Events and Activities

Click on the image to watch the video of this year's awards held on Friday August 21st at The State Library of NSW. Click on view more to take a look at our photo gallery of the day to see new and familiar faces. Congratulations to all of our winners and honour book authors and illustrators. 

Congratulations to our Collide Book Trailer Competition winners, runners up and highly commended students and schools. Click on view more to watch the announcement video from our judges Nathan Luff, Deb Abela, Tristan Bancks and Alexa Moses. 

CBCA Sun Project/Shadow Judging aims to engage students to 'shadow judge' the CBCA Book of the Year Shortlist alongside our esteemed judging panel. Every year young people around Australia join the conversation about the shortlisted books. They judge the books themselves using the same criteria as the adult judges. Click view more to see the video of this year's Shadow Judging winners! 

This year we will be reintroducing THE MAURICE SAXBY LECTURE. Maurice Saxby was the first national president of the Children's Book Council of Australia in 1958 and served as a judge for the CBCA Book of the Year awards. He was affectionately referred to as "the Godfather of Australian Children's Literature." In 2026 the lecture will be held in conjunction with The Lady Cutler award on Saturday November 14th. We are excited to announce that Tristan Bancks, well known and highly regarded children's author and staunch supporter of the CBCA, will be our guest speaker.

The Lady Cutler Award is a bi-ennial award, administered by the CBCA NSW Branch, for Distinguished Service to Children’s Literature. Previous winners and information about the award can be found here. The award will be presented to the winner on Saturday November 14th at the Writing NSW centre.

Bookings for the Lady Cutler Award 2026 are now open

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This year CBCA NSW Branch Inc and SLANSW (School Library Association NSW) are excited to be trialing a NSW Readers Cup competition. It will mirror the QLD and ACT competitions with regional heats and a State Final. We have completed all our regional heats and teams are now eagerly reading and waiting for our State Final. This will be held on September 22nd at Stanton Public Library. For more information please visit our Website.

A monthly magazine highlighting our author and illustrator creatives and linked to what's happening now in Australian books and writing. Featuring guest illustrators, there is a bounty of information for kids and those who work with kids. 

Memberships renew in the first months of the year. Watch out for the email with the link to Hello Club for renewing. New members always welcome. Look at our events calendar and book early for our upcoming events​​​.