KEY POINTS:
Sharon Holt's number one rule of joke telling - it's all in the punchline - sounds like common sense, but spelling it out in black and white won her a finalist's place in the children's book awards, announced today .
Her book It's True! You Can Make Your Own Jokes is one of five finalists in the non-fiction section of the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
Judges applauded the diversity of subject matter of finalists across the competition's four categories.
Convener Keith Olsen said the range of work went from factual war tales to fictional stories "with their drugs, death and divorce".
Holt's book was published, appropriately, on April 1 last year, illustrated by Ross Kinnaird.
The author said it was five years in the making and inspired by her 5-year-old son Gregory's attempts to tell a joke. She said other parents would be familiar with the way children told endless "knock, knock" jokes without humorous endings.
One of Gregory's ended "dinosaur", "dinosaur who?", "just dinosaur", she said.
"It occurred to me that I needed to teach him how to tell a joke properly," she said. "He's quite a good joke teller now and he's made up a few."
She said telling a joke that was appropriate to the listener was also important.
Like many authors, she had a tale of the difficulty of getting the title published. Despite early interest, it was turned away three times before being accepted by Allen & Unwin.
The book was selected as a finalist from the more than 120 children's books published in New Zealand last year and submitted for the awards.
Voting for the Children's Choice Award runs until May, when a festival will culminate in the presentationof the awards. The finalists are:
Picture book
* Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! by Kyle Mewburn, illustrated by Ali Teo & John O'Reilly.
* Matatuhi written and illustrated by Robyn Kahukiwa.
* Matatuhi (Te Reo edition) written and illustrated by Robyn Kahukiwa.
* The Three Fishing Bothers Gruff written and illustrated by Ben Galbraith.
* Riding the Waves written and illustrated by Gavin Bishop.
* Whakaeke i nga Ngaru (Te Reo edition of Riding the Waves) written and illustrated by Gavin Bishop.
* A Present from the Past by Jennifer Beck, illustrated by Lindy Fisher.
Non-fiction
* Winging It: The Adventures of Tim Wallis by Neville Peat.
* Red Haze: Australians and New Zealanders in Vietnam by Leon Davidson.
* Soldier in the Yellow Socks by Janice Marriott.
* Illustrated History of the South Pacific by Marcia Stenson.
* It's True! You Can Make Your Own Jokes by Sharon Holt, illustrated by Ross Kinnaird.
Junior fiction
* Thor's Tale by Janice Marriott.
* My Story: Castaway - The Diary of Samuel Abraham Clark, Disappointment Island, 1907 by Bill O'Brien.
* Frog Whistle Mine by Des Hunt.
* And Did Those Feet by Ted Dawe.
* Boyznbikes by Vince Ford.
Young adult
* A Respectable Girl by Fleur Beale.
* Genesis by Bernard Beckett.
* Shooting the Moon by V.M. Jones.
* Single Fin by Aaron Topp.
* Thieves by Ella West.
