SCBWI news from the Nation’s Capital - Canberra

Things are warming up in the ACT although the weather is definitely cooling.

Our first ACT SCBWI meeting is kicking off with an autumn event on the 1st April with a very special guest speaker, Tania McCartney. Tania will be giving a peek at her latest release “This is Captain Cook’. Tania will also be speaking about the success of the 52-week art illustration and her recent SCBWI events in WA.

President of CBCA Canberra, Leanne Barrett will also be speaking to us regarding upcoming events in the ACT.

Tania McCartney- Book Launch 19th April 2015, NLA 11am

This is Captain Cook celebrates the life of a great mariner and true adventurer. In this book Miss Batts and her class narrates the story of Cook's life through a humorous and whimsical school play.

If you are visiting Canberra- please come along and share the launch and excitement with us.

Stephanie Owen Reeder recently released her historical novel Lennie the Legend. 

Stephanie has added to her amazingly detailed collection of historical books (the first two being Lost! A True Tale from the Bush, and Amazing Grace: An Adventure At Sea, which won the Young People’s History Prize in the New South Wales Premier’s History Awards, 2012) with this new tale—Lennie the Legend: Solo to Sydney by Pony.

Set at the height of the Great Depression, Lennie follows the journey of a young lad destined for adventure. After saving the family farm’s latest crop, Lennie’s parents allow the young boy to ride his pony, Ginger Mick, all the way (on his own!) from rural Victoria to Sydney, to witness the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge—a journey of 1,000 kilometres. Along the way, this remarkable child meets with a lifetime of extraordinary experiences from a near-horse-napping to a bushfire encounter to meeting Prime Minister Joseph Lyons at Parliament House.

Stephanie said Lennie was once considered alongside our greatest poets and politicians at the time, yet his fame and achievements have been lost to Australians. She felt impassioned to share this young boy’s story—saying she felt people really should know about him. I’m so glad she did. The book is beautiful—peppered with amazing photos and facts on Australia and its people in the 1930s. One of my favourite parts of the books is a series of chapter header images showing the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as it slowly closed its maw over the harbour.

Lennie the Legend is available online at the National Library Bookshop.

Report on SCBWI Event - 14 March, 2015

It was a full house at the Melbourne SCBWI event on Saturday 14 March. After some highlights of members’ successes and new book announcements, award winning Young Adult and children’s book writer and illustrator, Gabrielle Wang talked about her publishing journey, from inception to today.

Gabrielle traced her love of illustrating back to a childhood gift of a set of 72 Derwent colour pencils, admitting that, as she struggled at school, it never occurred to her that she might be able to write the stories she illustrated. After writing about a dream she’d had, and some prompting from Hazel Edwards at a workshop, Gabrielle decided she could write the stories too. Her books are drawn from her dreams, as well as her family history as goldmine generation Chinese-Australians. Her favourite readers to write for are 8-12 year olds, the target readership for her acclaimed Pearlie books in the Our Australian Girl series.

Acclaimed artist Anna Walker told us that she always wanted to illustrate picture books, and has kept a visual diary of all her ideas and story possibilities since she first fell in love with pictures – ideas that can result in a new book years after they were first jotted down. One of the scenes from her picture book Peggy was influenced by the vision of a bird trapped in a shop window in Paris, which she’d captured in her visual diary more than a decade before. She often turns her exquisite drawings and artwork into soft toys and three-dimensional models, and is constantly experimenting with new techniques and media.

International bestseller James Phelan was the last speaker. In his presentation he attributed his writing talent to an “overactive imagination” prompted by reading books by Roald Dahl, Paul Jennings, and The Hobbit, among other iconic stories. Believing that writers were “old men” he pursued a career in architecture to fill his days until he would be old enough to join their ranks. He obtained an MA and PhD in literature with the same plan in mind, but continued to write in his spare time, producing the first of many successful thrillers that launched his career. Since then, he’s written more than sixteen books for teens and young adults, including the thirteen-book series for Scholastic, The Last Thirteen.

Nicole Hayes is the author of The Whole of My World (Random House 2013). Her new novel, One True Thing will be published by Random House in May.

ELR and PLR Closing date March 31

Public Lending Right (PLR) and Educational Lending Right (ELR) are Australian Government cultural programs which make payments to eligible Australian creators and publishers in recognition that income is lost through the free multiple use of their books in public and educational lending libraries.

If you are a book publisher or creator—author, editor, illustrator, translator or compiler—you may be eligible for a payment under the PLR and ELR schemes.

Have a look at the website for more.