A Day to Remember

Jackie French is a full-time writer who lives in rural NSW. She writes columns in the print media, and sometimes presents on radio and on Burke’s Backyard. Her books for children include Rain Stones, shortlisted for the CBC Children’s Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers, 1991; Walking the Boundaries, a Notable Book in the CBC Awards, 1994; and Somewhere Around the Corner, an Honour Book in the CBC Awards, 1995. In 2000, Hitler’s Daughter won the CBC Younger Readers Award and the WOW! Award in the UK in 2001. How to Guzzle Your Garden was also shortlisted for the 2000 CBC Eve Pownall Award for Information. Most recently, Jackie won the 2002 ACT Book of the Year Award for In the Blood; her successful picture book Diary of a Wombat was named an Honour book in the 2003 CBC Awards and also won the 2003 Nielsen Book Data/ABA Book of the Year Award.

Fine artist Mark Wilson has been illustrating and writing children’s books for over twenty years, at the same time exhibiting as a fine artist in many solo and group exhibitions and performing as a musician. Of his numerous popular children’s books, the most recent are Stranded!, Angel of Kokoda, Journey of the Sea Turtle, My Mother’s Eyes: The Story of a Boy Soldier, The Yellow Turban and Aladdin and The Magic Lamp. Mark has won many awards for illustration and fine art, including Whitley Award for Childrens Literature (The Last Tree 2007); Wilderness Society Award for Children’s Literature (The Extinction Trilogy, wirtten by Gary Crew, 2004); Wilderness Soci