Time to do a book giveaway ...

T'was the big awards night earlier this week and despite my most fervent hopes, Fuzzy was not a winner on the night. There were just too many excellent books to pick from. Big and most hearty congratulations go to all the amazing winners:

Best Picture Book
That's Not a Hippopotamus
Juliette MacIver and Sarah Davis
Gecko Press

Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction
My New Zealand Story
Bastion Point: 507 Days on Takaparawha
Tania Roxborogh
Scholastic

Elsie Locke Award for Non Fiction
Jack and Charlie: Boys of the Bush
Josh and Jack Marcotte
Penguin Random House

Copyright Licensing Award for Young Adult Fiction
The Severed Land
Maurice Gee
Penguin Random House

Te Kura Pounamu Award for Te Reo Maori
Te Kaihanga Mapere
Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan
translated by Kawata Teepa
Huia

Best First Book Award
The Discombobulated Life of Summer Rain
Julie Lamb
Makaro Press

The Russell Clark Award for Illustration and Margaret Mahy Book of the Year
Snark
David Elliot
Otago University Press


But neither Fuzzy Doodle nor I have been completely without some good fortune lately 😊 As mentioned previously, Fuzzy will be published across Asia (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia) by Scholastic Asia in October. And in more good news I have been awarded Creative New Zealand funding toward completing my new project, in the most recent quick response round. I have applied many times (at least 7, maybe more) for direct funding over the years and it is a thrill to finally be successful. And I am VERY EXCITED by this project.

So ... I have decided to do a little giveaway to celebrate. I have one signed copy of Fuzzy Doodle and one signed copy of A Winter's Day in 1939 as prizes. Please tell me in the comments section here on the blog how many countries Fuzzy Doodle will be in across Asia, and tell me whether you want the picture book or the novel as your prize. I will pick randomly from any and all correct entries.You have until 5pm next Thursday. And ... go

Ta da...

This competition was fun - I will have to do this again soon. And now as you can probably tell from the drum roll I am about to announce the winner. Congratulations to Vanessa Hatley-Owen who reminded me how much I love the word Oubliette (which sounds cute and fun but actually means something rather nasty) and makes me want to go rent out the movie Labyrinth (also a smashing word in itself). Vanessa let me know what book you would like. And I enjoyed doing this so much I have picked another winner at random. 5inabus gets a copy of The House That Went to Sea. Email me at melinda@tale-spin.com with postal details too peeps.

And folks if you have not already checked out the most awesome NZ Poetry Box blog run by fab poet Paula Green go take a look now. This is a blog for children, parents and teachers up to year 8. Paula posts tips, challenges, competitions, interviews and poems by children amongst other things. She has already run a number of challenges and awarded prizes to young poets from schools (and individually) all around New Zealand.

Paula recently ran the first Fabulous Poetry Competition for Children and after receiving nearly 2,000 poems has selected twenty to appear in the A Treasury of New Zealand Poetry for Children to be published by Random House. I cannot wait to see this fabulous book. Paula said:-

it was an ELEPHANT task reading my way through them all. It was really hard narrowing it down as there were so many wonderful entries. I think some schools must be little writing havens as they sent in so many good poems.

There were poems about cats, dogs, paddocks, beaches, the moon, wizards, witches, blue, yellow, fireworks, families, feelings, dragons, space, people, places, the world, gardens and a thousand other things. There were fat poems, skinny poems, funny poems, musical poems, poems that rhyme, poems that don’t, scary poems, thoughtful poems, imaginative poems, surprising poems, sad poems, happy poems.

There were similies that popped and words that shone.

NZ Children's Book Scene Name Dropping Alert...

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 :)