New Zealand Book Awards

New Zealand Book Awards

This week I went to New Zealand Book Awards for children and young adults. We went and listened to Sophie Sires, Gavin Bishop and Alison Balance. We listened to them talk about one of there books and I enjoyed it very much.

Sophie Sires talk about a book she wrote called “The Gift Horse”.

Sophie said that she lived on a farm and that was where she based the home of the main character Olivia. How she came to right this book was she went to a library that she goes to so she can sell her book and the lady and that worked there said something like this: “Sophie could you write a book about grief. There has been no books about grief lately”. She tock on the challenge for it was hard to make a book about grief and she made “The Gift Horse”. It is a good book at I recommend that you read it.

Next was Gavin Bishop. Gavin wrote a book called “Aotearoa New Zealand”.  He talk about how he came to writing this book and he said that there were some people that wanted him to write (and draw) a pitcher book, but they didn’t want it to be the normal size pitcher book, so instead of it being 32 page's long the wanted it be 64 page’s long. So the next day He started to research and sketch the beginning of the book. Something that he said to do was to do the title and front cover last witch was a really good idea because when you do those things it could the opposite of your story which would not be good.  

Then the last person we listened to was Alison Balance.  The book she wrote was “New Zealand's Great White Shark’s”. She talked about how a Great White Shark was born. For the first half of its time in the mother's womb it would eat eggs, lots and lots of eggs. Then in the second half it would digest all the eggs.

As we in New Zealand thought that the Great White Sharks like cold water, and that was why New Zealand had Great White Shark’s they were wrong! The Great White Shark’s went to australia and back!! She also said that The long’s Great White Shark was 6 feet long!!! A Female Great White Shark are 5 and half to 6 feet long, and the Male Great White Sharks are 5 feet long, so the female where bigger Shark than the male!!!!  

I really enjoyed listened to these authors talk about their books. And I do recommend them to many people.

Have you ever read an Award winning book?