WAYRBA 2022 shortlists announced

The shortlisted titles in each category, including middle-grade, which is a new category being trialled this year, are:

Picture book

• Happy as a Hog Out of Mud (Sean E Avery, Larrikin House)
• Flamingo Celeste is Not like the Rest (Celeste Barber, Scholastic)
• Pig the Monster (Aaron Blabey, Scholastic)
• Back to Sleep (Zoe Foster Blake, illus by Mike Jacobsen, Puffin)
• The March of the Ants (Ursula Dubosarsky, illus by Tohby Riddle, Book Trail Press)
• Norton and the Borrowing Bear (Gabriel Evans, Berbay)
• Windows (Patrick Guest, illus by Jonathan Bentley, HGCP)
• There’s a Ghost in this House (Oliver Jeffers, HarperCollins)
• The Couch Potato (Jory John, illus by Pete Oswald, HarperCollins)
• Three (Stephen Michael King, Scholastic)
• The Boy Who Tried to Shrink his Name (Sandhya Parappukkaran, illus by Michelle Pereira, HGCP)
• Chatterpuss (Josh Pyke, illus by Daron Parton, Scholastic)
• Now That’s a Hat (Heath McKenzie, Scholastic)
• The Gift (Michael Speechley, Puffin)
• My Shadow is Pink (Scott Stuart, Larrikin House)

Younger readers

• Operation Honeyhunt: Agents of the Wild (Jennifer Bell & Alice Lickens, Walker)
• Off the Track (Cristy Burne, Fremantle Press)
• Hopping Weird! WeirDo 12 (Anh Do, Scholastic)
• Donut the Destroyer (Sarah Graley & Stef Purenins, Graphix)
• The Little Wave (Pip Harry, UQP)
• Fish Kid and the Turtle Torpedo: Fish Kid 3 (Kylie Howarth, Walker)
• Wrecking Ball: Diary of a Wimpy Kid 14 (Jeff Kinney, Puffin)
• Real Pigeons Fight Crime: Real Pigeons 1 (Andrew McDonald & Ben Wood, HGCP)
• Ten Tremendous Tales: Tom Gates 18 (Liz Pichon, Scholastic)
• Gangsta Granny Strikes Again! (David Walliams & Tony Ross, HarperCollins)
• Hodgepodge: How to Make a Pet Monster 1 (Lili Wilkinson & Dustin Spence, A&U Children’s)

Middle-grade

• Blackbird Girls (Anne Blankman, Puffin)
• Logan Likes Mary Anne! (Ann M Martin, illus by Gale Galligan, Scholastic)
• The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel (Nicki Greenberg, Affirm)
• Nice Girls Don’t Play Footy (Kathy Helidoniotis, Omnibus)
• Pawcasso (Remy Lai, A&U)
• Whimsy and Woe (Rebecca McRitchie, HarperCollins)
• Keeper of the Lost Cities (Shannon Messenger, S&S)
• Michaela Mason’s Big List of 23 Worries (Alexa Moses, Scholastic)
• We Are Wolves (Katrina Nannestad, ABC Books)
• The Ickabog (J K Rowling, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
• Can You See Me? (Libby Scott, Scholastic)
• Guts (Raina Telgemeier, Scholastic)

Older readers

• The Inheritance Games (Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Penguin)
• The Turnaway Girls (Hayley Chewins, Walker)
• A Tale of Magic (Chris Colfer, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Suzanne Collins, Scholastic)
• Poisoned (Jennifer Donnelly, Hotkey)
• The Boyband Murder Mystery (Ava Eldred, Penguin)
• Beast Boy: Teen Titans (Kami Garcia, illus by Gabriel Picolo, DC Comics)
• Nightshade: Alex Rider 13 (Anthony Horowitz, Walker)
• The Unlisted (Chris Kunz & Justine Flynn, Lothian)
• The Battlemage: Summoner book 3 (Taran Matharu, Hodder Children’s Books).

The WAYRBAs are voted on by young readers from across Western Australia. Books are eligible to be nominated if they were published within the past five years, are currently in print, and are written by a living Australian or overseas author.

For more information about the awards, click here.