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Abstract
Despite the proliferation of literary awards, sometimes with a more extensive list of categories and often with more generous prize money, the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year is still the only award that has a significant impact on book sales in this country. Throughout the 65-year history of the CBC, both the judging criteria and the judges themselves have constantly been subjected to criticism and instead of acknowledging that, as English (2005) and Kidd (2007, 2009) argue, literary prizes are by their nature provocative and, therefore, welcoming any challenges, the CBC has responded repeatedly by asserting that it is a last bastion of literary standards.
This article argues that the desire to shore up its cultural capital in this way derives from an image problem related to its identification with primary school education and librarianship, and suggests that to do so is counterproductive.
Introduction
Over the 65-year history of the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year awards, an ongoing conversation about the integrity and competence of its judges reflects a general consciousness that those adults who work with children in our society, particularly young children - whether as librarians, educators, writers and illustrators, publishers or booksellers - are not regarded as being at the top of their profession.
Each state branch appoints a judge and the state that hosts the national executive on a two-year rotation has the right to appoint the whole judging panel for the information books category. In the early years, the probability that judges were not well known outside their home state or the CBC itself was not perceived as a problem. Rather than making personal judgements, they were seen as expressing consensus values for the organisation and the children's book community - if not the literary community generally. However, when the judges failed to announce a winner in 11 of the first 14 years of the Picture Book of the Year category and made no award at all on nine occasions, the CBC responded to public criticism by emphasising the qualifications of individual judges. In 1970 for the first time their degrees and honours were included, most notably at the head of the list for that year, 'ACT Mrs L...