Cowley's prizewinning tale links past and present

Joy Cowley

Joy Cowley says she "did not even bother to cross my fingers" after seeing the shortlist for the award she won last night for Hunter, a children's book inspired by moa hunters, Fiordland and the mystery of her own great-grandmother.

Hunter was judged New Zealand Post book of the year last night against the likes of Margaret Mahy's Maddigan's Fantasia, the basis for the television series Maddigan's Quest, and Brian Falkner's Super Freak.

"This year I saw that shortlist and I told a friend I wasn't even going to bother crossing my fingers. So it was a big, big surprise. I didn't have to pretend to look shocked because I genuinely was.

"I'm on top of the world and my feet haven't found the ground again yet."

The book links the stories of 14-year-old Jordan, who is stranded with her younger brothers in a wild area of New Zealand when their aircraft crashes in 2005, and a young hunter enslaved by Maori warriors who are hunting for moa in 1805.

Hunter was inspired by Cowley's time in Fiordland, standing in a cave in which a runaway slave lived in the 1800s and learning of moa sightings.

There was also a personal mystery behind the relationship between Jordan and the slave.

"We have a great-grandmother who was supposed to be Spanish and came over with our great-grandfather from England. But when we searched the ship's records, we found out he came over alone. So it's quite possible she was Maori and so the identity of a great-grandmother is something that is quite potent in me."

Judges Julie Harper, manager of Jabberwocky Children's Bookshop, writer Graham Lay and television producer Carol Hirschfeld said the book had "the potential to become a classic of fiction writing for young readers, in New Zealand and elsewhere."

The judges said it was a survival story so cemented in New Zealand culture and history that it could not have been set anywhere else.

It was this last comment that meant most to Cowley.

"It really couldn't have been anywhere else, because that is me too. I'm cemented in this country and when I'm away it feels as if I'm on a bungy cord which gets tighter the farther away I go.

"I get that feeling of dryness and displacement, and when the plane comes back everything settles back into place."

After 45 years of writing, Cowley has over 800 titles to her name, including about 70 picture books and novels.

Sixty-nine-year-old Cowley has a good testing panel - four children, 13 grandchildren and recently a great-grandson.

Her first adult novel, Nest in a Falling Tree, was published in 1967 and Roald Dahl bought the film rights. Her next project will be a "sort of biography" set in the Sounds and including interesting people that children know about, such as Dahl.

Best books

Other NZ Post Book Awards winners:

Picture Book: Ben Brown's A Booming in the Night.
Children's Choice: Jennifer Beck's picture book Nobody's Dog.
Young Adult Fiction: Brigid Lowry's With Lots of Love from Georgia.
Non-fiction: Leon Davidson's Scarecrow Army: The Anzacs at Gallipoli.
First book: Phil Smith's The Unknown Zone.

All winners received $5000. Cowley won an an extra $5000.