Australian Children's Book Council Awards for 2025

This is a cross post from my Children's Literacy Blog - Literacy Families & Learning

Book of the Year: Older Readers

WINNER

'I’m Not Really Here' – Gary Lonesborough (A&U Books for Children and Young Adults).

"A moving coming-of-age story with so much heart. For readers who enjoyed Heartstopper." --BOOKS & PUBLISHING 

Honour Books

'Birdy' Sharon Kernot 

'Into the Mouth of the Wolf' Erin Gough (Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing)

Book of the Year Award: Younger Readers

WINNER

'Laughter is the Best Ending' Maryam Master. Illustrated by Astred Hicks (Pan Australia)

Honour Books

'Aggie Flea Steals the Show' Tania Ingram, and illustrated by A. Yi (Scholastic Australia)

'Fluff: Mess Up!' Matt Stanton (ABC Books) 

Book of the Year Award: Early Childhood 

WINNER

'The Wobbly Bike' by Darren McCallum

Have you ever helped a child to learn to ride their first bike? Most of us have and it isn't always easy. Those wobbly wobbly starts as we sit them on the bike, walk beside them, try to steady them before you let them move a little on their own? It is usually stressful for child and parent. 

In this delightful picture book Darren McCallum was inspired by his three year daughter who one day was racing out the door. She had been given a bike and one morning her Dad caught her heading outside. He asked where she was going, to which she replied, "I'm going outside to ride my wobbly bike."

 

This experience was of course the inspiration for this wonderful picture book. He 

One afternoon when his daughter Summer was small, Darren McCallum took the training wheels off her bike. McCallum is a painter by trade who lives in Australia's hot Top End city of Darwin. He was something of a storyteller to his brothers and sisters while growing up.

When he eventually decided to give it 'a crack' (as we sometimes say in AUS), he remembered that Wobbly Bike. 

The Wobbly Bike, with illustrations by the well-known illustrator Craig Smith, is the well-deserved winner of the 'Early Childhood' Book award in 2025.

 Honour Books Younger Readers (Ages 0-6 Years)

'One Little Dung Beatle' by Heather Potter (illustrator) & text by Mark Jackson 

'How to Move a Zoo' by Kate Simson (illustrator) & Owen Simpson 

Picture Book of the Year Award 

WINNER 

'The Truck Cat' written by Deborah Frenkel (Author) and illustrated by Danny Snell 

The Truck Cat is a story about cats and humans, immigration and identity, and homes that can be lost and yet found again. 

Author Deborah Frenkel is an award-winning writer of books for children. She grew up in the 80s and 90s and thought she might just be a 'business lady'. But that wasn't to be, and after working in advertising in her day job writing ads for varied clothing brands, she changed course. She now lives in Melbourne, Australia, on the traditional lands of the Bunurong People of the Kulin Nation. 

Her delightful book is well supported by the illustrations of multi-award-winning artist Danny Snell.

Her delightful book is well supported by the illustrations of multi-award-winning artist Danny Snell. 'The Truck Cat' is the perfect book to inspire kindness and compassion in young children everywhere. Now this lead should get you in:
 
"Some cats are house cats. Some are apartment cats.
But Tinka is a truck cat. Tinka lives everywhere."
 
Tinka travels with his human owner Yacoub. But no matter how much they travel, home always feels very far away for both of them. Yacoub drives his truck to make a living, learning the landscape of a new country along the way, and longing for connection.
 
But on one trip, Tinka and Yacoub are unexpectedly separated. But they are both determined to find one another. In doing so, they find even more than they expected …

"In The Truck Cat, Deborah Frenkel’s beautiful writing takes the reader on a gentle and often amusing ride. Yacoub’s story is one of resilience, yearning and sighs of sadness. Tinka the cat makes sure there is sunshine and smiles along the way. Danny Snell’s gorgeous colour palette splashes movement and life on every page. From vignettes to double page spreads, the combination of art and text presents a heartfelt, hopeful story of finding home …"

Sandhya Parappukkaran, the award-winning author of 'The Boy Who Tried to Shrink His Name', suggests 'The Truck Cat' is a must-read picture book’. ‘At a time when the world is in turmoil, much of it due to ignorance, intolerance and bigotry, there could not be a more timely choice for a book that will bring children right across the country together, in a glorious celebration and a move towards greater acceptance and empathy.’

This is a lovely picture book that combines great storytelling that touch on the heartwarming emotions of loss, companionship and love. It's pitched perfectly to entertain and move young readers, as well as to gently open their hearts and minds.’

 Honour Books

 'These Long-Loved Things' (illustrator) & Josh Pyke (text)

"A moving coming-of-age story with so much heart. For readers who enjoyed Heartstopper." --BOOKS & PUBLISHING

 

'Afloat' Freya Blackwood (illustrator), Story by Kirli Saunders (Little Hare)

'These Long-Loved Things' Ronojoy Ghosh (illustrator), Story by Josh Pyke (Scholastic Australia) 

Other Picture Books Nominated 

'A Leaf Called GREAF' by Kelly Canby

 

'AFLOAT' by Kirli Saunders and text by Freya Blackwood

'The Garden of Broken Things' by Freya Blackwood 

'We Live in a Bus' by Dave Petzold. 

  

Book of the Year Award: Eve Pownall Award for Information Books

 Winner

'Always Was, Always Will Be' by Aunty Fay Muir & Sue Lawson (Magabala Books)

 Honour Books

'Making the Shrine: Stories from Victoria’s War Memorial' Laura J Carroll (The Crossley Press)

South With the Seabirds – Jess McGeachin (A&U Books for Children and Young Adults)

Book Of The Year - New Illustrator

 Winner

 Grow Big, Little Seed – ill. Sarah Capon (Bright Light)

Worthy Picture Books to Note but not awarded major prizes

1. 'AFLOAT' by Kirli Saunders & Illustrated by Freya Blackwood (Little Hare)

"Roam the water with me. We are here to learn.

Here to spin wisdom, to grow …"

This wonderful picture book is from award award-winning author Kirli Saunders (a proud Gunai woman) and seven-time CBCA-winner Freya Blackwood comes 'Afloat'. And what a triumph!

This is a story told in a time of climate crisis, but against a backdrop of a changed environment. An Aboriginal elder leads a child along the waterways, sharing her People's knowledge, skills like weaving and much more. All the while a child is leaning, discovering and gathering community and seeing their world extended and enriched along the way.

A wonderful new book about the skill of our Indigenous nations. In this book the skill of weaving has a special focus on weaving. But more broadly, it seeks to help young readers to remember and honour our First Nations. This wonderful book has a special focus not just on their unique skills, but also their wisdom and many lessons as they look with hope to the future.

2. 'The Garden of Broken Things' Written & Illustrated by Freya Blackwood

"One day, curious Sadie follows a cat into the tangled vines behind the lonely house at Number 9, Ardent Street.

Deep in the undergrowth, past all the twisted, rusted things, Sadie finds the cat sitting on the lap of a woman, bent with time and weariness.

Sadie has found the Garden of Broken Things." As Maura Pierlot wrote in her excellent review of this picture book in 'Reading Time'.

"A story’s first line can do so many things: capture attention, conjure emotions, pique curiosity, create anticipation, evoke nostalgia. The opening line to The Garden of Broken Things masterfully achieves all these things and more.

One day, Sadie follows a cat into the scrub behind Number 9 Ardent Street, where tangled vines concealed things from another time … things that had come to a final halt. Deep in the undergrowth, she finds the cat sitting on the lap of a woman, bent with time and weariness." 

This intriguing and unique picture book is a worthy member of the Children's Bookweek Shortlist in 2025. Freya as we've come to expect has crafted with warmth and emotion and allows us to enter into the life of Sadie as she explores her world. This includes memories, grief and loss, her natural world and her own journey as she grows older and comes to understand the changes in herself.

3. 'We Live in a Bus' by Dave Petzold

The Role of the Imagination in Story & Character Development

In 2024 I presented two keynote addresses to a national gathering of the 150 leaders of ‘Christian Schools Australia’. To do so, I drew on the ideas outlined in my book 'Pedagogy and Education for Life: A Christian Reframing of Teaching, Learning and Formation'. I suggested that Christian education and pedagogy must be rooted in an understanding of God's people in-between this life and the next.

 

As I suggest many times in my writing, we are shaped as we engage with others, and as we inhabit varied 'communities of practice'. That is, we move in and out of many situations and groups, all of which have an impact on us in varied ways. This is reality for our students as they attend our schools, and inhabit many groups. The term “Intertextuality” helps us to understand what this means. It was coined by cognitive anthropologist Julia Kristeva (1991).

 

It describes how we ‘inhabit’ the varied groups in life. And as we do we learn things, and take on many of the same concerns, passions, values and beliefs of the groups or ‘communities’. As teachers and school leaders, we need to understand this as we teach, educate and point students in wise directions for life.

  

1. Imagination and COMMUNITY

 

Martin Buber suggested as we build relationships, our ‘Character’ requires us to have and preserve a level of freedom, expressed in any human communion. Conversely, ‘compulsion’ illustrated by rules, can create disunion, sometimes humiliation, and hence rebelliousness.

  

In many ways, this is why the informal networks of life beat the formal structures of education hands down, in influencing the heart, life priorities, hopes and dreams. Why? Because in such less formal gatherings young people are able to ‘speak into’ the lives of their friends in ways that few teachers and even parents cannot. So, the varied communities our children inhabit, help to shape minds, lives, expectations, imaginations and hoped for futures.

 

Ironically, sometimes families (and some schools) only end up reinforcing the things that matter much less than faith in the living God. Even in faith-based schools, teachers and leaders can end up promoting worldly success, starting salaries for future jobs, career status, achievement etc. This is at the expense of faith and character, wise choices and growth. School for many, can become an annoying imposition that one endures, knowing that one day they can escape to find what they see as ‘true’ freedom. The communities that matter most can end up being outside the formal structures and life of school.

 

 

2. Creating different and more effective communities within our classrooms

 

What we need to consider as teachers and schools, is how we can build more effectively different within our classrooms and the school at large. That is, communities which can shape imaginations, and how our students use them.

 

But how can this be done? Let me offer a fuller vignette that might help to reinforce this key point. How can we assist our student imaginations to be shaped within our school communities of practice?

 

A number of years ago, I spent 12 months team teaching within a Year 1 classroom in Wagga Wagga, a wonderful town in inland Australia. My partner (Inta) was teaching in a Lutheran school, at a time when we were not plagued by the current education system’s desire to test children for the sake of testing. Rather, Inta’s key priority for these early learners was to embed them within an exciting classroom, that in its own way was a well-focused and exciting community that both taught and shaped at the same time.

 

 

One of my first observations as I entered the grade 1 classroom, was the rules within this classroom for 6 year old students in their second year at school weren’t dominant, and yet all seemed to know where the boundaries stood. As a result, there was movement, shared learning and intertextuality everywhere.

 

3. What do I mean by 'Intertextuality'? 

 

What is intertextuality, and why is it important? As I have already alluded, it is the relationship between one text or experience and another. By ‘text’ I’m using a term linguists use to refer to a spoken or written unit of meaning, of whatever length that forms a unified whole (a caption, headline, story, joke, play, essay, musical lyrics, letter etc). This term was first coined by philosopher Julia Kristeva in the 1960s. In essence, intertextuality involves “the connection or relationship between similar or related stories, images, songs, ideas and so on”. The interconnections we see can of course influence other learners to create very exciting classroom communities.

 

When I entered Inta’s classroom on my first day, it was obvious that the talk, drawing, writing, play etc, were being ‘collectively’ shaped as students read and wrote together, as extensions of their relationships with the teacher, and other students. Such interconnection didn’t stop within the classroom. I observed them in the playground, on the bus going home, and at home itself, with the texts playing a key role in establishing and extending their relationships. Sometimes the response of one child would lead naturally to the response of others.

 

 

I became involved very quickly and in my second week I read them the delightful book 'The Jolly Postman' (Ahlberg & Ahlberg, 1986). The children's interactions with the book as they sat on the floor in front of me was very exciting. They loved the book!

After finishing the book, I allowed time for students to chat about it, then sent them back to continue with a range of language activities (including writing). Within 10 minutes of reading the Jolly Postman, one student returned to show me a letter that she had written which was obviously inspired by the book we had just read (see PPT).  She announced:

 

“Look Mr Cairney, I've written my own Jolly Postman letter.  Chlorissa is writing one too.”

 

 

 

Within 20 minutes there were at least 10 letters in preparation, and by recess the whole class was writing "Jolly Postman" letters. Within a few days the class had produced many letters to favourite characters in books. 

 

 

The next day I was confronted by a small group of students who politely suggested (almost demanding): 

  

“Mr Cairney, we'll have to write our own Jolly Postman book.  Can we do one?”

 

And of course, Inta set about putting the wheels in motion to do just that. This was to dominate the next day or so at school. 

When it was time for me to leave the classroom after a few months I was presented with the class version of its own 'Jolly Postman' book. 

 

With the class letters inspired by ‘The Jolly Postman” Inta used the words from the book and the children's letters, and turned it into their own book, which they presented to me when I left them.

 

4  What can we learn from this example about imagination and character development?

 

This literacy lesson illustrates how classroom environments provide an opportunity for students to build textual histories, as they relate to others and share their experiences. These and other events in and outside school, help to shape them and to establish their hopes, dreams, values and priorities in life. As James Smith famously suggested, “we are what we love”. And this class had been inspired by Inta to love books!

 

This type of shared experience is a vital part of any classroom environment. Straight rows and "eyes to the front" and "heads down" will maintain discipline and focus on the teacher's agenda. This is of course is important and essential at times, but for younger learners, creativity and enthusiasm for reading, writing and even arithmetic (to use an old adage) are critical. So too, are creativity, joy in learning and collaboration with others, are also key skills for life.