Lifetime's passion goes into book of the year

By MARGIE THOMSON

Going green won Auckland writer Janet Hunt the country's top children's book award.

Stories about the environment are in vogue and the judges also noted trends towards fantasy and more male lead characters.

Butit was Hunt's story - firmly rooted in the earthy, world of the New Zealand bush with main characters such as Richard Henry the kakapo, Old Blue the black robin, Mrs Bones the black stilt and an entire ecosystem of other species - which won.

A Bird in the Hand: Keeping New Zealand Wildlife Safe (Random House) features a supporting cast of humanoid bi-peds, working hard to save our endangered species and habitats.

It won the non-fiction category and the Book of the Year in the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, announced on Thursday night.

The book grew out of her lifelong passion for the non-human world, her familiarity, as a former schoolteacher, with the vivid storytelling required to hold children's attention, and her "other hat" as a graphic designer.

Unusually, she not only conceived and wrote the book, but also did the design and layout as well.

It is such an appealing book that the three judges were unanimous in their choice.

Based on the proverb "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush", the book puts forward the idea that "a bird in the hand means two in the bush" - that is, if we care for what we have, we might one day have more.

It's a powerful message for those concerned about the many endangered species in New Zealand.

"If it were not for the hand, for all those people who work so hard, a lot of these creatures would not be here still," Hunt says.

"You can look at it the other way round too, of course, that if it were not for the hand, the species would not have been endangered, but we can't go back in time.

"One of the very good things about writing this book was having a sense of all these people doing such a fantastic job - I felt the presence really strongly of this network, of people working for DoC, the Wingspan Trust and many individuals.

"But as well as these amazing efforts, there's also a constant need for vigilance."

The judging panel, led by Northland poet, doctor and children's book writer Glenn Colquhoun, said A Bird in the Hand contained in large quantities all the qualities of the best books.

"Colourful and evocative illustrations, carefully written text that tells us enough but not too much, a subject that lets us look at ourselves while we are looking at it, and a design that combines all of the above into a beautiful 'book in the hand'. It carries the lifetime passion of its author."

This is Hunt's first book for children. In 1998 she wrote Hone Tuwhare: A Biography.

It is the third year in a row that a non-fiction book has won the children's book awards - Robert Sullivan and Gavin Bishop's Weaving Earth and Sky won last year, and Lloyd Spencer Davis' The Plight of the Penguin in 2002.

"It's a recognition that this is an area we do particularly well," said Whitcoulls book promotions manager Dorothy Vinicombe.

The judges paid a special tribute to Reed Publishing for its "continued service to New Zealand children's non-fiction".


In their report, they also commented that writing for boys was strong this year. "At least seven of the 10 books on the shortlists for junior and young adult fiction had central characters who were male.

"It would be difficult to argue on the strength of these figures that there was not much reading for boys in our literature."

Fantasy, a genre that's been popular overseas for a few years, driven partly by the Harry Potter phenomenon, is catching up here. Not only was Vicky Jones' Serpents of Arakesh (the first in her fantasy Karazan Quartet, see canvas magazine) a finalist in the junior fiction category, but fantasy or mystical elements were found in Tessa Duder's Tiggie Thompson's Longest Journey, Bernard Beckett's Home Boys and Penelope Todd's Watermark.

Aucklander Ted Dawe's hard-edged novel about street-racers and the drug subculture, Thunder Road (Longacre), won the young adult fiction category.

"The fast-paced narrative sinks its hooks into any reader," the judges said. "Teenage boys in particular will be gripped by the action ... It's a novel about friendship and about responsibility - to your friends and to your own future."

Pamela Allen won the picture book category with Cuthbert's Babies.

An honour award was given to Lloyd Jones and Graeme Gash for Napoleon and the Chicken Farmer (Mallinson Rendel) - a book that reverses the roles of Napoleon Bonaparte and a Corsican chicken farmer in a modern-day parable that "works as much for adults as it does for children".