For and by the kids

In the news this week we see that the kids have picked The Golden Door by Emily Rodda as the winner in the KOALA Fiction for Younger Readers category. The Kids Own Australian Literature Awards are chosen by children, for children and it's great to see young people speaking up in such a positive way.

In the grown-up world of publishing with its relentless generation of marketing plans and sales projections and cover art budgets it's nice to remember that ultimately what we're doing is making books that children will want to read. And small humans, like big humans, are increasingly (or should that be decreasingly?) short on time. So with the summer school holidays just around the corner we'd like to throw our support behind Doing Nothing. Yes, that's right, whole days filled with nowhere to go and nothing to do except ... Reading A Book! Or maybe two books, or five or ten. Find a sunbeam, flop down in it and lose yourself in another world.