New Zealand Children’s Book Awards 2015 finalists announced

The finalists for the 2015 New Zealand Children’s Book Awards have been announced. The shortlisted titles in each category are:

Picture books

Nonfiction

• Ghoulish Get-Ups: How to Create Your Own Freaky Costumes (Fifi Colston, Scholastic)
• Māori Art for Kids (Julie Noanoa & Norm Heke, Craig Potton)
• Mōtītī Blue and the Oil Spill (Debbie McCauley & Sarah Elworthy, Mauao)
• The Book of Hat (Harriet Rowland, Makaro Press)
• Under the Ocean: Explore & Discover New Zealand’s Sea Life (Gillian Candler & Ned Barraud, Craig Potton)

Young adult fiction

• I Am Rebecca (Fleur Beale, Random House)
• Night Vision (Ella West, A&U)
• Recon Team Angel: Vengeance (Brian Falkner, Walker Books)
• Singing Home the Whale (Mandy Hager, Random House)
• While We Run (Karen Healey, A&U)

Junior fiction

• Conrad Cooper’s Last Stand (Leonie Agnew, Puffin)
• Dragon Knight: Fire! (Kyle Mewburn & Donovan Bixley, Scholastic)
• Monkey Boy (Donovan Bixley, Scholastic)
• The Island of Lost Horses (Stacy Gregg, HarperCollins)
• The Pirates and the Nightmaker (James Norcliffe, Longacre Press)

Maori language

• Hoiho Paku (Stephanie Thatcher, translated by Ngaere Roberts, Scholastic)
• Ngā Ki (Sacha Cotter, illus by Joshua Morgan, translated by Kawata Teepa, Huia).

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in Wellington on 13 August.

This year’s awards attracted 149 entries and were judged by Bob Docherty, Annemarie Florian, Fiona Mackiewith and Stephanie Pohe-Tibble.

For the first time, New Zealand children have chosen the books eligible for the Children’s Choice Awards from all 149 entries. Previously, the Children’s Choice Awards were selected from the judges’ finalists list. To see the books selected for the Children’s Choice Awards, click here. 

The awards, now in their 25th year, were previously known as the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards before The Post Group withdrew its sponsorship in October last year. This year the awards are sponsored by Creative NZ, Book Tokens Ltd, Copyright Licensing Limited New Zealand and Nielsen Book Services, with further support from publishers, and are administered by a trust comprised of members from the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ), the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) and Booksellers New Zealand.  

For more information about the awards, visit the Booksellers NZ website here.

Category: Junior Local news