Monkey Boy – 2015 Best Children’s Book Award Finalist

Scholastic New Zealand Award for
Best Children’s Book 2015

Highly Commended 2015

Monkey Boy front cover

Designer Donovan Bixley (Magma Design)
Title Monkey Boy by Donovan Bixley
Publisher Scholastic New Zealand
Format 210 x 148mm, 228pp, paperback

Judges’ Comments As the cover notes, this book is part novel, part comic and all action and it delivers on all of those points. The real hero here, apart from cabin boy Jimmy Grimholt of course, are the wonderful illustrations that Donovan Bixley has masterfully woven through the book. They provide the perfect balance of visual fire-power against traditional typeset text to help keep the young readers fully engaged, and create a perfect bridge between a graphic novel and more traditional text based story telling. Books like these that kids love to read should be celebrated.

Monkey Boy spreadMonkey Boy spread p 32Monkey Boy spread page 94Monkey Boy spread page 130


View shortlist | View winners