Three years ago, I had the honour of attending the KOALA Awards with a school - KOALA stands for Kids Own Australian Literature Awards Inc - where the winners were announced after the children nominate books and then once they are in a shortlist, they read and vote again. When I attended, the winners were
Seriously, Do Not Open This Book Andy Lee and Heath McKenzie for Picture Books
The Bad Guys Episode 7: Do-you-think-he-saurus?! Aaron Blabey for Younger Readers
The 104-Storey Treehouse Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton for Older Readers
Maybe Morris Gleitzman for Fiction for Years 7-9
The last two years (2020 and 2021) the award day was online and unable to have the children attend. It returned to person this year, and although I couldn’t attend due to work. I got to experience the event through pictures. This is an event I am looking forward to attending later either as a SLSO or as an author.
This year the short list contained books from authors that I met and made friends with.
SHORT LIST 2022
Below are the winners
Any author looks forward to getting approval from their readers and been Australian authors, having school children nominate and vote for books, means that it judged by the thousands of younger readers rather than from adults. As mentioned above, I look forward to writing a book that is able to enter one of these categories and be on the shortlist or attend as an author and have children read my book.
Speaking of which I plan to announce something on Friday about the third book.