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A Snells Beach mum celebrated the launch of her award-winning children’s picture book at the Mahurangi East Library earlier this month.
Grandpa Versus Swing by Tania Sickling won the 2020 Storylines Joy Cowley Award for a picture book manuscript, and it is published by Scholastic.
The Storylines awards are presented by the Storylines Children’s Literature Charitable Trust, which promotes reading and books for children and young adults.
Judges commended Tania for her “beautifully written, playful and heartwarming story”.
It is Tania’s first book and she says it was a “beautiful surprise” to win the award.
As a busy mother of three children – one of them under two – she was obliged to snatch writing time whenever she could, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Her story concerns a highly competitive Grandpa. When new swings appear at the playground, Grandpa can’t resist trying them out, despite his grandchildren’s protestations that they are too small for him
He has great fun at first but then discovers he is stuck in one of the swings and the kids can’t budge him. All seems lost until Grandma comes to the rescue.
Tania says she loves swings, which she sees on visits to the playground at Sunburst Avenue with her own children, but she has read about people getting trapped in them and requiring the fire brigade to come to the rescue. She says the story grew from there.
The book is written in rhyme and tells the story from the children’s perspective, which Tania feels is important for a children’s book.
She adds that grandparents are often playful figures in children’s lives and share a sense of adventure with them – something she’s noticed with her parents’ interactions with her own children.
Tania says her three children – Natasha, 11, Daniel, 8, and Heidi, 3, – have been her biggest cheerleaders – spontaneously breaking into laughter when she first read them the story and sharing her delight at the competition win and seeing the arrival of the advance copies of the book.
She says the illustrations by Lael Chisholm have also helped the book.
“From the beginning, she had the characters down pat. She had the theme, she had the energy and matched very well the mood of the story,” she says.
Tania says she has been an avid reader from an early age and studied literature and linguistics at Auckland University. She wrote a Masters thesis on Grimm’s fairy tales.
Book Giveaway
Mahurangi Matters has one copy of Grandpa Versus Swing to give away. To go in the draw, email your contact details to editor@localmatters.co.nz and put “Grandpa” in the subject line. Competition closes on August 30.
