Welcome to the blog of the Tasmanian branch of the Children's Book Council of Australia!

Friday, 27 June 2025

Celebrating the National Simultaneous Storytime across Tasmania

A colourful and celebratory post provided by various libraries to wrap up Term 3. Creative talent from adults and children abounds. 

On Wednesday 21 May children around Australia were united in their joy as they listened to the wonderful, heart-warming story of The Truck Cat, written by Deborah Frenkel and illustrated by Danny Snell. Organised by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), this fun and joyful event has had increasing participation over the 25 years it has been in place. With 2,204,658 registered participants across 16,632 locations the event was clearly a hit success in promoting reading. Explore the national wrap up here.

 

NSS is a wonderful opportunity for public and school libraries to shine and there was visual evidence of this across Tasmania as vibrant and creative displays promoted the event as well as providing a backdrop for telling the story of Yacoub and his little cat Tinker and their truck journeys. Both trucks and cats were in abundance in the displays shared in this post and many thanks to the library organisers for providing a window into the excitement that NSS generates.

Sorell Library front window display - what a magnificent truck!

Launceston Library – cats, trucks, and cats in trucks!

Tinker chases butterflies around the circulation desk at Rosny Library. 


Scotch Oakburn Junior School library featured a massive truck with Yacoub and Tinker, surrounded by a wonderful collection of cat books.


Before and after shots from St Finn Barr’s Catholic School with a truck in the reading corner to be adorned with art work from the students in response to the read-aloud.


Students at Launceston Grammar searched for cat images to name and display on the circulation desk – what original names they came up with!



Windermere Primary School featured trucks and elaborate knitted cats to celebrate NSS.

An engrossed audience participates in NSS at St Thomas More’s Catholic School with creative responses from students of all ages.

Many thanks to the CBCA Tasmania supporters for providing these wonderful images. They certainly demonstrate the fun had participating in the 2025 National Simultaneous Storytime event. Don't leave this as a once a year occurrence. We urge you to Read Aloud to Your Child Every Day!

If you would like to adopt this logo for your school or business please contact us at tas@cbca.org.au

Jennie Bales

CBCA Tas Social Media Coordinator

W: https://cbcatas.org.au/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/cbcatas/


Thursday, 19 June 2025

Turning Pages Together – The Northern Primary School Readers’ Cup Competition

This year’s Northern Primary School Reader’s Cup was bigger than ever with 18 schools vying for the win, and the chance to have their name added to the trophy. Thanks to Jessica Marston for this report on such a highly successful event that encourages and celebrates sustained reading.

Our Readers’ Cup event has been in action for over 20 years, thanks to Jennie Bales who first heard of the concept at a school library conference in Queensland. 


This years’ books provided teams with a variety of text and theme complexity.  Teams read these books over a set time frame before completing a quiz about all of the books, and a short creative response about one of the books, at their own school.  Winning teams then met at Hagley Farm School after school on May the 29th for the final.

This year’s fun facts:

  • A total of 369 students participated across our 18 schools.
  • The highest participation was at Riverside Primary School with 56 students involved in 11 teams.  45% of these students were boys.
  • We were very excited to see Flinders Island District High School join us in person for our live event, having been involved via live-stream previously.
  • 42% of student feedback respondents nominated Scar Town as their favourite book, with Fantastic Mr Fox sitting on 25% and Parvana on 16%. Students reported a wide range of favourite aspects of Readers’ Cup including:
    • “Getting to compete with your friends and learn new things. I also love how you can work with people that you wouldn't normally work with and then you build a relationship with them.”
    • “Exploring new books that I didn't know existed.”
    • “Getting to read more books and the creative challenge helped me with a little bit of my stage fright.”
    • “I get to read and learn about books with my friends.”
    • “The best thing is that I was able to be more communicative with others of my class.”
    • “The teamwork, the creative challenge and the quiz!!!!!”
    • “I liked reading and then being quizzed on the books. I also liked doing the creative challenge, it was really fun!”


At the final, teams completed an on-the-spot Extra Challenge about The Truck Cat by Deborah Frenkel, another quiz, and then presented their creative response to a very large audience.





Westbury Primary School students working on their Extra Challenge task.

 


Our 18 teams during the quiz phase of the final


Congratulations to Longford Primary School who were our 2025 winners.  This was the first time Longford had won the trophy!

Our winning team from Longford Primary School


On behalf of all our participating schools I would like to acknowledge the wonderful support of the CBCA Tasmania Branch who provided Petrarch’s Bookshop vouchers to all of our participating schools, along with a first prize voucher. I would also like to thank the many volunteers, and school staff who give their own time, to make Readers’ Cup come to life every year. If you are interested in being involved, or bringing Readers’ Cup to your school, please feel free to contact me via the CBCA.


Jessica Marston 

Teacher-Librarian – Hagley Farm School, Westbury Primary School

 

Friday, 13 June 2025

Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities

One important element of The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) work is to support access to books that are relevant and accessible to children with different needs and abilities. Nella Pickup introduces 2025 IBBY Selection  of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities and the two Australian titles selected for inclusion.

Every second year, IBBY Australia Inc. nominates ten titles for inclusion in the IBBY Collection located at the Toronto Public Library, Canada. A selection of Outstanding Books is then made, and this selection is summarised in a Catalogue. 

Tasmanian author, Avery McDougall’s Invisibly Grace (Forty South Publishing) and Jessica Watson & AÅ›ka’s Stars in Their Eyes (Fremantle Press) were two of the forty books chosen for the 2025 catalogue from 200 submissions around the world. The Catalogue was announced at 2025 Bologna Children’s Book Fair on 31 March. Copies of the selected books were on display during the Fair. Inclusion in the Catalogue can lead to international sales/rights.

Australian nominations for inclusion in the 2027 list (books published between July 2023 and June 2025) will open in July.  The 3-person panel will be looking for books about characters with varied abilities and, also for accessible books, which provide opportunities for people of all abilities to read independently. 


Accessible books include formats such as Braille, Picture Communication Symbols, Sign language, Easy-to-Read language, tactile or textured illustrations, dyslexia-friendly font and other design features. Many of these formats are published by small publishing houses. If you know of suitable title/s, please contact IBBY.Australia@gmail.com for details on how to nominate for selection for the 2027 catalogue.   

To see the 2025 catalogue, visit https://www.ibby.org/archive-storage/08_Books_Disabled_Children_14771/Outstanding_2025.pdf

 

Nella Pickup

Reader and retired librarian

National Executive Member, International Board of Books for Young People/IBBY Australia Inc

Children's Book Council of Australia, Tasmanian Branch - Life Member

 

Tuesday, 10 June 2025

Legacy of a Wimpy Kid: Thoughts on Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Eighteen Years On.

Join Lyndon Riggall has he reflects on the life and ongoing times of the Wimpy Kid to consider how and why Jeff Kinney's indelible characters have stood the test of time.


A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of witnessing a live stream of the Sydney Writers’ Festival children's event celebrating the launch of Jeff Kinney's latest book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series: Hot Mess. The nineteenth book in the series, (with a twentieth, Party Pooper, on the way before the end of the year), Hot Mess is a story about food and family vacation. To celebrate its launch, Kinney visited Australia to present “The Hot Mess Show”, a wonderfully dynamic session in which parents and children were brought on stage and asked to prepare food in team-based challenges, play games that tested their memory or problem solving skills, and even reveal disgusting secrets about their own eating habits. It was a hugely entertaining presentation, and Kinney stood delighted in the centre of it all, seeming for all purposes like someone who was just a simple observer to the chaos around him, but nevertheless revealing a sneaky twinkle in his eye that made it clear that he was also undoubtedly the mastermind behind this funfair of chaos.

As it passes its eighteenth birthday (fittingly, April 1st), the meteoric rise of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series is worth paying attention to. Even before it had been published in Australia, I can remember our own king of cheeky children’s comedy, Andy Griffiths, telling me that he had read the book and loved it, predicting that it was one to keep an eye on. He wasn’t wrong. Alongside hundreds of millions of copies sold, the series has spawned an enormously popular live-action movie franchise, a complimentary animated movie franchise, video game spin-offs, and even a stage musical, while phrases like “Zoo-Wee Mama!” and “The Cheese Touch” have become part of the standard vocabulary of teenagers, even now.

 

Following Kinney's session, I decided to visit my local library and pick up a copy to remind myself of what I first read some eighteen years ago. Before diving back in, as I researched the series online, I was very aware of significant pushback from some readers in online communities, who felt that Greg Heffley's character was sarcastic, cruel, and too pessimistic about the world around him. Upon initial reading, there is some validity to their arguments. In the opening pages, as he explains why he has started his diary in the first place, Greg declares, "The only reason I agreed to do this at all is because I figure later on when I'm rich and famous, I'll have better things to do than answer people's stupid questions all day long. So this book is gonna come in handy." Still, beneath the savagery of his perspectives on the world around him, Greg's own admission and understanding of his role as the titular “wimpy kid” leads to something greater and more resonant. As I consider my own recent transition from senior secondary teaching to the middle school years, I can recognise in Greg's experiences so many of the moments, memories and intense feelings that characterise the experiences of my students as they settle into the early years of high school. Greg is by no means a perfect young man, and his outrageous adventures alongside his best friend Rowley, his brother Rodrick, and all of the other colourful characters that populate his world, probably shouldn't be taken as an instruction manual for how other young people should live their lives. Still, there is a realness to the series that has to be admired. There is a stylish honesty to the way that the stories are presented, complemented by the charming aesthetic of the illustrations (which Kinney took the time to explain and unpack in a fascinating way when he discussed his process in his Sydney Writers' Festival session). Most of all—even for this thirty-five year-old man, who found himself giggling late at night as he tucked himself in with the first novel earlier in the week—there is still something brilliant and timeless that can be found in the very simple and powerful humour of the series, which reminds all of us that our high school experiences are not unique, and that we are not alone in our teenage years when we suddenly find ourselves feeling like aliens on our own planet.

 

When I picked up my hold of Diary of a Wimpy Kid from the Longford Library on my way home from work earlier this week, as I passed it over to the librarian for processing, she smiled. 

 

“Oh, Diary of a Wimpy Kid!” she said. 

 

“Yes,” I answered. “It’s been a while, but I thought it might be time to go back and take another look.” 

 

“Oh, it’s for you!” she grinned, probably not used to checking out such a book to someone who can reach the whole way over the counter. 

 

As she scanned the book and printed my receipt, tucking it inside the cover, she passed it over to me with warmth and joy. 

 

“I will always be grateful to that man,” she said, gesturing to Kinney’s name on the cover. “He made my son a reader.”

 

Perhaps when it all comes down to it, that's what really matters most. Twenty books in, here’s hoping that we haven't quite reached the end just yet. 

 

My enormous congratulations and respect to Jeff Kinney, Greg Heffley, and all the other Wimpy Kids and Wimpy Kid fans out there. 

 

Long may they reign.

 

Lyndon Riggall is a writer and teacher from Launceston, Tasmania. He is the author of the picture books Becoming Ellie (illustrated by Graham Whittle) and Tamar the Thief (illustrated by Grace Roberts). Alongside Georgie Todman, he is co-president of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival. You can find him on social media @lyndonriggall and at his website http://www.lyndonrigall.com.