It’s full moon and I am OVER the moon with happiness.

Where Is The Green Sheep? has won not one, but two awards. It never rains but it pours! The Speech Pathology Association of Australia awarded ‘Green Sheep’ the Book of the Year, as the best book for Language Development in Young Children. And at the start of Book Week on August 19th, the Children’s Book Council of Australia, awarded it Book of the Year for Younger Readers. It is my first CBC win after 22 years and 28 books so I’m thrilled to bits and hope that Where Is The Green Sheep? will now be found in homes and schools and child care centres for generations to come.

I wasn’t in Sydney for the awards ceremony, having been booked over a year ago to talk about reading aloud and its benefits to parents in six small country towns in NSW: Moama, Barham, Deniliquin, Jerilderie, Narrandera, Temora and Young. In Barham I spoke three times to children from nine tiny rural schools who had been bussed in for the event. In the second session I was able to tell the children at noon (actually it was three minutes to twelve ~ I couldn’t contain the secret any longer!) that the Green Sheep had won. The teachers cried with joy, we all hugged each other, I cried, the kids were beside themselves to be the first to know, and it was, all in all, the most PERFECT and apt setting for such a special occasion. Later that afternoon at an afternoon tea party in Deniliquin I was presented with a cake in the shape of a Green Sheep. And I phoned Judy Horacek several times after she’d accepted the award in Sydney and both of us did a lot of incoherent shrieking. That evening I was able to share the exciting news yet again with a lovely appreciative bunch of parents who had come to hear me speak. It was a super day.

I was away for four days and spoke nine times without losing my voice. It’s work that I adore. Parents always want the best for their children so their attention and questions were terrific. The organisers of my tour were fabulous, divine, gorgeous community health workers: Jenny Newell, & Niccola Follett in Deiliquin and Anthony King in Young. We had miles and miles of car travel between the towns ( NSW is a huge state) so we got to know each other well and had a lot of laughs. When I wasn’t speaking, travelling or sleeping I was eating: good country food. I have several dozens scones, jam and cream playing havoc with my waist line.

I’m rather tired, as you can imagine, but high as an escaped balloon. And the next event is only ten days away: the first national Read Aloud Summit in the world, in Sydney. Bring it on!

Hope your life is full of bubbles too…

Mem Fox