What do I say about a book I am prouder of than almost anything else I have ever worked on in my career?

Children’s poetry anthology, A Boat of Stars is a true labour of love, initially on the part of myself and my co-editor, Margaret Connolly, and ultimately through the combined efforts of a glorious team of some of Australia’s best children’s writers and illustrators.

The spark for the book came resulted from a conversation Margaret and I had in 2016, in which we mourned the fact that there were so few outlets for new Australian children’s poetry. From this observation, we moved very quickly to the decision that we should  put together a collection of our own. The fact that we both felt extremely strongly that young children need access to quality poetry that speaks to their needs and circumstances, only added to our determination to get the project moving. It sooned turned out we were not alone in thinking this.

From the very beginning, the most remarkable thing about A Boat of Stars was the excitement with which everyone who contributed to the book embraced the idea. We were looking for poems which would be relevant to modern Australian children and their experience of the world. We wanted poems with an emphasis on rhythm and rhyme, that children would find engaging and amusing, and return to, over and over again. Our wonderful contributors delivered everything we hoped for, and more. Making the final choice from an incredibly strong field of original submissions was one of the most absorbing, challenging and professionally exciting things I have ever done, as was the process of matching the wonderful new poems to some of Australia’s top illustrators and then seeing the magnificent artwork coming in.