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Experienced Team to Judge the 2015 New Zealand Book Awards
Experienced Team to Judge the 2015 New Zealand Book Awards for Children And Young Adults
Bob Docherty, Annemarie Florian and Fiona Mackie have been appointed judges of the 2015 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
They have, between them, ninety years of
experience working with books for children and they will
deliberate on as many as 150 books over four categories:
Picture Books, Junior Fiction, Non-fiction and Young Adult
Fiction. They will select five finalists, then a winner in
each category. The supreme winner, drawn from the winners of
the four categories, will be declared the 2015 Margaret Mahy
Book of the Year.
Judge convenor Bob Docherty is well
known in his hometown of Christchurch, and across New
Zealand, for promoting reading into schools. He regularly
tours New Zealand offering collection selection advice to
school library staff. He is a children’s book reviewer for
Fairfax newspapers, and has his own book reviewing
blog.
“I look forward to experiencing the creativity
of New Zealand Children and Young Adult writers in the same
way a vintner looks forward to tasting this year’s
wine,” he says. “Just as our wine is world class, so are
our writers.”
Judge Annemarie Florian owned and
operated a specialist children’s bookshop for 26 years.
She has written several board books for very young children,
and was a finalist for the 2013 New Zealand Post
Children’s Book Awards with her non-fiction book Kiwi: The
Real Story. She is particularly interested in how books and
language can influence who we are and how we view ourselves,
as individuals and as a community.
Fiona Mackie has 30
years experience across the education and libraries sectors,
having worked as a teacher, a reference librarian, Social
Sciences Selector and New Schools Advisor while at National
Library. She is the Immediate Past President of SLANZA —
the School Library Association of New Zealand Aotearoa —
and is currently the teacher-librarian at Pinehurst College
in Auckland.
“The Book Awards Trust is delighted
with the calibre of the judges for the 2015 awards,” says
its chair Nicola Legat. “We had so many applications to be
considered as judges from many strong candidates and Bob,
Annemarie and Fiona stood out as having remarkable
experience and expertise across many aspects of children’s
literature. We await their shortlist with keen
interest.”
The finalist authors in the awards will
embark upon a nationwide author tour, in the week prior to
the awards being announced at a ceremony on Thursday 13
August.
Exciting changes are also being made to the
much-loved Children’s Choice Award that will make it even
more vital and relevant. The Book Awards Trust will announce
these at a later date.
The New Zealand Book Awards for
Children and Young Adults is sponsored by Creative NZ, Book
Tokens (Ltd) and Copyright Licensing Limited New Zealand
(CLLNZ). It is administered by Booksellers NZ.
To find
out more about the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and
Young Adults, please visit www.bookawardstrust.org.nz.
ENDS
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