Awards were presented at the Princess Margaret Hospital Megazone on October 10th at 10.am.
Write-a-Book-in-a-Day thanks all of the teams for their wonderful books, for the hundreds of sponsors who helped to support children in hospitals in NSW, QLD, TAS, WA, and for the teachers and volunteers who made this event possible.
Winner:
Thursday Night Group - The Eye of the Emu
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
I felt completely encircled by the imagination shown in the entries for this year’s book-in-day competition. Congratulations to all the entrants for demonstrating that story telling is not a dying art in a world that sometimes seems entirely captivated by narratives the length of a television commercial. Clearly, concentration spans have not diminished as most books demonstrated a consistent and continuous plot. Continuity is vital in developing a story line that has more than one author. Sometimes, one author cannot get it right, so I congratulate you further.
The art of story telling is to create characters and situations that are believable and memorable. Creating characters that become people we recognise, or people that we want to know. These become the stories that linger, that we cannot help but turn our minds to again and again, like the aromas of a well-cooked Sunday roast, or that moment when a stranger touches our hearts.
The winning stories did this for me. They stayed in my mind, not just the characters but also the feelings they arose, the visual images that fed my imagination, the humour, the intelligence of the writing and the places the characters visited.
The winner of the Primary School category takes the reader along a journey with a cello player and his annoying little sister to the Royal Show where they discover a parallel universe with a talking dolphin, a man with no eyes or mouth and four noses, robots that open the front door, blue and green spotted dogs and an orange-skinned man. This story is imaginative and, despite the obvious odd characters, believable. The Royal Show is, after all, a place of weird and wonderful happenings: a true playground for the imagination of a child. It is a children’s story, written by children for children.
| Winner | |
| The Mystery Door May Open Again | Poynter Primary School |
| Highly Commended | |
| Dr Dribble’s Experiment | Poynter Primary School |
| The Missing Goat of Twin-Leaf Town | Kewdale Primary School |
| Unbreakable | Melaney Primary School |
| The Curse of the Storm | Albany Primary School |
| Commended | |
| The Magical Star Painting | Our Lady of the Way |
| The Runaway Gift | Kewdale Primary School |
| Big Trouble in Little Shamble | St Michael’s School |
| Tomato Wars | Poynter Primary School |
| Life Isn’t Fair | Albany PEAC |
| Corrigin. The Last Stand | Corrigin Young Writers |
| Message in a Bottle | Corrigin Young Writers |
The winner of the under Secondary School category is a lesson for us all about finding the courage to do the things we think we cannot do by tapping that strength we all have within us. The primary character is a small boy in hospital struggling to come to terms with his sudden paralysis. He falls into a magic book, no doubt one from a previous book-in-day competition, and travels on a journey with a sky serpent, a magic tree and three daring tasks set for him as a test of his bravery, for trespassing on the Kingdom of Arangunyip. The story is a children’s story that hit its target audience of 10-14 year olds. It is inventive, entertaining and has a nicely controlled story line. I was impressed with the correct use of the word “ubiquitous,” the sentence structure, punctuation and the control of the plot. The poetic warnings at the beginning of each chapter lead the reader into each chapter without giving away the plot. Be careful what you trust. The illustrations in this book are beautifully crafted as is everything else. This book is an outstanding example of what this competition is about.
| Winner | ||
| The Three Pieces | St Andrew’s College | |
| Highly Commended | ||
| Plucking the Strings | Carine Senior High School | |
| The Wake Up Call | Carine Senior High School | |
| Tiger | Riverside Senior High School | |
| The Golden Jindara | Riverside Senior High School | |
| The Plague Melody | Swan View Senior High School | |
| It’s a Comic Life | Presbyterian Ladies College | |
| Commended | ||
| Painting a Smile | Shenton College | |
| The Circus Con | Carine Senior High School | |
| A Tragedy Paints a Thousand Words | Melville Senior High School | |
| Throwback Island | Shenton College | |
| Just Imagine | Joondalup Baptists College | |
| Fight of the Penguin | Caroline Chisholm College | |
| MischiElf | Caroline Chisholm College |
The wining book in the Open category was another story that has stayed with me. The story encourages readers to engage with the primary character, a little girl trying to come to terms with her mother’s death and her father’s apparent disinterest in her when he relocates them to a country town. Suffering the loss of friends and the familiar, she finds solace and comfort in her friendship with a magical emu, and a lesson in love from a ghost whose music draws her towards a renewed closeness with her father and an appreciation of a mother’s love. This book hits its target audience and is a lesson in story telling for young children. The writing is well controlled, the plot is tight and the characters develop without too much fan-fare. It is a simple story with a simple theme and a resolution that satisfies the reader.
| Winner | |
| The Eye of the Emu | Thursday Night Group |
| Highly Commended | |
| A Classical Education | Six Quills |
| Commended | |
| Collision Course | Speculative Fiction Group |
Each of the winning books creates characters and situations that are believable and engaging. They are magical, creative and well constructed. It is not easy to write a children’s story. It takes great skill, a little knowledge of child development and a lot of imagination. My congratulations to the winners and to all the entrants for the hard work you put into making books that children will read for years to come.
Lynn Gumb
Dip Tch BA LLB
Lynn Gumb has just returned from Northern Ireland where she was undertaking research for her novel on abandoning mothers. Lynn is currently completing a Master of Creative Arts degree at Curtin University. Her story, No Family Resemblance, was Commended in the 2006 Australian Association of Writing Award for Fiction and was published in the anthology, Emerge. Her short story, Nigger Box, was Commended in the 2006 Katharine Susannah Prichard Short Fiction Award and she was the 2007 winner of the Bobby Cullen Memorial Award. Lynn’s poetry and short fiction has been published in local magazines and journals.
| Winner | |
| The Curse of the Storm | Albany Primary School |
| Commended | |
| The Mystery Door May Open Again | Poynter Primary School |
| The Runaway Gift | Kewdale Primary School |
| Big Trouble in Little Shamble | St Michael’s School |
| Winner | |
| Young Yesterday | Caroline Chisholm College |
| Commended | |
| The Three Pieces | St Andrew’s College |
| Jealousy’s a Curse | Marian College |
| Star Thief | Terra Sancta College |
| It’s a Comic Life | Presbyterian Ladies College |
| The Golden Jindara | Riverside Senior High School |
| The Plague Melody | Swan View Senior High School |
| The Wishing Well | Shenton College |
| Flight of the Mutant Moths | Applecross Senior High School |
| Winner | |
| A Classical Education | The Six Quills |
Judged by: Jenny Haynes, Director of The Mundaring Arts Centre
and Cathryn Ross, Eastern Hills Senior High School
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© KSPF 2003
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