The Ena Noёl Award and NCACL

Since its inception in 1994, IBBY Australia’s The Ena Noël Award has played a significant role in identifying talented emerging writers and illustrators. This encouragement award for children’s literature is for creators who are under the age of 35 at the time the title (or titles) for which they are nominated was published. The author or illustrator must be an Australian citizen or permanent resident of Australia and the book must be published in printed form.

In 2022, the shortlist was announced publicly for the first time and in 2024, the 30^th anniversary of the Award, two Awards were presented – one for author and one for illustrator.

Sher Rill Ng is the winner of the Ena Noёl Inaugural Award for Emerging Illustrator 2024. Meg Gatland-Veness and Holden Sheppard are the joint winners of the Ena Noёl Award for Emerging Authors in 2024. You can hear the 2024 Award recipients via this link: https://youtu.be/w2qXsSKENpI

Some readers may ask – what’s the connection to NCACL?

Collaboration between IBBY Australia and the National Centre for Australian Children’s Literature Inc (NCACL) is longstanding. In October 2018, the NCACL and IBBY Australia Inc launched an exhibition at the Woden Public Library. The exhibition showcased the IBBY honour books for 2018, which included, in addition to the Australian IBBY Honour Books, 191 books in translation from 61 countries around the world.

And the link to the Ena Noёl Award? At about the same time as the exhibition, IBBY started depositing its Archives with NCACL, which include a copy of the books that have won the Award.

Two weeks after the announcement of the Award, my husband, our 11-year-old grandson and I, visited NCACL to deliver the 2024 Ena Noёl Award winners and 2023 & 2024 ICBD posters.  We have visited several times and are always warmly welcomed by NCACL Director, Dr Belle Alderman AM.

Over the last year, Belle and her team have worked through the Archives, stored them to archival standards, and have created a Guide to the IBBY Australia Inc Archive Collection.

We met volunteers Pat Dixon, and Max Brown -who as NCACL’s art curator, had created a special archival folder to store the poster collection flat.

Belle escorted us into the storeroom which houses most of NCACL’s artwork, and the compactus containing our IBBY files and the IBBY book award collection. This collection includes copies of every book that has won the Ena Noёl Award.

It is my task to continue to add, document and deliver IBBY Australia resources, posters and award-winning books to NCACL. IBBY Australia hopes this collaboration will support researchers of Australia’s children’s literature industry.

Nella Pickup
National Executive
International Board of Books for Young People/IBBY Australia Inc
Children’s Book Council of Australia, Tasmanian Branch – Life Member

Nella was a public librarian for 33 years and worked as a bookseller for six years. Nella has been a member of the Executive Committee of IBBY Australia Inc since 2018. She has been an Ena Noel jury panellist from 2016-2024. 

She is a Life Member of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (Tasmanian Branch) and was a CBCA Eve Pownall judge in 2003-2004. She is an avid reader, book buyer for herself, her husband and their 4 grandsons, supporter of the local bookshop, audiobooks listener and enjoys watching films.

 

See also:
Collaborative partnerships – NCACL
Advocacy for NCACL
Sharing Stories program celebrating the IBBY travelling exhibition
IBBY Australia Honour Books List 1962-2018 which is on our website (the first time they produced an annotated list)

 

Posted by: NCACL | Published: 29 May 2024