WA based Eve Pownall Award Judge, Helen Adam, gave Reading Time the lowdown on the Eve Pownall Award. Who was Eve Pownall? Why is there an award named after her? What treasures have the Eve Pownall Judges unearthed so far in 2015? Is the Information Book dead? Helen answers all these questions and more… The Eve Pownall Award for Information Books has been a part of the CBCA Book of the Year Awards since 1993. This is a very important category and an interesting one to judge. The 2015 awards have seen a wide range of interesting books in this category. …
Author: Admin
Darrell Pitt, The Monster Within (Jack Mason Adventures #4), Text Publishing, 22 April 2015, 254pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781922182876 Sailing over cities and seas in an airship called the Lion’s Mane, avoiding bombs by a hair’s breadth, climbing church spires as they are collapsing, Scarlet and Jack seek out the horrid perpetrators of crime, in this fourth title in the Jack Mason Adventure series. Jack and Scarlet are assistants to Mr Doyle, a steampunk Sherlock, and have participated in his cases since book number one in the series, The Firebird Mystery. There are many almost fatal adventures and a plethora…
Caleb Krisp, Anyone But Ivy Pocket, Bloomsbury, 9 April 2015, 313pp., $19.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781408858639 Ivy is self-deluding, bad mannered and generally insufferable, as one of the other characters in this story remarks, but she does have much going for her. Her delusions enable her to deal with any crisis faced, usually at the expense of someone else’s discomfort; her rudeness provides the writer with some delicious insults; and everyone she meets soon forms an unfavourable opinion of her. Everyone, that is, except those who really wish her ill. Ivy is a lady’s maid who is charged with taking a…
Brendan Ritchie, Carousel, Fremantle Press, 22 April 2015, 349pp, $19.99 (pbk), ISBN 9 781925 162141 Nox, aged 22,Taylor and Lizzie meet in Carousel, a Perth shopping Mall. Nox recognises them as twin sisters, singers from Canada, who have had some gigs in Perth that he has attended. With another boy, Rocky, they are trapped in Carousel for over a year. They eat and drink the food in the shops, wear the abundant clothes, ride bikes around the long corridors, write music together, develop a garden, and nurse Rocky when he is ill. There are resources galore. From Target to…
Jane Higgins, Havoc (Southside #2), Text Publishing, 25 February 2015, $19.99 (pbk), 342pp., ISBN 978922147295 This is the sequel to the Text Prize winning The Bridge, and the second novel from New Zealand author Jane Higgins. The story picks up soon after the events of The Bridge – Southside is still advocating for peace and free movement, but Cityside remains suspicious and aggressive. When Cityside blow up one of the bridges linking it to Southside, and cordon off one of the Southside suburbs, it’s up to Nik and Lanya to find out what Cityside has planned, and to try to…
Margaret Hamilton remembers Marianne Yamaguchi… Marianne Illenberger Yamaguchi was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in 1936. She received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and later worked as a high school art teacher in Australia where she came to live in 1973 with her family. Since her husband Tohr’s death she has lived in Tokyo, Japan. Marianne worked on the illustrations of several books for Angus & Robertson, particularly those written by Eric Rolls. She then illustrated a number of significant Australian children’s books, which include: SADAKO AND THE THOUSAND PAPER CRANES, written by Eleanor Coerr (Hodder…
Kristin Weidenbach (text) James Gulliver Hancock (illus.) Meet … Banjo Paterson Random House, 1 April 2015, 32pp., $24.99 (hbk), ISBN 9780857980083 There have been six previous titles in the Meet … series, including Meet …Captain Cook which was shortlisted for the 2014 Eve Pownall Award. This one is written by the author of Tom the Outback Mailman, which won the 2013 Eve Pownall Award. It relates the life of Andrew Barton Paterson from his country boyhood to his success as a poet. Although it mentions his career as a lawyer in Sydney, the text concentrates on his success as a poet…
Marie-Louise Gay, Any questions?, Allen & Unwin, April 2015, 60pp., $17.99 (hbk), ISBN 978 1 76011 317 9 Marie-Louise Gay is a well-known Canadian writer and illustrator who has been nominated for both the Astrid Lindgren award and the Hans Christian Andersen medal. This brilliant picture book has come about from all the author visits she has done in schools and libraries. The second double-page spread shows a gaggle of children all with speech bubbles containing a diverse range of questions from the personal (What is your favourite colour?) to the ones based on her previous books (Are you Stella?)…
Deborah Hart, Guarding Eden: champions of climate action, Allen and Unwin, June 2015, 256pp., $17.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760112356 This clearly and simply written book is about people who have decided to embark on peaceful action to save the planet. Each chapter is a glimpse into what a few individuals have done in the face of climate change. The facts are alarming, with some scientists believing we have already waited too long to act and catastrophic results are inevitable, but what I loved most about this book, is that these are ordinary people who focus not on what is wrong but…
Gina Inverarity and Celia Jellett (compiled by), Julie Vivas (illus.) The Possum Magic Cookbook, Omnibus/Scholastic, 1 July 2015, 32pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781742991214 One of the best-known and best selling picture books in Australia, Possum Magic, by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas was first published in 1983 and has since won numerous awards. A deceptively simple tale in which two possums, Grandma Poss and the invisible Hush, travel the countryside in search of the magic food that will make Hush visible once more, has undergone various incarnations over the years. It has been set to music, performed and is now a…