2016 Environment Award for Children’s Literature Shortlist Announced

I’m happy to announce that the shortlist for the 2016 Environment Award for Children’s Literature was announced yesterday. This is a great award put together by The Wilderness Society. The awards are announced later this year and I look forward to featuring the shortlist in the coming weeks. Please click here for more information.

Non-fiction

Atmospheric: The Burning Story of Climate Change by Carole Wilkinson

Talking about the weather used to be small talk; now it’s the hottest topic on Earth. We can’t survive without Earth’s atmosphere, yet most of the time we ignore it. We treat our atmosphere as a rubbish dump for our greenhouse gas emissions. Slowly but surely, what we are doing is changing Earth’s climate. Atmospheric cuts through the many voices raised around climate change to tell the story of our atmosphere, what is putting our climate at risk and what we can do about it. This could be the most important book you read in your life.

 

 

Platypus by Sue Whiting and Mark Jackson

Platypus leaves his burrow in the riverbank and dives into the cool green pool. It is dusk and he is hungry. Platypus is always busy, always moving, looking for his next meal. Follow platypus as he plays, swims, dives and scurries around his riverbank home.

 

 

 

 

Phasmid: Saving the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect by Rohan Cleave and Coral Tulloch

Phasmid is the amazing true story of the Lord Howe Island Phasmid, or Stick Insect. Believed to be extinct for nearly 80 years, the phasmids were rediscovered on Balls Pyramid—a volcanic outcrop 23 kilometres off the coast of Lord Howe Island. This wonderful tale captures the life of one of the world’s most critically endangered invertebrates. It is a positive story about one species’ incredible survival in a time of worldwide species decline.

Picture Fiction

Seagull by Danny Snell

Seagull loves to fly. It makes her heart sing. But when she gets caught in a tangle of fishing line on the beach, Seagull can only watch as other birds fly effortlessly above. What can she do? Who will help her? Seagull is a gentle, positive story with a strong environmental message about caring for our land and our wildlife.

 

 

 

A River by Marc Martin

There is a river outside my window. Where will it take me?’ Each new landscape is explored through stunning illustrations and poetic text from this award-winning picture book creator.

Once I Heard a Little Wombat by Renee Treml

A beautiful Australian take on a classic nursery rhyme. ‘Once I heard a little wombat stomp stomp stomp…’. Read along and act out the movements as these baby Australian animals eat, play and settle down for nap time.

Fiction

Thirst by Lizzie Wilcock

It’s not my desert, but this is my escape. I’m doing it on my own. Karanda Hooke doesn’t need anybody or anything. On her way to her sixth foster home, a car crash leaves her stranded in the outback with only a backpack, a bottle of water and a stained picture of the mother she hasn’t seen in years. This is her chance to escape her old life. There’s only one thing in her way… eight-year-old Solomon.

 

 

 

 

The River and the Book by Alison Croggon

Simbala is a Keeper, the latest in a long line of women who can read the Book to find answers to people’s questions. When developers begin to poison the river on which Simbala’s village relies, the Book predicts change. But this does not come in the form they expect; it is the sympathetic foreigner who comes to stay who inflicts the greatest damage of all.

Mister Cassowary by Samantha Wheeler

A thrilling adventure about Australia’s endangered cassowaries. When Flynn and Dad arrive at Grandad Barney’s banana farm, it’s clear that Flynn has a lot of investigating to do. Everything in the place is a mystery—especially his grandad who died almost a year ago, and the strange dinosaur-like birds called cassowaries that make his dad so scared. After Flynn meets local girl Abby and discovers two orphaned baby cassowaries, the mystery deepens. Can Flynn find out the truth about his grandad and the cassowaries before it’s too late?