There is a paradox in Australian children's literature and it is this: in an age where the young are attached to the very digital devices predicted to crucify the printed book, children's book publishing is in robust health. Not surviving but thriving.
Children's book sales have been on the rise on the back of vibrant stories from Mem Fox, Jackie French and Bob Graham and many others.
And in the year of blockbusters by J.K. Rowling and Andy Griffith/Terry Denton, the children's book market is expected to comprise one third of all national book sales for the first time in recent memory.
For young readers the tactile experience of the image on the page has no digital peer while teens have proved, too, discerning drivers and consumers of print.
"One of the greatest joys of life is sharing a book with a child," says Margaret Hamilton, deputy chair of the Children's Book Council of Australia awards. "Sharing a tablet with a child just doesn't have it."
Promoting quality children's books is the role of the council's annual awards, now celebrating 70 years. Judges noted the breadth of the 402 entries from poetry, to short story collections, verse novels to non-fiction, and outstanding writers and illustrators using new voices and new mediums to push the boundaries of storytelling.
Information books are alive in the digital age. War appeared as a theme in every category and refugees, fantasy, humour, animals, bullying, family and relationships all featured prominently. And though judges found cultural diversity and social change missing from entries this year, children couldn't be better spoilt for choice.
Robert Ingpen: Lifetime achievement award
Alice in Wonderland extract with permission from The Complete Alice. Illustrations coloured by Diz Wallis. Copyright Macmillan Publishers Limited 1995 Photo: John Tennel
Ingpen, one of only two Australians to be awarded the internationally prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award, has written and illustrated more than 100 books, including Colin Thiele's Storm Boy and Alice in Wonderland. He wrote The Idle Bear, an imagined conversation between two toy bears, to mark the birth of his first grandchild.
Ingpen doesn't have much time for digital picture book productions filled up with literal "graphics and pictures" or the illustrator "who is occupying the page for their own purposes as an artist".
The most successful picture books, he says, are those in which the illustrations amplify the text, not dominate it.
"There are two spaces," Ingpen says. "One is the space you can fill, if you are competent enough as an illustrator, and there is the space you don't, and leave to the reader to fill with their imagination. You don't communicate unless you leave room for the reader to engage their curiosity and imagination and place themselves in the story."
Book of the Year:
Older Readers (Secondary Students)
Winner: Fiona Wood, Cloudwish (Pan Macmillan)
Cloudwish was inspired by the author's work as a Friday night volunteer tutor, her regard for the Bronte classic Jane Eyre and a gift Wood received of a sealed glass cylinder containing a slip of paper.
Heroine, Van Uoc Phan, is the clever daughter of Vietnamese refugees who lives by the credo: What would Jane Eyre do?
"There is a tonal contrast in the two main story strands," says Wood. "One investigates identity via a whimsical love story, the other investigates identity via Van Uoc's growing need to understand her family's story and her mother's state of mind.
"As a child of migrant parents, Van Uoc has the extra pressure of being the interpreter between two cultures. This is a story that continues generation after generation, all over the world. We need to be able to walk in the shoes of people whose experience is different from our own."
This is Wood's second CBCA award win. Nothing makes her happier than knowing her books have made readers laugh and cry. "I also hope that readers will have some of their assumptions and beliefs challenged, and that they might occasionally allow for a little bit of magic in their lives."
Honour Books: Meg McKinlay, A Single Stone (Walker), Vikki Wakefield, InBetween Days (Text )
Younger Readers: (Middle and upper primary)
Winner: Morris Gleitzman, Soon (Penguin Random House)
Gleitzman hesitated for several years before writing the story of his Polish orphan, Felix. Known for his more whimsical stories, Gleitzman wondered if he had a right to tell the story of the Holocaust. Then, there was the dark subject matter. He didn't think he would ever find a publisher.
"To simply create an experience of darkness for young readers, there didn't seem much point to that," he says. "But at the same time it is important our future world leaders and supporters should understand both the worst we are capable of as well as the best and stories are well capable of showing that side-by-side."
Soon is the fifth in the acclaimed Felix series – Once and Then were also CBCA honour books – and picks up with Felix living in the ruins of Poland. The boy's unflagging optimism and friendships gives the novel its heart.
"I felt it was absolutely my responsibility and duty to equip Felix with as many personal resources as I credibly could," Gleitzman says. "This is not the sort of story where kids fly on broomsticks and play Quidditch."
Felix's story has crossed into the author's personal journey. Gleitzman's grandfather was stranded in England during World War II but family in Krakow died. All characters live on inside him to some extent, says Gleitzman. "But I can say I have never felt more like a writer at the deepest level than when I've been writing these books."
Gleitzman says there will be another two books in the series, in which Felix will come to Australia as a post war refugee.
Honour Books: Sally Morgan, Sister Heart (Fremantle), Emily Rodda, Shadows of the Master (Omnibus/Scholastic)
Early Childhood:
Winner: Anna Walker, Mr Huff (Penguin Random House)
The story of Mr Huff began as a tiny scribble Walker drew above her own figure one day as she sat at her desk worrying. It is her worst habit.
"That little cloud almost looked like a creature and I was thinking of the idea that your worries follow you almost like another presence or another being," Walker recalls. "I did a bit of research on mythical creatures throughout history and they often taken on shapes, almost the shape of the abominable snowman."
Starting as a black cloud, Mr Huff grows into a life-sized creature, trailing a little boy as he experiences bumps in his day. Bill tries to escape it but Mr Huff grows, shrinking only when Bill accepts the creature's constant presence.
"I almost see the book as celebrating the bravery of children to face their fear, even if the fear to someone else doesn't appear that real," says the prolific picture book creator.
Parents had found the book useful to read to anxious children.
Walker combined woodblock printing, etching, collage and ink and watercolour drawing to create the beautiful urban landscapes. "I regard children's books as an art form in themselves so to me they do deserve to be the best they can be."
Honour Books: Danny Parker/Freya Blackwood, Perfect (Little Hare/Hardie Grant), Tony Wilson, The Cow Tripped Over the Moon (Scholastic)
Picture Book of the Year
Winner: Armin Greder/Nadia Wheatley, Flight (Windy Hollow)
Swiss-born Greder was drawn to Wheatley's modern story of a family fleeing unknown authorities across shifting desert sands after publishing a book on the "somewhat related problem" of the treatment of the Palestinian people, and the coincidence intrigued him.
Greder feels his job as an illustrator is to exploit the ''parsimony of the writer'' and Wheatley's initial text was too descriptive for his liking. Wheatley understood and ''impoverished her text so that my images had a job to do''.
Working prominently in charcoal, Greder says he is attracted to the silence and emptiness of the desert and the ''certain danger that deserts imply''.
He hopes the picture book can trigger discussion about the plight of displaced peoples. ''I am interested in stories that somehow reflect on problematic aspects of the Here and Now – not to then propose a solution but merely to raise the awareness that there is something wrong,'' Greder says. ''This is what Flight is proposing. A solution to the problem doesn't come from a book, unless it is a manual about how to use your new Bose headphones, but from a raised awareness that condenses into some action.''
Honour Books: Shane Devries/Phil Cummings, Ride Ricardo, Ride! (Omnibus), Sally Heinrich/Jane Jolly One Step at a Time (MidnightSun)
Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
Winner: Stephanie Reeder, Lennie the Legend: Solo to Sydney by Pony (NLA Publishing)
It was trawling through digital newspaper archives that Reeder came across the story of Lennie Gwyther, the nine-year-old who rode his pony alone from rural Victoria to witness the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
"There was a picture of Lennie on his pony and with his funny looking hat in front of a great big crowd ... and I thought, what is this funny boy doing? Reeder recalls. ''What's he doing there? And it fired my imagination.
Gwyther made the 1000km journey as a reward for ploughing the family's 10-hectare plot of farmland for his hospitalised father. The parents sent letters ahead requesting hospitality and, as word got around, the boy's fame grew and he and his horse Ginger Mick led the public crossing.
"Stories like this are part of what made Australia it is now. What I like to show is that history is not just about politicians and dates, it's about real people doing real, inspirational things. I ask children where they think their parents would allow them to go age nine, and they say to the corner store."
Honour books: Rohan Cleave/Coral Tulloch, Phasmid: Saving the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect (CSIRO), Robyn Siers/Carlie Walker, Ancestry: Stories of Multicultural Anzacs (Department of Veterans' Affairs).
