 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher, and today we are going to be talking about the final shortlisted category for the Children's Book Council Awards for 2023, and that is the New Illustrator category. So this award's purpose is to recognise and acknowledge and encourage new talent in the field of Australian children's book illustration. And books in this category can be for children from 0 to 18 years, and are usually just stunning because it is a celebration of illustrations. So while I will talk about how much I enjoy the illustrations in these books, I will also still be talking about the books as a whole and what stood out for me and what might be useful in a classroom. So I have most of the books here, one book I wasn't able to get hold of but I have been able to read, and so I will be able to talk about that at the end. The first book is Tiny Wonders by Sally Solhahn, so she's the writer and the illustrator of this book. The blurb says, So this is really a story that is about hope and patience. The beauty of flowers, the ability for community to really forge a connection with one another and for taking action because April does take action in this story. It has beautiful bright colours that transition from that dull grey world that April was seeing to something that is more bright and colourful. So it does bring that element of hope and joy and love as the colours become more prominent. It's a great story to talk about children taking action and taking control of things for projects that they can manage and there are plenty of opportunities for those. The endpapers at the back of the book are amazing because it does feature a variety of flowers as well as what they mean. So this is a great way for people to learn about the language of flowers. And overall it is just a very, very beautiful book. There is also We Are Australians written by Duncan Smith and Nicole Godwin and illustrated with paintings by Jandamara Kadd. This book is just so vibrant and beautiful. I am very drawn to colour and bold colour in particular so this book always stands out to me. And at the back of the book it just says what does it mean to be a citizen of Australia and that is what this book explores. This is not a text heavy book. It is really posing the question of what does it mean to be Australian and how do we connect to the culture that existed here for thousands and thousands of years before White Set Liz even came here. And what does that mean for us in the present day? Jandamara Kadd's artwork is just absolutely stunning to look at. It is a very beautiful visual book and it has a really great message that is great to unpack. You could use this with multiple age groups. You might need it to support younger readers a little bit more through it if you're using it in the classroom. But it is a really, truly beautiful book to look at. And then we have Australia from Dusk to Dawn by Brentos. And this book is another visually stunning book in a completely different style. I absolutely love this illustrative style. I don't see it very often. I love the beautiful pastel colour palette. The sun says it's a new day in Australia. Let's follow the sun. Wake up with Wombats on Aroquel Country in Bahrain Bay. Bask with Wombats in Cradle Mountain. Watch Black and Red Cockatoos flying over Anungu Country, which is Uluru. Scratch the Daintree rainforest floor with casseraries on Kuku Yalanji Country. And go to sleep as quokkas wake up on Wajaknunga Country in Watness Island. So welcome to Australia as you've never seen it before. It's an extremely pastel-popping road to significant places and animals on the land which we call home from emerging artist Brentos. So this is a trip around Australia. Each page has a location and it has the traditional place name as well as what you might see there. And these gorgeous, very stylistic illustrations. It is a truly beautiful book to explore. It will be great to have a map of Australia out and just start pinpointing the different locations that are explored in here. There is a map at the back of the book that does highlight where all of the animals that we meet are but to create a class version of it would be great. And the other thing that I really love about this book and the illustrations in here is you have the endpapers. So the book is called From Dawn to Dusk. So you have dawn to dusk. And it's just a beautiful thread the whole way through the book. So it is a very simple text. This is perfect for younger readers. Great jumping off point if you want to learn more about Australian animals and where they're from. You know, you get one or two tiny little facts about them. So it's very digestible, but very much a gorgeous visual book to look at. Then there is Natureopolis by Deborah Frankel and Ingrid. Art Kowauk, I think. Apologize if I mispronounced that. This is a gorgeous book. The back says look closer, look with care, and you may find a forest. Among the steel and stone canyons of the city, nature flourishes in tiny tenacious ways. Follow our tiny friend to discover, celebrate and connect with the urban flora and fauna hiding in plain sight. So this book is all about nature that is hiding in plain sight. So you might have a location, and then you start looking closer and you might see the native animals and where they live. So this one in this case is a tiny ant. And so on the next page, you begin to find out more about their world as you dive in and you zoom in on their life. Things like meadows of flowers, those weeds that we never really look at, but are actually the plant life and the forest life that live in urban areas. It's a great reminder for people in urban areas to actually notice that there is a life and it may not look the same as what we envision of parks and forests and rainforests, but it is its own kind of ecosystem. This book has beautiful tier two language like cumbersome, meadow, wilderness, drifted, centred, sociable, spoils, trickster, great, great powerful words to pull out and unpack and talk about in the context of the book but also the other meanings and the other ways that you could use it. And because this is also a fictional non-fiction story where the narrative is enhanced by the information, like I love those stories because it makes it very easy to absorb the information and be inspired to find out more. And then there is the best hiding place by Jane Godwin and illustrated by Sylvia Morris. This one is a really gorgeous narrative story. It is about a group of, I don't know if they're siblings or they're friends playing hide and seek in a house. The blurb says Archie has found the best hiding place, but after a while it feels too quiet. Is the game still on? Has Archie been forgotten? And the way that this is told, Jane Godwin is also a really fantastic storyteller. The first part of the book has very simple, very short sentences as the game begins and as the person who is it begins to search for the people who are hiding. And then as we begin to see where Archie is hiding, Archie has found a really fantastic hiding spot and so he's in there and he starts thinking about the space that is in, what he hears, what he smells, what he sees and builds these beautiful descriptive passages. The illustrations in this are beautiful and detailed as the characters explore the house, but also as we begin to zoom in on where Archie is as well, we begin to see how all of that fits together. It has great use of questions through the text, a great mentor text to use with students to highlight how you can use questions to further a story and to highlight how someone is feeling because as the blurb says, Archie begins to feel like he's forgotten, but simply it's because he's chosen a really great hiding place and it also is a beautiful book about the friendship of all of these characters because they clearly love playing with one another. And then the final book in this category is There's No Such Book. This one is written by Jessica Detman and illustrated by Jack A. Minton, and this is a gorgeous story about Book Week and the blurb says, it's the night before the book parade and Ellie needs a costume. She and Mum raid their home, but all Mum's suggestions fall flat. Ellie heads to bed with only Mum's promise that she'll find something somehow. And sometimes finding the right costume it means creating a whole new book and this is a book that celebrates being creative and I mean, if you just look at the illustrations, it's a really gorgeous, fun book. You can tell that it's going to be entertaining. Mum tries to come up with all of these suggestions based on what they already have at home and Ellie is frustrated because she doesn't have a book like that and so Mum writes her a book that features all of these things so that she can choose what costume she decides to go as. I think it's a really great way of saying that we are all capable of telling stories and those stories are valid. I love that it has links to a real event activity so the book awards coincides with book week in Australia and most schools and kinders will do something like a book parade where the kids get to get dressed up as a favourite book character so there's lots of links that can be made and this is a great mentor text for a language experience like that but it can also be used as a jumping off point and a mentor text for talking about well, you can write your own stories. We write books all the time in our junior years classrooms and this is another great text that highlights that yeah, that is valid and when you write you are a writer. So I really enjoyed writing this one. I think it's a really fun story. So those are our shortlisted books for the new illustrator category. I will leave links to the official CBCA website as well as links to all of these books so you can find out more information if you wouldn't like to. In the comments I would love to know if you've read any of these picture books or if you're planning on picking them up or feel free to share your favourite children's picture book illustrator down below. I'm always interested in finding books with really unique, interesting illustrations because that's the point of a picture book is to have the illustrations enhance exactly what is happening within the text. If you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a rocket emoji down below. Otherwise I hope that we're on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you next time. Bye everyone.