Documenting Delight: day two hundred and thirty {Book of the year awards + meeting an author}

Today marked the first day of the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book Week. Finn and I braved the cold weather (In Finn’s words: “Mummy it is such a miserable day!”) and headed out to the National Library of Australia to hear the announcement of the CBCA’s Book of the Year winners. The event tied in really nicely with Project #6 in My Little Bookcase’s The Little Book Adventure. Project #6: Meet an author or illustrator, encouraged families to find and meet a children’s author or illustrator at a book event during the month of August. With local children’s authors signing their books after the announcement, we were able to successfully complete this month’s Book Adventure (....after missing the last coulple of Projects). Completing this project was a simple task but one that made for a lovely outing for Finn & I and bought him a little closer to understanding who is behind a book or collections of books.

Before the Book Award winners were announced we spent some time in the National Library’s beautiful bookstore. It gave us time to read through a couple of the shortlisted titles we hadn’t had the chance to view previously. The two that struck a chord with Finn the most were ‘A bus called Heaven’ by Bob Graham and ‘The Runaway Hug’ by Nick Bland. To find out not long after our mini reading session that these two books won Book of the Year for their separate categories wasn’t really a big surprise. Both are beautiful books with heartwarming endings.

{taking in the pictures from 'a bus called heaven'. finn was quickly drawn in by the intricate illustrations}

{i love how finn draws his shoulders in when he is reading. it's almost like he is trying to get closer to the pages}

After the official announcement we returned to the bookstore and I told Finn that he could pick out one of the shortlisted books. He chose ‘A bus called heaven’. I had to restrain myself from picking up ‘A runaway hug’ too. We also chose a book written by local author Stephanie Owen Reeder for her to sign. Finn decided that he would like to give the book, ‘Colour My World’ to Harper. Finn approach Stephanie and they had a lovely chat about colours and how to spell his sister’s name. After the meeting Finn was so excited to return home and show Harper her new book with “the lady’s writing inside it”. 

{meeting stephanie owen reeder & finding delight in her feather pen!}

{a special message for harper}

 Completing this project was a lovely way to extend Finn's understanding of authors, and of coarse it is always a treat to add a couple of gorgeous books to our bookshelves.