The Last Viking has won the 2012 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ (SCBWI) Crystal Kite Award.
This is a members’ choice award. Writers and illustrators from each region voting on their favourite title for the past year.
Congratulations to all the other Crystal Kite winners around the world! And many many thanks to all the Australian and New Zealander SCWBIans for choosing our book; it’s very humbling to have your support.
Brilliant brilliant news…
The Last Viking has been listed in the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards 2012!
- Notable Book, Picture Book of the Year category, CBCA Awards 2012
- Shortlist, Early Childhood category, CBCA Awards 2012
The Last Viking has also been shortlisted in the 2011 Aurealis Awards for Australian fantasy, science fiction and horror creators.
Brilliant brilliant news…
My debut book The Last Viking, written by Norman Jorgensen, has been shortlisted in the Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards 2012!
We scored two mentions:
I’m very surprised and very chuffed. It’s one of those cliches… ever since I was a kid, I dreamed that one day one of my books would have the shiny CBCA sticker on the cover- and now it’s happened, hooray! It’s a great honour and a great affirmation. Congrats Norm! And thanks to the CBCA 🙂
Norman Jorgensen and I received great news this year regarding our children’s book, The Last Viking. It has been shortlisted for 4 awards!
It’s a great buzz to be nominated with Norman, and also to be nominated alongside illustrators that I look up to.
Hi everyone,
Norm and I have some excellent news to share for 2012. The Last Viking has been shortlisted for three awards!
- 2012 Western Australian Young Readers’ Book Awards
- 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature
- 2012 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ Crystal Kite Awards
It’s a great honour to have The Last Viking listed alongside books by Australian and international greats, like Shaun Tan, Bruce Whatley, Alison Lester and Chris van Allsburg.
As part of this years Premier’s Summer Reading Challenge (supporting the Multiple Sclerosis Society), students from across the state were invited to design a bookmark. The judges included Bosko the Reading Challenge mascot and myself. As it was Movember, I was sporting a 3 week-old moustache at the time of judging.
We had many many entries to get through…
…but we eventually decided on two winners- Kaden Prowse from Swanbourne Primary School and Taylor Anderson from Newman Primary School. Congrats you two!
Although Children’s Book Week is over for another year, the fun ain’t over yet – because the HeARTlines Festival is just getting started.
This biennial festival celebrates children’s literature and book illustration, and is held at the Mundairing Arts Centre in the Perth hills. This year HeARTlines is dedicated to the memory of the festival’s founder, WA author Louise Schofield. Louise was an incredible woman and it’s an honour to be a part of her festival this year.
I’ll have original artwork from The Last Viking on display in the exhibition, and prints for sale too… the exhibition opens tonight (Friday 2nd September) and closes Sunday 9th October.
I’ll also be running a school holiday cartooning workshop during the festival – here’s the details:
Friday 7th October
10am-12noon
Ages 9-13
Cost: $15 ($10 for members of the Mundairing Arts Centre or Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre).
Call (08) 9295 3991 to book your place.
It was a dark and stormy night…
Actually, it was. Norm and I had been watching the weather forecast all week, wondering what the heavens would bring on the Friday night of our launch. By Tyr’s Day, we could see that rain was likely. By Wodin’s Day, rain was certain. Come Freyja’s Day, when the wind didn’t let up all day, we knew a storm was brewing. Thor was angry. The joke going around was that his invite had been lost on it’s way to Asgard. But maybe that was true, and he thought we were snubbing him… and when you snub a Norse god, you get a once-in-10-years weather event. Thirty millimetres of rain fell in 30 minutes: the precise 30 minutes in which our guests were en route to the launch.
Thanks to Rebecca Newman of Alphabet Soup magazine for the following review of The Last Viking.
If you don’t know anything about Vikings yet, you’ll know heaps about them by the time you finish The Last Viking. The illustrations are fun and cartoon-like and if you’re a super sleuth, you’ll notice that on some of the pages there are messages written in code—rune carvings. At the back of the book (on the endpapers) you’ll find the key to crack the code.
Keep an eye out for the ravens in the book, too. In Norse mythology they are Odin’s messengers, and in The Last Viking, they keep the Viking gods updated on Josh/Knut’s progress.
The Last Viking is an exciting adventure about courage, imagination and dealing with bullies.
Time to go a-viking!
You can read the whole thing here.
It’s here: an honest-to-goodness book trailer for The Last Viking.
Everyone’s doing book trailers these days, so we thought we should too. Yep, that’s how Norm and I roll, so easily swayed by peer pressure.
Hope you like it.
James Foley 