Open Your Heart to Country by Jasmine Seymour

Open Your Heart to Country by Jasmine Seymour Jasmine Seymour has won her second Prime Minister’s Literary Award in the Children’s Literature category. Open Your Heart to Country has won the 2023 award. Cooee Mittigar: A Story on Darug Songlines (written by Jasmine Seymour, illustrated by Leanne Mungo Watson) won the 2020 award, as well […]

A Feather on a Wing by Maria Speyer

A Feather on a Wing by Maria Speyer Danish artist, illustrator and author Maria Speyer’s debut picture book in English is A Feather on a Wing. It has an ethereal feel yet is grounded in a sister’s love, nurturing nature and access to a world constructed with care and warmth that is growing and inclusive. […]

Words on the Waves Writers Festival 2022

Words on the Waves Writers Festival 2022 The second Words on the Waves Writers Festival was held on Darkinjung Country on the NSW Central Coast during the first weekend in June 2022. The festival expanded over two venues, Ocean Beach Surf Life Saving Club and Umina SLSC (both at Umina Beach) and was marked by […]

The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel by Nicki Greenberg

The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel by Nicki Greenberg Inside the CBCA Shortlist Inside the 2022 CBCA Shortlist Inside the 2022 CBCA Notable Books Author Interview “She slunk off to the library. The room was deserted, as it had been every time she had looked in. She wandered listlessly among the armchairs and sofas and […]

All the Little Tricky Things by Karys McEwen

All the Little Tricky Things by Karys McEwen “I don’t want to be ungrateful about being sent to a good school in the city. I know I’m lucky. It just adds to my weird tummy feelings about being an in-betweener. I won’t belong with the Merri kids anymore, but at the end of each day, […]

Florence & Fox by Zanni Louise, illustrated by Anna Pignataro

Florence & Fox by Zanni Louise, illustrated by Anna Pignataro Inside the 2022 CBCA Notable Books Author & Illustrator Interview Congratulations on your picture book Florence & Fox (Walker Books Australia) being recognised as a Notable Book in the 2022 CBCA Early Childhood category, Zanni and Anna. Thank you both for speaking to Joy in […]

Book of Curious Birds by Jennifer Cossins

Book of Curious Birds by Jennifer Cossins Inside the CBCA Shortlist Inside the 2022 CBCA Shortlist Inside the 2022 CBCA Notable Books Interview extract by Joy in Books at PaperbarkWords blog (adapted from an interview in Magpies magazine) & how to use the book with children. I interviewed Jennifer Cossins while she was creating Book […]

How to Spell Catastrophe by Fiona Wood

How to Spell Catastrophe by Fiona Wood “Our word of the week is participation. More like ‘exclusion’ for me, not that anyone seems to care.” (How to Spell Catastrophe) Fiona Wood is one of Australia’s best contemporary writers of YA literature, evinced by the many awards her books have won. In fact, her three most […]

The Verse Novel by Linda Weste

The Verse Novel by Linda Weste “I think verse novelists are so clever in the way they say so much, with so few words.” Pip Harry in The Verse Novel The Verse Novel by Linda Weste is an important text. It is an accessible and interesting academic book of interviews with Australian and New Zealand […]

Walk of the Whales by Nick Bland

Walk of the Whales by Nick Bland Inside the CBCA Shortlist Inside the 2022 CBCA Shortlist Inside the 2022 CBCA Notable Books Book Review by Joy in Books at PaperbarkWords blog Nick Bland is very well known and loved for his picture books, The Very Cranky Bear and sequels, The Wrong Book, The Runaway Hug […]