NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults + What NZ book for kids or teens changed you?

The winners for this year’s New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults will be announced at a ceremony at Te Papa next week (Wednesday 7 August 6.30pm).

If you can't be at the Awards ceremony at Te Papa, join Painted Stories at Tūranga, Wednesday 7 August 6pm. A panel of experts will discuss the finalists in the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and give their predictions on who will win. This annual event is always an interesting (and entertaining) evening.

What New Zealand book changed you?

There's more #NZCYA goodness today. New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults are curious and want to know What New Zealand children's book changed you growing up? The New Zealand Book Council has been running a series asking our finalist authors this question, check out their selections:

• NZCYA Finalists
• Elsie Locke Non-Fiction Award finalists
• Russell Clark Illustration Award finalists
• Wright Family Foundation Te Kura Pounamu Award finalists
• Best First Book Award finalists

We asked librarians for their reckons:

Dare Truth or Promise by Paula Boock

Ky, Te Hāpua: Halswell Centre: Dare Truth or Promise by Paula Boock came out (pun fully intended) when I was in my first couple of years of high school. It was so much more relatable than the American and British books I was mainly reading at the time … and it was the first time I’d read a New Zealand book with LGBTQ+ representation. Because I didn’t know any LGBTQ+ people in real life, this was a powerful thing to read about. This is why we need #diversebooks .

The Halfmen of O by Maurice Gee

Clare, Tūranga: The NZ book that changed me is The Halfmen of O by Maurice Gee! Like being sucked into a dream - up a creek to the gorge, down a mine shaft, into O – The Halfmen of O by Maurice Gee thrilled me as a kid - a world hidden within one I knew, in which fate, perception, darkness & light are explored within a dramatic struggle for environmental balance. Still go bush trying to find my own portals.

Donella, Redwood: The Halfmen of O by Maurice Gee: I loved this book and read it when I was about 11, and then went on to read all the others in the Trilogy. I loved the beautiful descriptions of the landscape and the folk who lived in O and wished I could have transported myself there. The connection the cousins had with their matching birthmarks was mysterious and cool and I wanted to be just like the heroine Susan.

Margaret Mahy

We love Margaret! Read our Mahy posts:

Book to film: The Changeover Moata (read also her post on Stuff What I learned from Margaret Mahy).

I picked up a hardcover copy of the book at my school library. The cover had a black background with a picture of an olive-skinned girl with woolly hair holding some kind of coin in her hand. I devoured it until I was close to the end, at which point I slowed my reading pace so I could make it last longer.