The CBCA Notables 2017

In the last year or so, the Children's Book Council of Australia has taken to publishing a long list before it announces the short list in April. The books on it are called the Notables. They have had Notables for years - two of mine were there, Potions To Pulsars: Women doing science(which was also on the Clayton's short list, a sort of Golden Globes of children's books) and Wolfborn. But now the Notables have become the official long list. Back in my time, having a Notable was nice, but it meant you hadn't won or even made the short list. Now you might end up on the short list, because this is the long list.

Here's the link - I really can't reproduce the lot here.

https://cbca.org.au/notables-2017?utm_content=buffer4128d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I have read, or am reading, the following of the books on this year's list.

Words In Deep Blue by Cath Crowley.

The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon
The Sidekicks by Will Kostakis
Forgetting Foster by Diane Touchell

Theophilus Gray And The Traitor's Mask by Catherine Jinks

The Family With Two Front Doors by Anna Ciddor

Dragonfly Song by Wendy Orr

The Pearl-Shell Diver by Kay Crabbe

Captain Jimmy Cook Discovers Third Grade by Kate Temple and Jol Temple

Congratulations to all of you! And I can see Book Club and I are going to be busy. I was a bit disappointed to see no sign of Songs That Sound Like Blood by Jared Thomas - but his publishers, Magabala Books, might not have entered it. Publishers sometimes don't. If you're running a small press, like Ford Street, you don't always have the money for the entry fees. 

I think the first three on that list will make it to the short list. Not sure about the others, as yet, though there are some deserving titles.

I'm a bit uncomfortable to see Forgetting Foster there. Not that it's a bad book - but, as I said in my review, it just doesn't fit anywhere. The hero is seven years old, but it's marketed to older readers. In my experience, teenagers like to read about kids their own age or older. If Foster had been ten or eleven, it could have been marketed to older primary school kids and that would have worked. But sometimes judges are so absorbed in choosing books about Important Issues - in this case the boy's father coming down with early onset Alzheimer's - that they don't think about what the kids might actually read. Perhaps it has been given a Notable, old-style, just as a tribute to the quality of the writing.

Captain Jimmy Cook is good fun, but award material...? Hmm...

I'll have to get stuck into some of the others on the list now.

Cheers!