The  Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards were established in 2008 to celebrate the contribution of Australian literature to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life. The awards, held annually, recognise literature’s importance to Australia’s national identity, community and economy. This year two new categories, with prize amounts of $100,000 each, have been added: Young Adult Fiction and Children’s Fiction.  The shortlists have just been announced and include nine children’s fiction and seven young adult fiction titles.

Over a year ago now, I blogged about the beautiful poem Outback written by the then eight-year-old Annaliese Porter and published by Magabala Books in Australia, in a stunning edition illustrated by renowned artist Bronwyn Bancroft. I recently lent our copy of Outback to a friend to use with her class of eight-year-olds here in the UK, when they were learning about aboriginal art, and it was an eye-opening experience for them to work with a book written by someone their own age.

Now Magabala have done it again – they recently published Joshua and the Two Crabs by Joshua Button, “a young man with a keen interest in the saltwater country he has grown up in”.

It’s a delightful story, told with humour, as Joshua chases the two crabs around the beach, telling them,

‘I can see you two!’
‘Well, we can see you too,’ said the crabs.

The three-fold repetition of this satisfying formula perhaps lulls young readers/ listeners into a false sense of this being a wholly imaginary, anthropomorphised tale – so it comes as a bit of a shock when Joshua catches them and then throws them onto the fire to cook for lunch! However, Joshua’s matter-of-fact tone is quite in keeping with the descriptive narrative… I would say the story is a perfect example of a child’s ability to weave fact and fiction together in one breath. We adults sometimes walk a tightrope here. How often have you found yourself in a no-win situation? Either you go along with the imaginings and are berated for saying something which is obviously not true, or you are likewise reproached for throwing in the cold water of fact! Well, Joshua Button seems to have got the blend just right, judging by Little Brother’s reaction.

He was chuckling for a long time that Joshua carried a bucket and spear at the beach – and he loved the pictures – he liked the textures and layering. They are indeed stunning – the colors bring the sea and the creek alive; the crabs are wonderful, as are the vignettes of the waders – and I especially loved Joshua peering down at the crabs in his very goggly goggles!

A while after reading it together, it became apparent that Little Brother had been mulling it over:

“Joshua Button does exist.”
“Yes, he does.”
“Do you think this is a true story?
“Yes, I do.”
“But the bit about talking crabs is fiction.”
“Probably.”
“Well, it could say that”
“But it’s a story – fundamentally it’s a story, isn’t it?”
“Well, it did happen. It’s a story about two crabs.”

…and he is now thinking about writing his own book. In my post yesterday, I quoted Jarrett Krosoczka and the effect on him of a comment from a visiting author to his school – how much more aspirational then to read a book in print that is written by someone your own age! Not only has Joshua Button given children all over the world the opportunity to find out about a fun family day out in his corner of Australia, he has opened them to the possibility that they could do it too. Thank you, Magabala Books!

• When I was growing up in Alaska, the shortest day of the year was almost imperceptible. All of our winter days were short and dark, with lengthening light returning only in the early spring. And yet there was something magical to me about the promise of light and warmth coming back to our frozen landscape, a promise that was carried by a day with only a few scanty hours of daylight.

Now I live in Thailand, a country so close to the equator that the days vary in length only by a whisper of time with the shortest day of the year distinguished from the others by less than ten minutes. In Australia, not too far from my new home, our shortest day is their longest and their day of darkness is England’s Midsummer Night’s Eve. This is magical to me even now, far from Alaska and childhood.

What a wonderful opportunity to explain the mysteries of the solar system, and the wonders of geographic differences to children, during this time of darkness on one side of the globe and light on another! And what a glorious time for us at PaperTigers, and for all of our readers, to remember that no matter whether today is short or long on the corner of the globe that we inhabit, whether the hours are dark or filled with sunshine, books for all of us, on every day, are festivals of light.

The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) is proud to sponsor the longest running children’s festival in Australia: Children’s Book Week. Celebrating its 63rd birthday this year, Children’s Book Week will take place August 16th -22nd with the theme “Fuel your Mind”. Schools and public libraries from all over Australia will spend the week celebrating books and Australian authors and illustrators. Classroom teachers, teacher librarians and public librarians will offer a plethora of activities: author and illustrator visits, workshops, theatre acts, competitions, and storytelling relating to the theme in an effort to highlight the importance of reading.

CBCA is a volunteer run, not-for-profit organization comprised of individual members who are passionate about children’s and young adult literature. To help promote Children’s Book Week as well as their Book of the Year Awards, they offer a range of merchandise that can be purchased to decorate schools and classrooms for Book Week. This year Australian author and illustrator Shaun Tan, winner of the 2007 CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award for his book The Arrival, has designed the vibrant, eye-catching posters.

On Friday, August 15th, as a kick-start to Children’s Book Week, the CBCA will announce and present their 2008 Book of the Year awards in the following categories: Older Readers, Younger Readers, Early Childhood, Picture Book, and the Eve Pownall Award for Information Books. The shortlists for these awards were announced in April and at the same time the unique CBCA Junior Judges’ Project (JJP) was launched. The CBCA Junior Judges’ Project encourages children to do their own judging of the shortlisted books in the annual CBCA Book Awards, based on similiar criteria to those used by the CBCA Book of the Year judges. Once the Short List is announced, students guided by their teachers are encouraged to read the shortlisted books and, based on the judging criteria, select their Winner and two Honour Books in one or more categories and cast their votes online, either through their teachers or individually.

Our fourth geographical area for our readaloud PaperTigers Reading Challenge book this month is the Americas and we chose Deborah Ellis’ I Am a Taxi. I was slightly concerned that it might prove too much for Little Brother (aged 7): but by making sure that we read the last few chapters during week-end morning “book sessions” rather than at bedtime, we had plenty of discussion time (drugs…) and no nightmares! Diego, the book’s 11-year-old hero, became a real person to my two boys. They absorbed details about Bolivia; they compared details of Diego’s life with their own; and they goggled at the encounters with nature in the jungle. It was salutary for me to observe that they did not really pick up on the sinister side to Smith until it was completely obvious, but trusted him as someone who was kind to Diego, which in the immediacy of dealing with jungle beasties, he was. This did, however, make the climax particularly shocking for them. It is a book that I think they will both pick up and read for themselves in a few years’ time – for now, it has been a very exciting readaloud for us all.

For more, take a look at what Shelf Elf and Elisabeth thought about it too.

Little Brother’s book also came from the Americas – Napí by Antonio Ramírez and illustrated by Domi. Here’s what he has to say about it:

Napí is about a little girl called Napí who loves to dream. She is a Mazateca Indian from Mexico. She likes herons and I think it’s beautiful when it says the trees bloomed with herons and it’s also quite funny. Napí often dreams she’s become a heron. The river dresses itself in different colours. The river smiles up at her and the rocks on the riverbank form teeth. In her dream she was followed by the moon and carried by the river and the moon had a face and the river had hands. The pictures had all the colours I know and some I didn’t. They are so spectacular! I give it 10/10!

La Bloga and Gina MarySol Ruiz have both published reviews in the past too…

Meanwhile, Older Brother (9) travelled to the other side of the world and read Kakadu Calling by Jane Garlil Christophersen, an elder of the Bunitj clan in Kakadu National Park, Australia:

These adventure stories are all set in the Australian Bush. I liked the book because all the stories had animals in them – a snake, a dingo and a hermit crab – as I love animals and it’s wonderful to me to be reading about wild animals in Australia. My favourite story was about a young boy who had to wait four full moons until his parents came to pick him up from his grandparents but he decides he wants to get home sooner and runs away. On his way he meets some buffalos and he wakes up to find a snake slithering across his chest. He wanted to run but he heard his father’s voice telling him to stay really still.

So, we have but one more book to go in our Reading Challenge 2008… We’ve been taking it gently but I would say there’s still time to leap in there; and at the end of the month, be ready to tell us your final booklists. We can’t wait to hear from you!