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Children’s Book of the Year Award Renamed

Up until now the top award in the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards has always been known as 'The Book of the Year’. However, it has just been announced by Sam Elworthy, chairman of the Book Awards Governance Group, that the award has now been renamed, New Zealand Post Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award. 

Margaret’s Mister Whistler with illustrations by Gavin Bishop, is on the shortlist for this year’s Picture Book Award. 

 Photo of Margaret: acknowledgments to www.stuff.nz

Margaret was 76 when she died in her home city of Christchurch last year and had won the top award in 1999 and 2011.  She would, said her daughter Bridget, have been very happy about being acknowledged in this way. …I don’t think she ever stopped enjoying the acknowledgements that were made for her writing.

Her mother, said Bridget, always supported other writers, turned up for their book launches, bought their books and asked them to sign them.

Margaret wrote over 200 books and poems many of which have been given awards. She is the only New Zealander to win the biennial International *Hans Christian Andersen Award  

Source: The  Dominion Post  29.4.13

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*Every other year IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People)  presents the Hans Christian Andersen Awards to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children's literature.