good worlds

Hurrah! Leon Davidson just won the New Zealand Post Awards: http://www.booksellers.co.nz/awards/new-zealand-post-childrens-book-awards/2011-winners

What moved me to tears, many times over, when editing Zero Hour were the words of the soldiers themselves:

'When you next see this I'll be dead: don't worry...Try to think I did the only possible thing, as I tell you I would do again if I had the chance.' Sergeant David Baker

And in Messines, in 1917, 'New Zealander Private Sidney 'Stan' Stanfield saw his mate Private Janes Hallett...get shot as they moved out of a trench. He recalled when he returned the following day to bury him,

poor old Jim was laying there, cuddled up in a heap, as men die. Don't forget we were all young, we didn't die easy. You don't die at once, you're not shot and killed stone dead. We were fit and highly trained, and of course we didn't die easy. You were slow to die, and you'd find them huddled up in a heap like kids gone to sleep, you know; cuddled up dead.'

And Cath Crowley won the Ethel Turner in the NSW Prem's Literary Awards. http://www.pla.nsw.gov.au/awards-shortlists/ethel-turner-prize-for-young-peoples-literature

With the two most beautiful opening lines. 

'Let me make it in time. Let me meet Shadow.'