New Zealand Post Children’s Book Award finalists on whirlwind tour, 17-24 June

Cupcake parties, school quizzes, whānau storytelling times, a Parihaka peace celebration and a live Tuatara visiting a library are all part of this year’s New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards festival.

Libraries, bookstores, schools and communities around the country are gearing up for a week of colour and fun as the festival celebrates the fantastic books named as finalists in the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards.

The colourful festival promotes the importance of books and reading, and provides inspiration for New Zealand’s future writers and illustrators.

Find out what events are happening in your area: www.nzpostbookawards.co.nz

The festival’s national coordinator, Mary McCallum says the festival will see authors and illustrators popping up all over the country.  “Our festival coordinators have taken the stories at the heart of the books and made them come alive for children and families. It’s very exciting.”

To cap off the amazing array of initiatives, two roadshows will ferry bunches of librarians and piles of books to schools and preschools around Canterbury and Marlborough reaching over 3,000 children.

The festival runs from 17 June until the announcement of the winners at an awards ceremony in Christchurch on Monday 24 June.

Some festival highlights:

• In libraries around Auckland there will be a series of magical cupcake tea parties to celebrate the picture book finalist, A Great Cake by Tina Matthews, and the central library will host a giant Book Trail and Storytime at the Cinema.
• Lower Hutt library will have a very special guest – a live Tuatara – visiting the library to introduce young readers to the book Kiwi: the real story by Annemarie Florian and Heather Hunt.
• The West Coast will host varied events including a Mister Whistler pyjama party, a glow-in-the-dark experience with the book Kiwi: the real story, and ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ with author Kyle Mewburn’s Melu.
• Whangarei library will run a popular ‘Storytime’ character hunt.
• In Taranaki, there will be a celebration of the peace of Parihaka, speeches by local school children and performances by Kura Kaupapa; and Hawera Community Centre will host a Secondary Schools Literacy Challenge based on the awards finalists.
• In Wellington the popular Java Dance Company will perform a dance depicting the story of Margaret Mahy’s Mister Whistler, which will be performed for three schools as well as a public performance at the Wellington Central Library.