DANZ Boldly Launches Into Its Second Year!
The ASLA Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Children’s Book Award is back for 2025 to celebrate and spotlight even more underrepresented children’s book creators!
Following a hugely successful first year, The ASLA DANZ Award, previously The DANZ Award, is returning bigger and better in its quest to reward and celebrate diverse and ground-breaking children’s literature. In 2025, there will be a focus on a greater range of books that push boundaries and challenge stereotypes, created by authors and illustrators from Australia and New Zealand. New and exciting partnerships with dynamic market leaders and changemakers will also be announced in the coming months as the award looks set to become a respected and well-known brand as well as a go-to resource.
In 2023, more than 120 books were nominated by a variety of publishers, both big and small, or by the creators themselves, and then a group of over fifty enthusiastic young judges aged between six and sixteen from across both countries read and chose their favourites. Twenty-six of these titles made the inaugural longlist and from that, nine incredible books were shortlisted.
The three winning books were crowned at a child-focused event at the prestigious Somerset Storyfest held on the Gold Coast in March 2024. The exciting event included a talk by the 2024-2025 Australian Children’s Laureate and was attended by several of the shortlisted creators.
The 2024 winners were:
Picture Book: Come Over to my House, written Eliza Hull and Sally Rippin and illustrated by Daniel Gray-Barnett and published by Hardie Grant
Chapter Book: Maku by Mayne Wyatt and published by Pan Macmillan Middle Grade: The Wintrish Girl by Melanie La’Brooy and published by UQP.
The winners all received a monetary payment, a trophy, and a guaranteed spot presenting at a future Somerset Storyfest event.
Martha Itzcovitz, the president of ASLA (Australian School Library Association) says: “Though packaged as an award, DANZ is really about curating a valuable resource for teachers and librarians, booksellers and guardians: a comprehensive print and digital brochure listing details of the longlisted books – books that not only have sensitive and accurate representation of marginalised people and groups, but most importantly given a seal of approval by children themselves.”
Children are now invited to apply to be a 2025 judge via a simple sign-up form that can be found on the website. The nomination period for the 2025 award is also now open. We are accepting books traditionally or self-published in Australia and/or New Zealand in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and fall into one of the following four categories: Young Adult; Non-Fiction; Graphic Novels; Poetry and Other. If there are few nominations in any one particular category, however, the award committee reserves the right to merge categories. Once again, there will be no entry fee for books, which is in line with the committee’s commitment to make the award accessible for each and every creator.
Children’s publishing needs to pick up momentum when it comes to the changes it’s making regarding diverse representation, but Kate believes this must be approached with caution: “Books continue to be published by teams, though passionate and
well-meaning, who are often not trained to recognise harmful and insensitive content, and thus perpetuating stereotypes and negative associations. It’s easy to slap a label of diverse on a book, but if these books are rushed into the hands of children and publishers have not done the essential work, we run the risk of creating more harm than good.”
She continues: “We need to first give more opportunities to marginalised people who can tell their own stories authentically, or encourage creators to not skip on their research and to go beyond simple internet searches. Creators need to be immersing themselves into the cultures they want to write and use authenticity and sensitivity readers. Change also needs to come from the top, within the publishing houses themselves, by hiring more diverse staff and introducing mandatory sensitivity training for all team members in all departments.”
The ASLA DANZ Award seeks books which push boundaries, challenge stereotypes, and celebrate diversity, including disability, culture, class, LGBTQI, race, and religion. The diversity portrayed in the book and under which the book is nominated must be relevant, obvious, and important to the story, but the story must be more than the diversity portrayed. The submitted work must be sensitively and authentically written without using offensive, inaccurate, harmful, and insensitive tropes and representation. The judging process will be thorough and critical in this regard.
Visit www.thedanzchildrensbookaward.com to learn more, review the criteria and FAQs, and to access the book nomination and judge application forms. Any queries or concerns can be directed to the DANZ committee at thedanzchildrensbookaward@gmail.com
Since the award is not charging an entry fee, support in all forms, from financial sponsorship to the sharing of services and networks, is welcomed and encouraged to help grow the award and cement its place in the children’s literature landscapes of Australia and New Zealand.
Please look out for details of the upcoming fundraising day and reach out to Kate Foster at thedanzchildrensbookaward@gmail.com or Martha Itzcovitz at president@asla.org.au to discuss how you can help us make a difference.
For more information visit thedanzchildrensbookaward.com and asla.org or contact Kate at thedanzchildrensbookaward@gmail.com or Martha at president@asla.org.au
