sandwiches and fairy cakes might be a good start to the picnic!
• Write to your favourite authors and let them know how much you enjoy their books. Don't be disappointed if they don't have time to write back - it takes ages to write a really good book.

READ MORE... 

Events: Book Week at ACT Libraries, Canberra

Libraries ACT are hosting many activities and events to celebrate Children’s Book Week this year and bookings are now open for all events. The full program can be found at library.act.gov.au. 

Do you have Book Week events you'd like showcased on KBR? Email us now!

Monday 22 August 2011

4.30 pm - 5.30 pm, Woden Library

Steve Isham: An Interactive Introduction to his books
Nearly all Steve Isham's books are about Australian animals, including the Draw Aussie Animals series. There are riddles, puzzles and things to find along with the story. His new book, Penguin, is about Antarctica, where dad looks after the egg for ten freezing weeks. Hear Steve read the story, view original art work, find hidden objects and interact over riddles. Families with children aged 7 -10 are welcome to attend. Book now to secure your place: eventbrite.com/event/1971337323 

Tuesday 23 August 2011
6.30 pm - 7.30 pm, Belconnen Library 
Meet and Hear Judy Horacek: Cartoonist, artist, writer and children’s book creator
A special Children’s Book Week author visit just for grown up’s. This is a great opportunity to hear Judy talk about her experience writing and illustrating for children. Please note: This event is just for adults. Book now to secure your place: eventbrite.com/event/1971367413

Wednesday 24 August 2011
4.30 pm - 5.30 pm, Gungahlin Library
A fabulously fun time for kids with Tania McCartney - Inspiring kids to write and read
Join local author Tania McCartney at Gungahlin library for a fabulously fun reading of one of her picture books. She will also take you on a visual journey through the book making process. Families with children aged 6 - 8 are welcome to attend. Her visit to the library will include the secret to the best folded paper aeroplane ever invented! Book now to secure your place: eventbrite.com/event/1971389479

Thursday 25 August 2011
4 pm - 4.30 pm, Kippax Library 
Stephanie Owen Reeder shares her charming books for children
Meet local author Stephanie Owen Reeder as she reads from some of her internationally renowned books for children, and shares how she goes through the book making process. Families with children aged 5 - 7 are welcome to attend. Book now to secure your place: eventbrite.com/event/1971395497

CBCA Book of the Year 2011 Shortlist Nominees

So exciting to see the shortlist announcement today - the Children's Book Council of Australia has revealed shortlist nominations in five categories - enjoy this peruse! And make sure you check out the CBCA website for more information on the Notable Books and Chrichton Shortlist for new illustrators. The winners will be announced on Friday 19 August 2011. Highlighted titles are books we have reviewed right here on KBR.

Book of the Year: Older Readers
Crowley, Cath	Graffiti Moon	Pan Macmillan Australia
Hartnett, Sonya	The Midnight Zoo	Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Horniman, Joanne	About a Girl	Allen & Unwin
MacLeod, Doug	The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher	Penguin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Marchetta, Melina	The Piper’s Son	Penguin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Wood, Fiona	Six Impossible Things	Pan Macmillan Australia

Book of the Year: Younger Readers
Bauer, Michael Gerard	Just a Dog	Omnibus Books, Scholastic Australia
Bongers, Christine	Henry Hoey Hobson	Woolshed Press, Random House Australia
Branford, Anna Ill. Sarah Davis	Violet Mackerel’s Brilliant Plot	Walker Books Australia
Carmody, Isobelle	The Red Wind	Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
McKinlay, Meg Ill. Leila Rudge	Duck for a Day	Walker Books Australia
Murphy, Sally Ill. Rhian Nest James	Toppling	Walker Books Australia

Book of the Year: Early Childhood
Champion, Tom Niland & Niland, Kilmeny Ill. Deborah Niland	The Tall Man and the Twelve Babies	Allen & Unwin
Dubosarsky, Ursula Ill. Mitch Vane	The Deep End	Puffin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Lester, Alison	Noni the Pony	Allen & Unwin
Niland, Deborah	It’s Bedtime, William!	Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Norrington, Leonie Ill. Dee Huxley	Look See, Look at Me!	Allen & Unwin
Ormerod, Jan Ill. Freya Blackwood	Maudie and Bear	Little Hare Books

Picture Book of the Year
Baker, Jeannie	Mirror	Walker Books
Bancroft, Bronwyn	Why I Love Australia	Little Hare Books
Greenberg, Nikki	Hamlet	Allen & Unwin
Kane, Kim Ill. Lucia Masciullo	Family Forest	Hardie Grant Egmont
McKimmie, Chris	Two Peas in a Pod	Allen & Unwin
Riddle, Tohby	My Uncle’s Donkey	Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)

Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Brasch, Nicolas	Theme Parks, Playgrounds and Toys	Macmillan Education Australia
Brooks, Ron	Drawn from the Heart: A Memoir	Allen & Unwin
Davidson, Leon	Zero Hour: The Anzacs on the Western Front	The Text Publishing Company
Dubosarsky, Ursula Illustrated by Tohby Riddle	The Return of the Word Spy	Viking, Penguin Group (Australia)
Lloyd, Alison Illustrated by Terry Denton	Wicked Warriors & Evil Emperors: The True Story of the Fight for Ancient China	Puffin Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
One Arm Point Remote Community School	Our World: Bardi Jaawi: Life at Ardiyooloon	Magabala Books