8 years ago

CBCA Clayton’s Night 2016 – Older Readers

Last night I had the great honour of being a guest speaker at the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Clayton’s Night – from their website;

Clayton’s Night is held annually in the month before the official CBCA shortlist is announced.

Guest judges are asked to look at the entries from each year and pick a personal ‘best of’. They don’t have any correspondence with the official judges, and their selections are their own. In addition, each of the guest judges only presents books in one of the five national categories: the three age-based categories – Older Readers, Younger Readers and Early Childhood – and the two general categories – Picture Book and Eve Pownall.

So I went along with my six-book selection (plus two ‘notable’ titles I also wanted to sneak in there) and thought I’d share with everyone what I picked and why. So here you go, in no particular order – my Clayton’s 2016 Older Readers ‘Best Of’ Selection (which was super hard to do, btw!):

1. A Small Madness by Dianne Touchell

2. The Hush by Skye Melki-Wegner

3. The Foretelling of Georgie Spider (The Tribe, #3) by Ambelin Kwaymullina