Literary Award winners Announced 2012

 Speech Pathology Book of the Year Awards 2012

The Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards were established in 2003. The awards are presented annually for excellence in the development of children’s speech, language and literacy skills.

I must say how very honoured I have felt with my latest picture book  Nancy Bentley, The First Australian female Sailor  being shortlisted in the Lower primary category of these awards.  Thank you Speech Pathology Australia :)
It has been a long wait for the announcement but finally,last night at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, the wining authors and books were announced.
Congratulations to the winners!!

The winning titles in each of the categories are:

Young Children

• Come Down, Cat! (Sonya Hartnett, Viking)

 Lower Primary

• The Little Refugee (Anh & Suzanne Do, illus by Bruce Whatley, A&U)

 Upper Primary

• The Invisible Hero (Elizabeth Fensham, UQP)

 Indigenous Children

• The Snake and the Boy (Azmen Sebastian, Magabala).

 A Lifetime Achievement Award was also presented to author and illustrator Graeme Base. Base won the Lower Primary category in the Speech Pathology Awards in 2005 for Jungle Drums (Puffin) and in 2007 for Uno’s Garden (Viking). His most recent book, Little Elephants, was published by Viking this month.
 

While the Speech Pathology awards were underway in Melbourne, I was in a book store in
Canberra attending a literary event. Children's Author Tania McCartney interviewed award winning Children's Author- Graeme Base. While Tania managed to get Graeme to open up about the ideas and stimulation behind many of his books, there was not the slightest hint from Graeme or his Publishing House team that he was being bestowed with the prestigious Lifetime award in Melbourne at the same time!

However, it was lovely to hear Graeme talk about his journey to becoming an author and the mysterious moments of fate that sent him on the road to success. As an author it is always fascinating to hear other authors speak about their books, their ideas and why they wrote the book they did.

Tania McCartney is a wonderful, vivacious local Canberra author. Want to know more...  just go visit Tania's website.

                                http://www.taniamccartney.com/



While net surfing do pop in and visit the Kids Book Reviews site and read a recent review of my picture book  Max Meets a Monster.