We’re delighted to report that recognition for Fremantle Press books has been strong this month, with four titles making the award lists (as modelled here by Children’s Publisher Cate Sutherland).

Bella and the Wandering House by Meg McKinlay is a finalist in the Children’s fiction category of the 2015 Aurealis Awards. Picked from a field of some 750 entries across 15 categories, McKinlay’s book for junior readers is competing against her other 2015 release: A Single Stone.

We All Sleep by Ezekiel Kwaymullina will be read aloud on a new episode of Play School for ABC Children’s TV to air later this year.

It’s been a good month for children’s literature with two new specialist bookstores opening on both sides of the country. Independent Melbourne bookstore Readings announced they would open a store dedicated to children’s and young adult books in Carlton and Jennifer Jackson launched Paper Bird Children’s Books & Arts in Fremantle. We had a quick […]

Representation matters, including in picture book illustrations. Perhaps especially in illustrations, because children are fluent in the language of art in a way that most adults are not. There is no aspect of an illustration that escapes the attention of a child, and this means that to create art for children is to speak to an audience more attuned to the nuances of representation than yourself. This is one of the reasons why the misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in illustration – or the misrepresentation of other diverse peoples, for that matter – should never be dismissed as being ‘only a picture book’.

Fremantle Press authors Jen Banyard and Deb Fitzpatrick have both been shortlisted for a 2016 West Australian Young Readers’ Book Award.

News

Winners!

Congratulations to Alicia Lilly of Bannister Creek Primary School who has won a date with Meg McKinlay for her school in 2016.

Sally Morgan’s new book, Sister Heart, was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award today. Poignantly written from the child’s perspective, Sister Heart tells the story of a young Aboriginal girl’s experience as part of the Stolen Generations.

WA kids say Viking creators are number one Norman Jorgensen and James Foley’s The Last Viking Returns has won the Hoffman Award, an award given to the highest ranked creators in the West Australian Young Readers’ Book Awards. This is the third win for Jorgensen and the second for Foley.

Peacock Visuals has created a book trailer for Can a skeleton have an x-ray? by Kyle Hughes-Odgers.

Kate McCaffrey has won her second Australian Family Therapists’ Award for Children’s Literature for her latest novel, Crashing Down.

Fremantle Press has launched a new website that includes a section dedicated to educators. It is designed to be a practical one-stop-shop for busy teachers and children’s librarians looking for quality Australian titles and teaching resources. You can now use the education page to find the latest news and resources, book authors online and subscribe […]

What difference does it make if the characters in young adult novels swear? From time to time, publishers are contacted by parents or schools who are concerned by the appearance in YA fiction of (to quote an editor of T. S. Eliot) words ending in ‘uck’ or ‘ugger’.

Popular children’s book The Last Viking will be read at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington, this November as part of a Nordic Stories series.

Artist and author Sally Morgan shares her highlights from the inaugural Spinifex Story Writing Camp. I spent the last week of June participating in workshops at Tjuntjuntjara Remote School with three amazing people – Karen and Tina from the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) and illustrator Ann James.

Children’s publisher Cate Sutherland discusses the trials and the triumphs of publishing children’s picture books. The most common misconception about picture books is that because they are short and written for children they must be easy to write.

We asked Jenny Simpson to let some AWESOME cats out of the bag by sharing her highlights from this year’s AWESOME Festival. Warning: spoiler alert!

No matter who we are or what we do, things sometimes go wrong in life.

Giveaways

Free posters

Want to brighten up a wall in your library or classroom? Fremantle Press has a small number of free children’s books posters available for schools and libraries.

No matter what we end up doing in life, ‘what we end up doing’ is grounded in effective communication. Life is built upon relationships.

Need a last-minute Anzac Day activity? Why not get your students to create and use semaphore flags? The semaphore signalling method was used to communicate important military information, home-front anxieties and, eventually, hopes for a more peaceful world.

Drawing on fascinating archival material, and interweaving fact with fiction, in this video award-winning author Dianne Wolfer deftly recreates the story of Fay Howe, the little girl from Breaksea Island. In doing so she depicts the hardships of those left at home during WWI — waiting, wondering and hoping. 

Illustrator Sean E. Avery takes us into his studio where he created the picture books All Monkeys Love Bananas and Harold and Grace.

Alice Nelson is a novelist who won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award and was named Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist in 2009. Here she talks about her latest book After This: Survivors of the Holocaust speak.