Ideas for encouraging students to read the shortlist

  • Story Hooks and Sizzling Starts - In pairs, students identify the strategies the authors have used. Rank the first lines in order of most enticed to read. Share and explain personal choices. Students try to match first lines with books. Share each matching book.

Shortlist Announcement 2025 →

Koalas far and wide, come and devour these fantastic shortlisted books in each of the four categories!

Congratulations to the shortlisted authors, illustrators and publishers, we can’t wait to have all our young koalas enjoy these fabulous books, before voting season begins!

Do you see any familiar books? Did you nominate any of them? Excited about some of the cover art? Curious about the titles? Get stuck in koalas, start reading now.

Watch the announcement.

New Leadership News for K.O.A.L.A.

Thank you for your support in 2024. It was another wonderful year for Australian Children’s Literature and the K.O.A.L.A. Awards. Now, as 2025 starts, we have some exciting news to share.

We wish to announce Sophie Partington as the newly elected K.O.A.L.A. Council President commencing her term after the AGM on January 21st, 2025. Sophie is the Director of Library Services at PLC Sydney and has been an educator for over 22 years across multiple sectors. She is passionate about Children's literature and has participated in K.O.A.L.A. Awards for over 10 years and joined the Council 2 years ago. Sophie is looking forward to her new role as President, following on the great enthusiasm forged by Megan Light.

Megan has stepped down after 11 wonderful and dedicated years of service in the role of President. Fortunately for K.O.A.L.A., Megan will remain an active member of the Council. We give our heartfelt thanks to Megan for all she achieved over her long-standing term as President. Her vibrant and enthusiastic leadership led to the increased growth and success of the K.O.A.L.A. Awards and supported the development of the R.E.A.L. awards across Australia. Her dedication to promoting and enhancing the presence of Australian Children’s Literature, Authors, and Illustrators is to be commended. Megan’s tireless and humble work has resulted in a vibrant and well-loved Awards program being rolled out more broadly across the state of N.S.W. We are grateful to Megan for her inspirational commitment to encouraging children to read and enjoy Australian children’s literature.

We know you will join us in thanking Megan for her leadership over many years and we look forward to another exciting year ahead.

Kind regards,

The K.O.A.L.A. Awards Council

2022 K.O.A.L.A. Awards Day Wrap

The 2022 K.O.A.L.A. Awards Day was a wonderful time to come together (in person!) and celebrate great Australian books, authors, illustrators, and readers. Thanks for joining us – live or online!

Our amazing guest authors and illustrators from Awards Day 2022

If you haven’t checked out all the fun yet, you can catch up on the whole event by watching the recording here.

You can also read a great blog post by “Momo” (one of our guests at the Awards Day ceremony), which captures some of the history of K.O.A.L.A. as well as the fun of the day itself.

Illustrating with Dub Leffler

In 2020, our online KOALA Awards ceremony featured illustrator Dub Leffler demonstrating his skill in creating beautiful illustrations. His imagination and creativity, as well as the use of interesting mediums including coffee and salt, were inspiring to see.

At the end of the ceremony, Dub revealed the completed artwork: a gorgeous tawny frogmouth owl perched on a branch. Students from Charlestown South Public School were the lucky winners of the Artwork Draw, and get to keep this incredible original illustration!

Dub's Owl.jpg
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To complement this beautiful artwork, some of the students from Charlestown South have been working on their own pieces using Dub’s techniques. You can see their work below.

Why not get your students to have a go too? You can find the complete clip of Dub’s demonstration in the Members only section, to re-watch with your students. You could even create a display of Dub’s picture books in your Library and share some of these with your students for further inspiration (and maybe some ideas for KOALA nominations for 2021!), and then get illustrating.

We would love you to share your student artworks with us so we can display it online in our photo gallery.

KOALA NEWS UPDATE

Dear Friends of K.O.A.L.A.

As we head towards the end of Term 3, we thought we would let you know some exciting information about the KOALA events planned for the rest of this very unusual year. 

The Shortlist Poster

Unfortunately, the shortlist poster which is usually printed by YABBA (our Victorian partners) is not being printed this year due to COVID 19 restrictions. We know that you will understand and appreciate the reasons why this has occurred. We would like to include this PDF to an electronic copy of the REAL Awards Shortlist Poster which can be printed as an A3 poster for you to display in your classroom, Library or Bookshop. It is a great way for students to check out what other kids have recommended to read.

Additionally, the four KOALA category Shortlist Posters can be found using this link:  https://www.koalansw.org.au/shortlists

Shortlist poster 2020

It’s Time to Vote – Last Week to Vote for Your Favourite Books

Get creative and set up your own display or if you are a KOALA Member please use the KOALA Shortlist Slide Presentation in the Members Resources section to heighten interest in the announcements for this year’s awards.

To generate excitement for the voting process, some schools and public libraries have been promoting the KOALA Shortlist with some wonderful displays for their students and through their newsletters.

William Clarke College Display

William Clarke College Display

Richmond Tweed Regional Library Newsletter

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Voting for the KOALA Awards must be submitted by Saturday September 26th.

Head to https://www.koalansw.org.au/voting to vote for your favourite titles. Votes may also be sent by spreadsheet to koalaawards@gmail.com.

A BIG shout out to all those schools who have already registered their votes. It is terrific to see so many schools getting involved in the voting process!

2020 KOALA Awards Ceremony - This Year with a Difference!

Make sure to mark Tuesday November 10th in your diary!

The KOALA committee has been hard at work contacting authors and illustrators for our online KOALA Awards Day celebration. We know you are going to be excited to see your favourites so we want to keep it a surprise. Did you ask a question for an author or illustrator at the end of the online voting? It could be included too!

Maybe you are a little sad that you can’t physically attend KOALA Awards Day 2020. We are, too. But you might like to help make the day festive as you tune in to watch on the day or at another time more suited to your school. Here are some ideas:

  • Usually only 20 students from each school can attend Awards Day. This year, because it’s an online event, your entire school could join in! You could view it in the school hall and/or individual classrooms for everyone to share in the excitement.

  • Students could make KOALA crowns/headbands to wear to the event (PDFs in Members Section)

  • Bunting could be hung to make the place for the Awards viewing more festive - perhaps it could say KOALA DAY AWARDS (PDFS in Members Section)

  • If your school would normally be buying tickets to attend Awards Day, perhaps you would be in a position to fundraise on the day. You may like to sponsor a koala or another animal, or support a community group that could use a boost, or buy some new books for your library.

  • Some ideas for appropriate ways to fundraise:

        - Sell Caramello Koalas. Koalas, that's right!

        - Sell bookmarks - perhaps colour-your-own or themed

        - Have a gold coin mufti day. Or a pyjama day - who doesn’t love snuggling up with a good book in bed?​

Whatever way you decide to be part of KOALA Awards Day we look forward to having you with us.

Please stay tuned for more details about the day in Term 4.

It's time to think about voting!

There are a number of ways to engage your students with the voting stage of the KOALA year. Kids love this stage and the options make it fun and exciting for all age groups.

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  • Online - ideal for Years 3-6 who read across the categories; add the link to your website, blog, iPad shortcut; no tallying numbers

  • Paper and Postbox- create a point of interest in the Library; develops familiarity with both author and illustrators' names; great job for library monitors to sort and tally

  • Cups and Counters - heighten excitement with K-2; anonymous-secret vote! (see image)

  • Sticky Notes - display based voting; students place a post-it note on the cover of their favourite book; great for younger years; saves writing time; quick tally count

The Tally Sheet for offline votes is due by the end of Term 3.

Happy voting!

Bring your sticky notes to life with these post-it designs. Go to Learning in Hand for instructions on how to print. 

Mascot Menagerie

Thank you to the CBCA NSW Branch for inviting us to share a little background about our animal mascot alongside some of their favourite children’s literature organisations. You can read all about them and more in the July edition of KIDS’CORNER – Colliding with Curious Creatures.

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About KOALA’s Mascot

Koalas are world famous marsupials who love to read Australian books. They hold them carefully in their five-fingered front paws. When you see a koala hidden high up in a eucalyptus tree it usually means they’re reading a bedtime story.  The koala reading in our banner was created by author and illustrator, Sarah Davis. Many more bookish koalas were created by shortlisted illustrators for KOALA’s 21st and 30th birthdays. These can be found on bags, bookmarks, stickers and in the KOALA gallery.

Play the KOALA Guess Who Game - can you match the koala picture to their creator.

What does the acronym K.O.A.L.A. mean? Kids Own Australian Literature Awards

How many ways can you order the letters of the KOALA acronym so it still has a similar meaning?

e.g. Australian Literature Kids Own Awards (ALKOA)

Are there other words you could use for each KOALA letter?

e.g. Kids Own Australian Literature Association

Engage with the shortlist

Dear Friends of KOALA,

The 2020 shortlist has been announced and can be accessed on the website. The posters and shortlist stickers will arrive in the mail for members soon.

We at K.O.A.L.A., and Australians students everywhere, send congratulations to all the shortlisted authors, illustrators and publishers for 2020.

Thank you to all the schools and students who nominated this year, we had over 8000 in NSW!  

How many of your school’s nominations made the shortlist?

This term is all about reading and getting to know the shortlisted titles and their creators. So, set up your displays and get class teachers involved. 

To assist you, we have curated a range of resources that you can use in your libraries and classrooms to encourage reading of the titles.  There are links to teachers’ notes, interviews, book trailers, reviews, author and illustrator websites, and so much more.  

There are also Kahoot quizzes to test your knowledge of the picture book shortlist and other fun ideas for encouraging your students to read.

Members can access these in the new members only resources tab on the website https://www.koalansw.org.au/members-resources.

Did you know that 85% of the shortlisted titles are also Premier’s Reading Challenge books?

Want access to all we offer and more? Then become a member in time to vote on the shortlist.

Happy reading, investigating and kahooting!

The KOALA Team

It's Time to Nominate!

Dear Friends of KOALA,

You still have TWO WEEKS for your students to become involved in the nominating process for this year’s KOALA Awards. Completed nomination forms for the 2020 KOALA Awards should be sent to contact@koalansw.org or students may nominate online. All nominations are due by Friday April 3rd.

Please find below a few ideas that you can quickly implement in your Library, Library Lessons or school classrooms to help get your students involved in the nominating process for 2020. Students may nominate up to FOUR books.

If a book is to be nominated, there are FOUR criteria that the book needs to meet:

1.       The book must be Australian.

2.       The book must have been published since 2011.

3.       The book must not be a previous winner.

4.       Nominations must be for a specific title e.g. Selby Surfs not Selby series

KOALA Nominating Ideas

  • Use this attached Powerpoint Presentation to introduce and inform your students about the nomination process.

  • Set up a display of books and nomination station that you have highlighted or read to your students over the course of Term 1 to give them some suggestions of books to nominate.

  • Involve class teachers in the nomination process. Over the next two weeks, select and send to classrooms a few Australian authored Picture Books for teachers to read to their class. Students may want to nominate some of these titles on the nomination form sent to the classroom. Display each classes’ TOP THREE NOMINATIONS and check next term to see if they have made the Shortlist.

  • Have a look at your loan statistics to compile a list of Australian authors’ books that have been most borrowed over Term 1. You could even extend this list to your loan statistics from 2019. Have students nominate their favourite reads from this list.

  • Use the CBCA 2020 Notables Lists to build a display of books that students could read over the coming weeks in the Library and then have them choose their nominations from what they have read.

  • Look at previous years’ CBCA Winners and include these books in your display or for distribution to classrooms.

  • Print and display a list of Australian authors near your nominating station so that students can check to make sure their selection has been written by an Australian author.

  • Print the list of previous KOALA winners and display to assist with the nomination process.

This list of ideas is not an exhaustive one. Teacher librarians, librarians and classroom teachers all have a myriad of ideas of how to promote reading in their schools. Using the KOALA Awards Nomination Process is another launchpad to achieve this. We look forward to seeing which Australian books your students feel should be considered for the 2020 KOALA Shortlists.

Happy reading and nominating!

Focus on Fiction for Older Readers

52 Mondays by Anna Ciddor

We're going to look everywhere,' said Anna.

And they did.

When Anna sets out to find the doll of her dreams, her two younger sisters are eager to help. But it's not easy. This is 1960s Australia and there's no computer or internet yet. This is a time when teachers still write with chalk, cars have no seatbelts, and Mr Whippy sells ice-cream cones for half a penny.

Anna and her sisters fill their days with fun, mischief and adventure - like the time Anna glues a block of wood to her middle sister's foot, then worries it will be stuck there forever! They celebrate birthdays and Passover together, cope with friends being mean, and feed peanuts to the bears at the zoo.

But through it all, Anna never loses sight of her dream.

Inspired by the author's real childhood, this is a warm, funny and fascinating family story

Anna Ciddor’s website

52 Mondays teaching notes from Allen & Unwin

Fearless Frederic by Felice Arena

When the river rises and the city of Paris begins to disappear under water, Frederic decides to help those who can’t help themselves. But as his heroic acts escalate, so does the danger. Frederic will have to battle an escaped zoo animal and fight off pickpockets and looters but, as the waters subside, can he find justice for his father and find out what courage really means?

Felice Arena’s website

Fearless Frederic teaching notes from Penguin

Fearless Frederic book trailer

Felice Arena (video) talks about where he writes

Felice Arena (video) interview about his books

PRC 7-9 Booklist #23177

Finding Serendipity by Angelica Banks

Tuesday McGillycuddy loves stories - and her mother is a writer. A very famous writer, who has locked herself away in her writing room to finish the final book in her best-selling series for children. But when Tuesday knocks on her door, she discovers her mother is missing!

In search of Serendipity, Tuesday and her faithful dog Baxterr soon find themselves on a very dangerous mission. They enter the magical world where stories come from, a mysterious and unpredictable world, full of real danger and heart-stopping adventure.

With the help of pint-sized heroine Vivienne Small, Tuesday will need all her wit, courage, perseverance and imagination in order to get to The End and be reunited with the people she loves.

Finding Serendipity teaching notes from Allen & Unwin

Series website

Angelica Banks (video) interview about Tuesday McGillycuddy

PRC 5-6 Booklist #1063

Funny Kid for President by Matt Stanton

Every kid wants to laugh, but Max Walburt is the boy who can make it happen. He’s the class clown, the punch line and he’s even volunteered his bottom to be the butt of the joke. Max is the funny kid … and he’s running for class president.

Poop-scandals, stalker-ducks, surprise-debates, psycho-sports-teachers, tell-all-interviews and the great-library-vomit-a-geddon are just some of the things in store for Max and his friends at Redhill Middle School this election season.

Matt Stanton’s question of the day (Video) – Why Funny Kid?

Matt Stanton reads (Video) chpt1 of Funny Kid for president

Funny Kid teaching notes from Harper Collins

PRC 5-6 Booklist #4007

Help around the house by Morris Gleitzman

Ludo helps other people. It’s how he was brought up.

When Dad is elected to Federal Parliament, Ludo grabs the chance to make Australia an even better place.

But he soon discovers it’s not the homeless of the national capital who most need his help - it’s the rich and powerful.

Morris Gleitzman’s website (read chapter 1 for free)

Help around the house teaching notes from Penguin

PRC 5-6 Booklist #580933

Nevermoor: the trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Born on an unlucky day, she is blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks - and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on Eventide.

But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor.

It's there that Morrigan discovers Jupiter has chosen her to contend for a place in the city's most prestigious organisation: the Wundrous Society. In order to join, she must compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children, each boasting an extraordinary talent that sets them apart. Except for Morrigan, who doesn't seem to have any special talent at all.

To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to find a way to pass the tests - or she'll have to leave the city to confront her deadly fate.

Nevermoor teaching notes from Hachette

Nevermoor book trailer

Jessica Townsend (video) reads from Nevermoor

NewsToME chat with Jessica Townsend about Nevermoor and Wundersmith, about who she'd cast in the film adaptations of her books and plays a game of "Drawing in the Dark"!

PRC 7-9 Booklist #35548

So Wrong 2 by Michael Wagner and Wayne Bryant

Michael Wagner and Wayne Bryant have put together book 2 in the series, and crammed it full of more: -short stories -satirical advertisements -highly suspect 'life advice' -naughty cartoons and other visual delights -and laughs on every page.

Michael Wagner’s website

Michael Wagner CKT featured author

So wrong Youtube channel

The 104-storey treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton

Join Andy and Terry in their now 104-storey spectacular treehouse. They've added thirteen new levels, including a never-ending staircase, a burp bank, and even a mighty fortress. But Andy and Terry are in a race against time to find a funny story for their next book – will the tooth fairy, the two-million-dollar shop or even the riddles of the deep-thoughts thinking room be able to help?

Andy Griffiths’ website

Dymocks interview (video) with Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton

Andy Griffiths (video) advertises about the 104-storey treehouse

PRC 5-6 Booklist #571116

The Forgotten Pearl by Belinda Murrell

‘Let me tell you a story. A story about friendship and sisters, about grief and love and danger, and about growing up . . .’

When Chloe visits her grandmother, she learns how close war came to destroying her family. Could Poppy’s experiences help Chloe face her own problems?

In 1941, Poppy lives in Darwin, a peaceful paradise. But when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and then Australia, everything Poppy holds dear is threatened. Terrified, she flees to Sydney – only to find that the danger follows her there. Poppy must face her war with courage and determination. Will her world ever be the same?

Belinda Murrell’s website

Teachers’ Resources Notes

Belinda Murrell - The best job in the world video

KOALA 2018 Legend Award announcement

You choose alien invaders from beyond the stars by George Ivanoff

Protector of planet Earth or abduction by extraterrestrials!

You see strange lights in the sky. It’s a flying saucer, just like in the movies. Inside are lizard aliens – disguised as humans. They have come to invade planet Earth! You want to resist, but your actions may lead to the destruction of humankind . . .

Do you have what it takes to save the world? Or will the aliens unleash their ultimate weapon?

George Ivanoff’s website

Alien invaders from beyond the stars reviewed by CKT

George Ivanoff’s (video) thank you for the 2016 K.O.A.L.A. nomination

PRC 3-4 Booklist #580039