diversity is more than a label.
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announcing the 2025 award.
The ASLA DANZ Children's Book Award 2025 is officially launched!
Book Nominations are now closed.
young adult
non-fiction
graphic novels
poetry and other
We are not accepting works of fiction in Picture Books, Chapter Books, or Middle Grade unless the work is poetry or a graphic novel.
Please know that DANZ reserves the right to merge categories if only a few nominations are received.
To learn more about our award and the nomination criteria, please read on.
2025 AWARD KEY DATES (subject to change)
Judge applications ARE NOW CLOSED
Book nominations ARE NOW CLOSED
Judging will run from September to November 2024
Longlist will be announced in January 2025
Shortlist will be announced in March 2025
Winners will be crowned at the ASLA Conference in May 2025
Book Nominations are now closed.
young adult
non-fiction
graphic novels
poetry and other
We are not accepting works of fiction in Picture Books, Chapter Books, or Middle Grade unless the work is poetry or a graphic novel.
Please know that DANZ reserves the right to merge categories if only a few nominations are received.
To learn more about our award and the nomination criteria, please read on.
2025 AWARD KEY DATES (subject to change)
Judge applications ARE NOW CLOSED
Book nominations ARE NOW CLOSED
Judging will run from September to November 2024
Longlist will be announced in January 2025
Shortlist will be announced in March 2025
Winners will be crowned at the ASLA Conference in May 2025
nominate a book. |
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Nominations for the 2025 award are now closed.
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become a judge. |
Applications are now closed.
support us. |
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Email us today for our sponsorship brochure and to talk about ways you can help grow our award.
about DANZ.
DEFINITION AND CRITERIA
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.
Diversity can include disability, culture, class, LGBTQI, race, and religion.
The diversity portrayed in the book and under which the book is entered must be relevant, obvious, and important to the story.
Authors are not required to identify as "diverse" themselves; however, 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. The award looks for something new, for inclusivity, and mostly for the celebration of minority people and voices.
WHY?
There have been several recent academic studies, over the past five years, which have extensively researched children’s fiction in Australia and New Zealand, with results showing that there is still an overwhelming lack of diverse representation, from picture books through young adult, yet a high percentage of the population is not white, Australian- or New Zealand-born, abled, middle-class, or heterosexual. To add further concern, many of the books published, and sometimes awarded, over the past ten years which do feature diverse characters and settings, were created by white, middle class, heterosexual, abled people writing often harmful representation that portrays outdated stereotypes and recycles insensitive tropes.
The publishing landscape is beginning to take notice and make changes, though there is a long way still to go. The DANZ award, therefore, recognises and celebrates positive, ground-breaking, inclusive diversity in children’s literature and brings awareness and much-needed attention to the wonderful books which offer mirrors, windows, and sliding doors, and organically build empathy, understanding, and encouragement to children from all walks of life. This national award will not only allow and encourage the marginalised authors of these books to continue writing, but also book-buyers and educators to stock books which have been given a seal of approval from a diverse cross section of judges.
The DANZ Award brings Australia and New Zealand in-line with the UK and US who have been successfully running awards such as The Diverse Book Awards, Jhalak Prize, Little Rebels, and The Walter Awards for many years. The award does not exist to replace or compete with other established children's book awards in Australia and New Zealand, but to complement them and shine a spotlight on the right kind of diverse representation.
