The Sun Project: As Book Week begins, a new initiative is giving young readers a voice in children’s stories

It’s that one week of the year when book characters invade school grounds and parents across the country thank the book gods for Harry Potter. A stick for a wand, a hastily drawn lightning bolt and Expelliarmus! You have a boy wizard.

It’s the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s (CBCA) Children’s Book Week, the one time in August where story times, book displays, and the much-anticipated book parade take on the power of a footy grand final.

The CBCA has been bringing books and children together during this nationwide celebration since 1945. In 1946, the organisation established its first awards, aiming to promote quality literature for young Australians.

“The CBCA Book of the Year awards is the pre-eminent book awards for children,” says Kris Williams, CBCA (WA Branch) president.

“What CBCA does is they take the very best books that have been produced by Australian publishers by Australian authors and illustrators across five categories and say, ‘this is the best we have in Australia’.”

This year the awards, judged by adults under certain criteria, are about to be joined by a new voice through a CBCA initiative, The Sun Project: Shadow Judging. And it’s shouting loud and clear.

Now, kids can be part of the conversation about the official CBCA Book of the Year Shortlist. Young shadow judges will discuss, analyse, and creatively respond to books, choosing winners that will be announced at the inaugural Shadowers’ Choice Awards on Friday, August 26.

“We want the CBCA to survive and be relevant,” says Wendy Rapee, chair of the CBCA national board. “We want to give a sense of agency for children.

“With the shadow judging, children are increasing their experience of literature, learning what makes great literature and the role of illustrations in picture books. It’s a much deeper experience.”

Alyson Simpson, professor of English and literacy education at the University of Sydney, has partnered with the CBCA in helping teachers guide their young shadow judges into reading more ‘deeply’.

“Reading deeply is when a reader is moving towards critical understanding, not just at the literal surface of narrative but thinking about what (the text) might mean to me as a person, how it relates to my life, to other texts I have read, and how it might make me think differently about the world,” Professor Simpson says.

“It’s a richer engagement with the text.”

And this is something that Simpson believes the current school curriculum puts less emphasis on.

“A lot of current syllabus direction is emphasising more than ever decoding skills, which is fine as children need to learn to read, but unless they make a connection to the reason for reading, for imagination, creativity, playfulness, vocabulary, considering possibilities of lives beyond what they know, they will not develop those capacities early on, or at all,” she says.

“Children need to learn to respond to text themselves, not have someone else tell them what they should be thinking about the text or give them limited comprehension questions that only examine a particular aspect of a text.”

It is this critical understanding of literature that has such a huge impact on the child’s education, impacting their learning, impacting their futures.

But learning to read more deeply doesn’t have to be confined to the classroom. Simpson believes that parents can partner with their children on their literary journeys.

“Make sure you belong to a library,” she suggests. “Read to children from when they’re little right up to and during primary school, help children be aware of language, what rhymes, what vocabulary they notice that’s different, give them the opportunity to interact with many different kinds of texts including digital and multi-media texts.”

Every Wednesday morning babies, toddlers and special older friends get together in Hilton for Buds ‘n’ Blooms, an intergenerational gardening playgroup. The group spends time gardening, singing, feeding chooks and enjoying getting messy together. Co-ordinator Emma Jack, a lover of books and storytelling, was excited by the idea of children’s voices being incorporated into the CBCA’s judging process and decided to register a group of toddlers as shadow judges for the early childhood category.

Each week Jack would read two books with the group as a colleague filmed the children’s faces for review.

“We would have a chat about the themes, then the kids vote on a favourite between the two,” she says.

Three-year-old Alyosha’s favourite book is Walk of the Whales by Nick Bland.

“It is funny because they are walking on the land and it’s much flatter,” Alyosha says.

“I like When the Waterhole Dries Up (by Kaye Baillie, illustrated by Max Hamilton) too. In the pictures in the book, there is water there.”

For this group, the winning book was Amira’s Suitcase by Vikki Conley, illustrated by Nicky Johnston.

“The kids related to the joy of nurturing a plant and watching it grow,” Jack says.

In the Goldfields, about 230km north of Kalgoorlie, a group of students from Years 2 to 6 has been getting together each week to talk books.

Leonora District High School has approximately 120 students with almost 70 per cent Aboriginal enrolments.

“We pride ourselves on having a school community with a strong connection to culture and country,” says Ayla-Jade Wheeler, the school’s library officer.

Ayla-Jade wanted her students to have a literary opportunity that they would not have had due to their isolation.

“The Sun Project presented as an exciting, enjoyable and new way to engage with books,” she says.

Raiden, aged 7, is an enthusiastic shadow judge and reader.

“We read books and told each other how good they are!”

The students decided that Just One Bee by Margrete Lamond and Anthony Bertini, with illustrations by Christopher Nielsen was their overall winner in the picture book category.

“It has good illustrations and it tells us how helpful bees are,” says Nathan, aged 12.

Back in Perth, Carlisle Primary School teacher Jen Mckay has 31 students in her Year 5/6 class, many of whom are new to Australia.

Mckay decided to register her class for the Sun Project as it gave her students ready access to quality literature and the opportunity to work with an author. It also gave her students a purpose to their reading and more importantly, a voice. The group worked with books from the picture book category.

“It’s usually adults who judge but we need to judge books too because the adults’ judging is different to the children’s judging,” says 10-year-old Dylan. “Children need to become more confident in their own opinions.”

Mckay found that the Sun Project had quite an effect on her students’ reading habits.

“More students are borrowing from the school library, and many of the students are enjoying giving peer recommendations when they have read a book they really connect with,” she says.

But the best outcome would be discovering a love of reading.

“I’ve changed my mind about reading,” says Caleb, aged 10. “Before I didn’t really read, I didn’t really enjoy it but when we were judging, we read the books a lot and I felt like it was more interesting.”

West Australian author and illustrator Gabriel Evans has been talking with groups of shadow judges like Mckay’s class about the thought processes behind creating a book.

“We talk about how the words and pictures both work together to try and tell the story and different ways that those words and pictures can work together because obviously there are so many relationships between those two,” Evans says.

He likes the fact that the Sun Project encourages kids to read books they wouldn’t normally read.

“Talking to some of the students that have been part of the shadow judging it’s been really interesting to hear them say that the books that have frustrated them, or the books they didn’t really understand when they first read them, became their favourite once they understood how to read them,” he says.

Methodist Ladies College in Claremont has a very strong reading culture within the school. The college runs a readers challenge between local schools which is based on the CBCA Book of the Year Awards.

“As the girls were reading the Younger Readers shortlisted books, they were interested in being shadow judges to read the books and evaluate them using the same criteria as the CBCA national judges,” says Felicia Harris, teacher librarian — junior years.

After much discussion about how the votes should be taken, it became clear that there was one winning book: Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief by Katrina Nannestad.

“At first it was hard to understand but once you got into the book, it became really interesting,” says Izzy, aged 12. “When you got to the end, you wanted it to keep going.”

One thing was certain though, if books were written for children, it makes more sense to have them judged by children.

“Shadow judging incorporates the opinions of all the other children who have read those books and have opinions of them. Some things resonate better with them than with grown-ups,” Acacia, 11 says.

The Scribblers Festival is Western Australia’s pre-eminent celebration of literature and arts for young people.

“The whole ethos behind (the festival) is to show families how reading and even drawing can be part of everyday life because a well-read young person is a grown-up who is able to understand a lot more because they have that foundation in reading about different lives and reading perspectives,” says Lindsay Fletcher-Hammond, marketing and communications, Scribblers Festival.

The festival put a call out for teenagers to be the voice of youth for the Scribblers Festival YA Collective. Through an in-depth selection process, a group of literary savvy teenagers was chosen, and they went on to be part of the Sun Project.

“At the beginning of the program we talked about our favourite books (from the Older Reader Category) and used the notes we took, and we kept on refining them,” says Sophie, aged 14.

And the winner? How to Repaint a Life by Steven Herrick.

“For me it came down to that was the book I enjoyed the most really,” says Linus, 15.

“We had five criteria we looked at and we went through those on the day and expanded on and unpacked them a little bit more: the literary merit of the book, the cohesiveness, the appeal to readership, the quality and originality.

“But it’s just surprising how many kids my age just do not read at all,” says 14-year-old Anish. “So many of my friends haven’t read a book since Year 4.

“Reading takes you away to another world. I just think everyone should be able to experience that, find books that they love and then be able to read them.”

Breaking down barriers between year groups and reading outside their comfort zones have been just two of the benefits of taking part in the Sun Project for students at All Saints College in Bull Creek.

Book lovers from Years 8 to 10 met every Wednesday lunchtime to discuss the shortlisted books in the Older Reader category. For this group of teenagers, the project has given them a chance to discover Australian authors, in particular the author of their winning book, How to Repaint a Life by Steven Herrick.

“The book felt very Australian,” says Ruby 13. “I could actually see that happening in an Australian country town.

“It was the first time in a long time I’ve really been able to fully relate to a book,” says Dylan, 14.

Reading is a solitary pastime but as a shadow judge, these students found that collaboration made for a deeper reading experience.

“Reading a book by yourself, you don’t really think about it too much,” says Dylan. “You read it and you think that was good or that was bad and move on, but our open-ended discussion was really good because it helps you understand the book more and see other people’s point of view.”

Overall, the response from teachers and facilitators about the Sun Project: Shadow Judging has been ‘totally positive’.

“Our feedback is that students are loving the process,” Rapee says.

“The strength of the project is that kids are given the opportunity and a structure to the experience.”

In the past the CBCA has placed children’s literature on a podium, this exclusive view created by adults, but there was something missing.

“Children,” Simpson says. “It’s children’s literature and we want children to feel like they belong in this space.

“Showing them through the shadow judging process that not only do they have a voice, but we want to hear it, that’s going to set them on a pathway to help their critical awareness and inform their future world view.”