It's a massive Top 5 for Friday this week, with not just one list, but two. This week we are counting down the five finalists in two of the sections of the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards 2011.Introducing Picture Books
Baa Baa Smart Sheep Mark Sommerset & Rowan Sommerset. Publisher Dreamboat. Target age 3+. Little Baa Baa is bored so he decides to play a practical joke, telling Quirky Turkey that the pile of round, brown things on the ground are "Smarty Tablets". Who is smarter, sheep or turkey?
A Dog Like That! Janene Cooper & Evie Kemp. Publisher Duck Creek Press. Target age 2+ . All dogs should be like this! Everybody tells her how dogs should be, but this girl knows better. This is a story about a little girl and her unruly, loveable best friend. Local author.
Hill & Hole Kyle Mewburn & Vasanti Unka. Publisher Penguin Group (NZ). Target age 3+. Hill loves being a hill, but sometimes he wishes he could feel the earth breathing beneath him. Hole loves being a hole, but sometimes wishes he could see the sun rising. Their friend Mole is happy to help and soon Hole is a hill, and Hill is a hole, but what at first seemed wonderful turns out to be not so great after all. Will they find a solution to their problem?
Marmaduke Duck and the Marmalade Jam Juliette MacIver & Sarah Davis. Publisher Scholastic New Zealand. Target age 4+ . Down in the woods, not far from the sea, Marmaduke Duck found a grapefruit tree. What luck! cried the duck. How lucky I am! I'll take some and make some marmalade jam. The smell of Marmaduke Duck's marmalade jam cooking draws a lot of other animals to his river.
The Moon & Farmer McPhee Margaret Mahy & David Elliot. Publisher Random House New Zealand. Target age 4+. A heart-warming story - with lots of fun wordplay - about a grumpy farmer whose animals keep him awake at night singing and dancing by the light of the moon. Eventually he is won over by the moon and the animals and learns how to be happy.
Introducing Junior Fiction
Finnigan & the Pirates Sherryl Jordan. Publisher Scholastic New Zealand. Target age 7+. Wildbloode the Wicked is the fiercest, most ferocious pirate in all the seven seas. All she wants is for her nephew to follow in her footsteps. But Finnigan's not interested in piratical pillaging. All he wants to do... is dance!
The Haystack Jack Lasenby. Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Target age 8+. Maggie's growing up during the Great Depression without her mother in the little Waikato dairying township of Waharoa.
Hollie Chips Anna Gowan. Publisher Scholastic New Zealand Target age 8+. Hollie Chips is an unusual girl. Not just because she has one blue eye and one brown eye... but she just cannot tell a lie, no matter how small. So when she finds out that the unscrupulous Barry Buckscud has been lying to her and her neighbours, she plans to get even.
Shadow of the Boyd Diana Menefy. Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Target age 8+. Historical novel based around the events of the Boyd masscre in which two young boys, a Māori and Pakeha, find their friendship stretched to breaking point.
Tussock Elizabeth Pulford. Publisher Walker Books Australia Target age 9+. When a family is struck by tragedy a little hope is all that is needed. When Kate and Madeline's father goes missing on a routine local flight, family life is thrown into chaos. While the close rural community help the family deal with their grief, Kate lights a lamp every night in the window of the old tin hut on the hill in the hope that it will help her father find his way home. Madeline invests her hope in building a replica of the fabled stone man. But it is the appearance of the troubled Troy that brings comfort to Kate in the most unexpected way. To Kate, Troy seems nearly as lost as her father and the mystery surrounding him and also the stone man leads Kate into dangerous territory.
There is also a People's Choice award. Call into the Library and pick up a voting card or go online to the NZ Post Book Awards website.
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