 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and today I'm here to review the books that are in the Children's Shortlist for the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards for 2024. So the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards are handed out to books in various categories and they do have a children's and a young adult category. I have read and will be talking about the children's category today and I'll also be talking about the young adult category next week. So in the children's category there are three shortlisted books and two highly commended books. So I'm going to talk about the highly commended books first and then the shortlist. The children's shortlist can include picture books and middle fiction which is great so there is a collection of both in here. The middle fiction title that was highly commended was The Goodbye Year by Emily Gale. This is set in Australia. It is about a young girl called Harper who is about to go into year six and it is 2020 and the year starts very normally and all of her friends are given captain positions and her very close friends become school captains and so they become very busy with what's going on with what they're doing at school and so she starts to feel a little bit on the outer. At the same time her parents who are both nurses end up traveling to Yemen to work over there as emergency relief nurses and so she's staying with a grandmother who she is not particularly close to so there's a lot of change going on at the start of this last year of primary school and then being 2020 the pandemic hits and there are lockdowns and remote learning and things like that that take place. So there's a lot of complicated things going on for her and then on top of that she begins to see the ghost of a boy who died during World War One so there is a magical realism element to this story. She discovers that trying to research and find out what happened to this young boy helps her to begin to understand a little bit more of the history of her town, of her school, but also helps her to understand her own circumstances. This was a really enjoyable read. There are some elements of bullying in here as Harper has to deal with another student at the school who just can't seem to stop from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I also had a bit of an issue initially because I know how schools work with the way that all of the captains are chosen. Like it just to me it didn't make sense but that's fine. This is a middle fiction story for middle fiction readers so perhaps this is the way the kids view how how captain decisions are made. But it was a very interesting story and very well written and at times fairly emotional. So this is a really great story to read with probably year six students to talk about and unpack all of those feelings that are going on during year six but just be aware that it is about the pandemic so some students still do have quite a bit of trauma related to that. The picture book that is an honourable mention is Australia Country of Colour by Jess Rucklief. This is a non-fiction title that explores Australian flora and fauna through colour and it is absolutely gorgeous. The very start of the book begins with an intro from the author and illustrator explaining sort of the concept of this book which is how important colour is both emotionally but also in nature. And then as we move through the book each colour or group of colours in this case red and pink get a bit of a description about a place but also other things that are represented by that colour in nature. And then a couple of pages with the animals and the flora that display those colours and it's really fascinating. Each animal and plant gets a very brief one sentence sort of description describing it. So it is non-fiction but it's very accessible because it's very very bite-sized chunks of information. But I think most importantly the fact that it's followed it's ordered everything in colour is its most intriguing concept because it's a different way of viewing the world because it's not necessarily about where everything is and is found in Australia but it's about how the colour affects this animal or this plant. It does include scientific names for all of the flora and fauna which is great because then you get that academic language coming in. It's a great book to explore. It is so fun and beautiful and very inviting to look at but also I just thought how great would this be in a school where you have it exploring colour in such a different way like this would be great in an art room. If you were doing a unit on colour and exploring colour in nature like this is just a stunning stunning book it's one of my favourite children's non-fiction books that I've picked up in the last 12 months and I've really started looking more at children's non-fiction recently and this is just absolutely gorgeous from cover to cover. So then we move into the shortlisted books there are three of them. The first one is a picture book called Who's Afraid of the Light by Anna McGregor. I have reviewed this book so I will leave a link to that review or that specific review on the screen so you can check it out in more detail. This is a really wonderful book that is a narrative non-fiction book. The narrator of the story is talking to us the audience as if we are deep under the sea so we know that we're under the water and we can see this light on every page and the creature that the light belongs to is talking to us but we don't know who it is, what it is and we meet all of these amazing creatures that live in the depths of the ocean and then you know the big reveal at the end is who's behind the light and it looks very much at how animals who live in the depths of the ocean have to have very specific mechanisms for keeping them safe and it was very very cool. The other cool thing about this title is that it does have a glow in the dark cover which is awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed this book the first time that I read it so I was really glad to see it here on the list because while it has a very simple storytelling style it's very engaging, it's very informative and it's a really great text to share with students. I was also really pleased to see Ghost Book by Remy Lye on the list and I think I have another video about this one so if I do I'll leave this one linked on the screen. This is a middle fiction graphic novel. It is about Julie who is a young girl who can see ghosts and this comes about because when she was born there was a bit of a mix-up and her life was saved and so she's forever connected kind of to this underworld of ghosts and she ends up saving a boy ghost from being devoured during Hungry Ghost Month and so this inextricably ties them together as they become friends and they try and figure out what's going on and why the ghosts are trying to reclaim both of them. So it's really really fun. It's quite a long graphic novel but it was really enjoyable. Lots of great mythology, some spooky scenes but also just has a really wonderful theme of friendship as well. So this one was absolutely wonderful and then the final book on the short list is It's the Sound of the Thing by Maxine Benba Clark. Now this is a poetry anthology by Maxine Benba Clark and I loved this. Aside from Australia Country of Colour I think this was my favourite book that I read from this short list. So it is middle fiction. The poems in here are written probably for years three to maybe year eight age students but that said they are very accessible to everyone and I will probably be reading a few of them with my year two students this year. I have got all of them marked up because I really did love reading these poems and I can't wait to share them. Maxine Benba Clark is currently the poet in residence at the University of Melbourne and this collection of poetry focuses on school, being young. There are some poems in here that centre black and diverse peoples and I loved that. There are a variety of different poetry types within the text. Everything from free verse to haiku to onomatopoeia to very specific things and the thing that I absolutely loved about it is that rather than put that information on the page with the poems there is an index of the poetic forms used in the text as well which poems feature that poetic form. To me that makes this really really useful for teachers because it can be really difficult sometimes to find great poems in a particular form that are great for use within a primary school. It can be really really challenging sometimes and Maxine Benba Clark's use of language and her word choice is just wonderful. Like this is absolutely gorgeous. I'm so glad that I read it and I can't wait to share it with my students. Of all of the books I kind of hope that this one wins. We'll wait and see. I can't remember when the awards are announced but I'm of this one like I got the most joy out of this one as an adult reading poetry for middle fiction readers. Like this was just a wonderful wonderful collection. I will leave links to where you can find out more information about all of the books as well as the Victorian Premier's literary awards down below. In the comments I'd love to know if you've read any of these books or if you're planning on picking any of them up or if you feel like there is another book that should have been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier literary awards for the children's shortlist. Feel free to chat about it down below. If you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a microphone emoji down below. Otherwise I hope that wherever you're on the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.