This is going to surprise some people, but I’ve been shortlisted for a prize in which Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream Speech’ was only longlisted:

It is a picture book prize, and arguably, the Chickadee Maine Children’s Choice Award was never on Dr King’s radar when he stood in front of 250,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to change America and the world, but nevertheless – Wilson /DeGennaro 1: Martin Luther King Jnr 0.

The book that scored the honour for us is The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas. It was released here in Australia in 2009, but had an international life after being picked up by Peachtree Publishing in the USA last year. Now we just need 5000-odd Maine school kids from kindy to Grade 4 to declare themselves pea brains, and victory will be ours.

In terms of background, Princess was written because despite a lifelong love affair with Hans Christian Andersen (‘There’s nothing Mr Pockets hasn’t got /Also a yacht!’) I never could stand the princess out of The Princess and the Pea. Let’s not forget that she complained about a pea under twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdowns to people she barely knew, less than twelve hours after barreling through their front door, drenched. She took their food. She took their bedding. And she bitches about the pea. Imagine how she’d be once she became confident.

Given modern usage of the word ‘princess’, it was a tale ripe for the twisting.

And so I wrote a first draft.  Here’s how it read:

The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas Original Draft

This is how it changed between first and final drafts: My editor at Scholastic was Ana Vivas, daughter of Julie and a woman with a masterful eye for a neat cut.

The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas Compare document by Tony Wilson

 

And this is how it sounds when read by Tiffany, a cheerleader from the Atlanta Hawks football team:

Congrats also to Sue deGennaro for her CBCA shortlisting for her follow up book, The Pros and Cons of Being a Frog. My other favourite titles on the shortlists are:

• Doug McLeod ‘The Shiny Guys’
• Suzy Zail ‘The Wrong Boy’
• Simon French ‘Other Brother’
• Gus Gordon ‘Herman and Rosie‘
• Anna Walker ‘Peggy’

The Emperor’s New Clothes Horse didn’t receive a CBCA nod, and neither did Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. So I guess it’s nil-all there.