In the first of an occasional series on the people ‘behind the scenes’ of the Aotearoa children’s lit scene, Jane Arthur speaks with Joy Sellen. Joy is the administrator of the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and…
Convenor of the 2024 NZCYA Book Awards Maia Bennett takes The Sapling behind the scenes on selecting the cream of this year’s crop of books for children and young adults. On Wednesday evening the winners of the children’s and young…
Illustrated by Alba Gil Cedrán This month’s Sampling is from last year’s winner of the Margaret Mahy Illustration Prize, Alba Gil Cedrán, in a re-imagining of Mahy’s 17 Kings and 42 Elephants. The shortlist for this year’s award will be…
When reading our Junior Fiction finalists, Sarah Forster was blown away as always by the brilliance of Aotearoa’s authors that write for this audience. She asked each of the five authors to answer five probing questions, including a well-disguised version…
It’s time to celebrate an oft overlooked aspect of book creation—the design. The Publishers Association of New Zealand has just announced the shortlist for Aotearoa’s best-designed books in nine categories. Here we are showcasing the three which focus on books…
We’ve prepared something special this year to honour the Best First Book Finalists. Michael Park School librarian Kura Rutherford corralled her student librarians into considering the shortlist and awarding their own medals for merits they deemed worthy. See the list…
For the Te Kura Pounamu finalists we asked the publishers why it was important to them to publish these particular books in te reo Māori, and our te reo editor Faith Tupou makes some comments as well. Read our comments…
The Non-Fiction shortlist is absolutely top class. We asked the finalists to pose a couple of questions to each other about their books. Read our comments about the books in all the categories here. Selina Tusitala Marsh asks Gavin Bishop……
This year’s NZCYA YA finalists span a huge range of genres, settings, and themes. From the journey of an escaped convict as she tries to forge a life in colonial Tāmaki Makaurau, to a graphic novel about the struggles of…
The Sapling is excited to continue its tradition of sharing drafts, sketches and process work from the NZCYA illustration award finalists. Thanks to the Book Awards Trust for the book descriptions, the publishers for organising the images and the artists for generously…