Had an enormously fun day yesterday. In the lead up to last night's NZ Post Book Awards at which the baton was passed to the 2010 Children's Choice Award winner, I had a day of catching up with a host of fab writery people in town for the event. The day began with morning tea with my mentor (from the NZSA mentoring program and under whose guidance I wrote Jack the Viking) Barbara Murison who'd come up from Wellington for the awards. She'd invited her past and present Auckland mentees Victoria Azaro, Julie Scott and Elena de Roo and of course Me. After a spot of light lunching and shopping (naturally) I then had afternoon drinks with Kyle Mewburn and his wife Marion, Des Hunt, his wife Lyn, Jill Marshall, Fleur Beale and Crissi Blair. Then it was on to the pre-awards drinks put on by Scholastic where I got to chat with Diana Neild, Maria Gill and Thelma Eakin, Brian Lovelock and Sher Foley, Anna Gowan, Sarah Anderson and Kim Dovey, Dianne Boles, Sarah Forster and Rob Southam and a host of others. All of this was just such a lovely treat. I could talk books and writing all day, every day and to be able to have these conversations with such a talented brilliant group of people was totally delicious.
Well done to ALL the NZ Post Children's Book Awards finalists (thanks to the ever fabulous Fifi Colston who kept me up to date with the results as they happened) - To get there is huge. And to the winners a big congratulations:-
Non-fiction winner Janet Hunt for E3 Call Home
YA winner Mandy Hager for The Crossing
Junior Fiction winner James Norcliffe for The Loblolly Boy
Picture Book winners Kyle Mewburn and Rachel Driscoll for Old Hu-Hu
Picture Book honour award Margaret Mahy, David Elliott and Tessa Duder for The Word Witch
Children's Choice winners Craig Smith and Katz Cowley for The Wonky Donkey
Best First Book winner David Hair for The Bone Tiki
And the overall grand poobah's are Kyle Mewburn and Rachel Driscoll for Old Hu-Hu
Lucky NZ Children is all I can say :)
2 comments:
Sounds like you had a great time. Lucky you. :D
I absolutely love all these titles: The Wonkey Donkey, the Loblolly Boy, and my favourite Old Hu-Hu.
I need to grab a child to read these books to!
Well done you and all these lovely writers! the kiddies never had it so good with you lot around to engage their imaginations.
Take care
x
Post a Comment