Join or renew your membership

IBBY Australia membership for the coming financial year (1 July 2018–30 June 2019)
is now available. Please join (or renew) and help us continue as an independent body, introducing Australian authors and illustrators for young people to the world stage.
IBBY’s activities include:

• Nominating Australian authors and illustrators for the prestigious international
  Hans Christian Andersen Medal and IBBY Honour List
• Encouraging young Australian authors and illustrators through the Ena Noël Award
• Providing books to children in need through the Children in Crisis Fund

IBBY AUST membership form 2018

Advertisements

Ena Noël Award 2018

Press Release

Ena Noël Award 2018: THE IBBY AUSTRALIA ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD for a young emerging writer or illustrator

The panel of three judges is pleased to announce the winner is :

Will Kostakis for The Sidekicks  published by Penguin Random House

Meet the Sidekicks: a swimmer, a rebel and a nerd. Through the different relationship each shared with Isaac, they become more than these public personae.  Each young man deals with grief and the situation that forces them together to deal with Isaac’s untimely and suspect demise.  The relationships with each other and the people around them bring them to face difficult choices they need to make, the choices that free them to be the multi-dimensional people they truly are. These peripheral characters enhance but do not overwhelm the narrative. This intricately designed narration weaves the stories of  Ryan, Harley and Miles together. These characters scream silently out for help, and each finds strength or solace if in different places. Sidekicks concludes with Miles narrating an external film sequence.  The boys come together around the picnic table providing a new catalyst for the future, a future where they can remember and finally forget Isaac.

The Sidekicks is Will’s third novel for young adults, and American debut. His first novel, Loathing Lola, was released when he was just nineteen, and his second, The First Third, won the 2014 Gold Inky Award. It was also shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year and Australian Prime Minister’s Literary awards. As a high school student, Will won Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year for a collection of short stories.

The judges note it was  a pleasure to read such a broad and diverse selection of Australia’s emerging children’s and YA authors and illustrators and what an honour to select such a truly deserving book. Congratulations to Will Kostakis and the publishers.

The Ena Noël Award – to encourage young emerging writers and illustrators has been a significant identifier of talented authors and illustrators since inception in 1994. Thank you to all the publishers who entered creators of such a wide range of formats for this award.

Please see the link  for more details on previous recipients.

 

International Children’s Book Day featuring Tamsin Janu, Matt Ottley and Robin Morrow

IBBY Australia invites you to celebrate International Children’s Book Day by hearing Tamsin Janu and Matt Ottley, creators of books which open windows for young readers and Dr Robin Morrow on books as windows on refugee experiences.

Saturday 7 April 2018, 2:00pm onwards.

Tickets are on sale.

Download the flyer.

ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD FOR LITERATURE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

MEDIA RELEASE

Entries for the Australian IBBY Encouragement Award for Children’s Literature, the Ena Noël Award are now open. Publishers are invited to submit entries for this prestigious Australian Children’s & Young Adult literature Award.

Books by Australian creators published in the two years prior to the particular closing date 30th November 2017 can be nominated by the publishers for the Ena Noël award. The nominated creator must be under the age of 35 at the time the title (or titles) for which they are nominated was published.

The Ena Noël Award – to encourage young emerging writers and illustrators has been a significant identifier of talented authors and illustrators since inception in 1994.
Please see the link  for more details on previous recipients. Information and entry forms for the award are available from the coordinator.

Contact:
Claire Stuckey coordinator
2017-2018 Ena Noël Award

Email: troislouise3@gmail.com
Phone : 0416061474

IBBY Australia Honour Books showcase refugee stories

PRESS RELEASE

IBBY Australia proudly announces its biennial Honour Books for 2018. Many Australian authors and illustrators for young people have a deep concern for the plight of refugees. It happens that the two books selected, one for excellence in Writing, one for excellence in Illustration, treat themes of migration and the search for a safe place.

For Writing: The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon, Lothian Children’s Books, an imprint of Hachette Australia.

Subhi is a refugee of Rohingya origin, born in an Australian permanent detention centre, and life behind the fences is all he has ever known. But as he grows, his imagination gets bigger too, fed by The Night Sea, the faraway whales and the birds.

 One night Jimmie, a scruffy, impatient girl, appears from the other side of the wires, bringing a notebook written by the mother she lost. Unable to read it, she relies on Subhi to unravel her own family’s love songs and tragedies. 

Subhi and Jimmie might both find a way to freedom, but not until each of them has been braver than ever before. The writer succeeds—mostly through Subhi’s first-person narrative —in presenting the claustrophobic world of the detention camp, with its tedium and heartbreak, major and petty cruelties and unexpected humour. The reader is left pondering themes of hope, freedom, friendship, memory and the power of stories.

Zana Fraillon was born in Melbourne, studied history and became a primary teacher.  She has written picture books for young children, a series for middle readers, and No Stars to Wish On, about a boy taken from home and put in an orphanage. Her most recent book, The Ones That Disappeared, tells of trafficked children searching for freedom. The Bone Sparrow has featured on a number of awards lists in Australia and overseas, including the Amnesty CILIP Honour 2017, for which a judge wrote: ‘The characters are sharply observed throughout and, in Subhi, Zana Fraillon has created an unforgettable voice’.

For Illustration: Teacup by Matt Ottley (text by Rebecca Young), Scholastic Press

Teacup is the story of a boy ‘who had to leave home’ and his long and arduous journey by sea, bringing with him only a book, a bottle, a blanket and a teacup full of earth from the place where he grew up. The journey includes peaceful days, and days when storms threaten to overturn his boat. When at last he reaches land, it does not feel complete . . . until another traveller joins him. Matt Ottley has crafted images of this transformative journey, using a combination of oil paintings and digital art. He has brought dramatic and luminous skyscapes and seascapes, skilful changes in perspective and studies of reflection to the spare, poetic text to create an eloquent tale of migration. The symbols of the teacup, the soil and the tree that grows from it will evoke recognition in many readers.

Matt Ottley was born in Papua New Guinea, moved to Sydney as a child, and worked as a stockman in Queensland before finally studying fine arts and music. In addition to being one of Australia’s most highly regarded children’s book creators, he is also a musician and composer. He has illustrated over 20 children’s books, including Luke’s Way of Looking (text Nadia Wheatley); Requiem for a Beast: a Work for Image, Word and Music (text Matt Ottley); Home and Away (text John Marsden); and Tree: A Little Story about Big Things (text Danny Parker). Teacup was winner of the Patricia Wrightson Award 2016 (NSW Premier’s Awards).

Every two years an Advisory Panel of three children’s literature experts makes the selection from all books published in the period. These outstanding books become Australia’s representative books in a travelling exhibition of about 150 international titles. The exhibition will be shown at the IBBY Congress in Athens in 2018, at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and in many other countries.

Contact:

Dr Robin Morrow AM

National President

IBBY Australia Inc

Email: robin.morrow@wordsandphrases.com.au

Tel: +61 (0)2 9484 1904                                                                     10 October 2017

IBBY AGM, Brisbane 19 October 2017

Join IBBY Australia Inc for a special evening featuring an inspiring address by David Metzenthen, the Australian nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing 2018. David’s address will be preceded by the IBBY AGM.

You can download a copy of the AGM flyer.

Book tickets online.

IBBY and REFORMA present at ALA in Chicago, 24 June 2017

Will you be at the American Library Association conference in Chicago at the end of June?  Or know of anyone who will be?

We are very excited to announce that there will be a presentation of the work IBBY and REFORMA has been doing for the children caught on the borders with the USA and Mexico. Many thanks to YALSA for providing this opportunity.

The Other (Invisible) Refugees: Supporting Central American Children in Crisis
For details see the Flyer.