(Clockwise from top) Catherine Morgans, Stephanie Owen-Reeder, Leanne Barrett, me, conference buddy Janine O’Dwyer.
I met Maryann Ballantyne from Wild Dog at the last SCBWI International Sydney Conference in 2019.
I was there with my conference buddy Janine O’Dwyer and we had both escaped to a quiet balcony to avoid the noise. Can you believe how loud children’s writers and illustrators are when they are all in one room?!
Maryann and Donna Rawlins both had the same idea. We all got to talking and it turns out Maryann had a Canberra connection (Canberra is my home town).
At a later date, Maryann found out that I was an electoral educator. In one of those lovely coincidences, she had been wanting to publish a book that explains our somewhat complex voting system. I’d always had the idea of writing a book about a classroom election but had put it on the back burner.
Not long after this, I had a contract for my current picture book, Vote 4 Me, illustrated by the magnificent Cathy Wilcox.
Maryann has been an amazing publisher. I feel extremely lucky to have met her that day at the SCBWI Conference.
Vote 4 Me, explains the federal preferential voting system through a fun classroom election. The student candidates are brought to life by the brilliant political cartoonists, Cathy Wilcox.
It’s suitable for students in year 5 and 6 who will be learning about Civics and Citizenship. And anyone else who isn’t sure how preferential voting works! Voting is integral to our democracy and children instantly respond to it because they have an innate sense of fairness (as any parent who has had to split the last Tim Tam in the pack with their own kids knows).
Democracy means ‘people power’ and it works best when all citizens are engaged. Getting kids involved early means that they understand how it all works, and most importantly, they understand that they have the means to bring about change.
Krys Saclier
author@kryssaclierstories.com
www.kryssaclierstories.com