CBCA Shadowers’ Choice Awards 2022 winners
The winners of the inaugural 2022 Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Sun Project: Shadowers’ Choice Awards, chosen by groups of young people, have been announced.
The winning books in each category are:
Older readers
- Sugar Town Queens (Malla Nunn, A&U)
Younger readers
- Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief (Katrina Nannestad, ABC Books)
Early childhood
- Walk of the Whales (Nick Bland, HGCP)
Picture book of the year
- Stellarphant (James Foley, Fremantle Press)
Eve Pownall Award
- The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature (Sami Bayly, Hachette).
The CBCA Sun Project, which received Australia Council funding in late December 2021 as part of the federal government Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand fund, involved 155 groups of young children from across the country, who each chose a CBCA Book of the Year shortlist category to shadow judge.
CBCA chair Wendy Rapee said of the program: ‘We have received overwhelming feedback from our young judges with many saying they enjoyed two important aspects of this process: meeting up with other young people they wouldn’t normally spend time with and reading books they wouldn’t normally turn to. They have read and enjoyed genres they haven’t experienced before … Their choices have expanded. Their reading skills have deepened. This is a huge win for our participants. We are thrilled.’
This year was the first year of the national roll-out of the program, after the shadow judging process was successfully trialled in Victoria in 2020–21.
For more information on the winners and the project, see the Sun Project website.
Category: Awards Local news
