Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Eileen Merriman makes DANZ Children’s Book Award 2025 shortlist

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DANZ Children’s Book Award 2025 shortlists announced

I am delighted to see Eileen Merriman makes the YA shortlist with her novel To Catch a Falling Star (Penguin, 2023). The book, with both nuance and complexity, navigates tough issues. Aged fifteen, Jamie Orange participates in school musical productions, is secretly in love, but faces persistent and crippling mental health challenges. The story and the characters are utterly moving. The novel is an unforgettable, thought-provoking read, so I am pleased to see it get this recognition.

In my Poetry Shelf review I wrote: “Ah. Triple ah. Quadruple ah. Catch a Falling Star is a sad, contemporary, thought-provoking, must-read story that revives you no matter how little sleep you have had! The word I take with me is hope, the image I hold is two teenagers bonding over books and coffee. Utterly riveting! Utterly humane.”

You can read my review here.

The Shortlist

The DANZ Children’s Book Award, launched for 2024, stands for The Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Children’s Book Award and has been created to recognise, award, and celebrate diverse children’s fiction. This means a children’s book published in Australia or New Zealand which pushes boundaries, challenges stereotypes, and celebrates diverse and marginalised people and communities.

Website here.

The 2025 shortlists for the Australian School Library Association (ASLA) DANZ (Diversity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand) Children’s Book Award have been announced.

Chosen from previously announced longlists, shortlisted titles in each category are:

Graphic novel

  • Ghost Book (Remy Lai, A&U Children’s)
  • Neverlanders (Tom Taylor & Jon Sommariva, Penguin)
  • The Sweetness Between Us (Sarah Winifred Searle, A&U Children’s)

Nonfiction

  • Looking After Country with Fire (Victor Steffensen, illus by Sandra Steffensen, HG Explore)
  • Our Mob (Taylor Hampton & Jacinta Daniher, illus by Seantelle Walsh, Ford Street)
  • The Trees (Victor Steffensen, illus by Sandra Steffensen, HG Explore)

Poetry

  • It’s the Sound of the Thing (Maxine Beneba Clarke, HGCP)
  • Pasifika Navigators (52 Pasifika student authors, Mila’s Books)

YA

  • Catch a Falling Star (Eileen Merriman, Penguin)
  • Inkflower (Suzy Zail, Walker)
  • Into the Mouth of the Wolf (Erin Gough, HGCP).

The winners will be announced at the ASLA conference in Geelong on 30 May.

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