Awards and Honours List

Books

1987 Winner of the Young Africa Award for children’s literature (The Strollers)
1988 Winner of the Sir Percy Fitzpatrick Award for the best children’s book (The Strollers)
  Third Prize in the Young Africa Award (Traveller)
1989 Winner of the Cosmopolitan Award for a woman of achievement
  Cageful of Butterflies won second prize in the Young Africa Award
  J&B Rare Achievers Award for outstanding success in the field of literature
1990 Winner of the Sir Percy Fitzpatrick Award for the best children’s book (Cageful of Butterflies)
1991 Winner of the M-Net Book Prize (Cageful of Butterflies)
  SACBF Honours Awards for Song of Be
  Chosen for inclusion in Bookchat’s Southern African Children’s Book of the Year
  Honourable mention in Namibian Children’s Book Forum Awards in English Prose category (Tjojo and the Wild Horses)
1992 One Dark Night a winner in the READ Little Library competition
  Children’s Book Forum Honours List (The Race, Oxford University Press)
1993 Song of Be selected as a Notable Children’s Book for 1993 by the American Librarian’s Association
1994 Song of Be selected as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Librarian’s Association
1995 Song of Be awarded a gold medal for Best Children’s Book in English by the Namibian Children’s Book Forum
1996 One Dark Night (Cambridge University Press) part of The Little Library package which won the Asahi Reading Award (IBBY)
1997 Awarded a scholarship to America by the Highlights Foundation. Attended a writer’s conference at Chautauqua in New York State.
  Nominated as South Africa’s entry in an international competition, the Premio Mundial De Literatura Jose Marti. This award is given to ‘a writer with a distinguished work in the field of children’s and adolescent literature’.
2002 Africa’s Best 100 Books – short-listed in top 500
2003 Waiting for Rain requested as an exhibition book by the South African Museum in the new permanent rock art exhibition.
2004 Nominated by the South African Children’s Book Forum as candidate for the Hans Christian Andersen Award
  IBBY Conference in Cape Town. The South African Children’s Book Forum (SACBF) included in their list of 100 best children’s books: Song of Be, The Strollers and Waiting for Rain.
2005 Nominated as a candidate for the Astrid Lindgren Award in Sweden.
2006 Home Now chosen by British Sunday Times as Book of the Month.
2009 The Strollers to be included in an international publication by Quintessence entitled ‘1001 Children’s Books’, which will be published internationally in many languages. This will be a beautifully illustrated guide to the very best 1001 children’s books throughout history to the current day. The general editor on the project is Julia Eccleshare, the children’s books editor for the UK Guardian newspaper, and contributing authors include Isabel Allende, Quentin Blake and Raymond Briggs.
2015 Rotary Newlands Vocational Award in recognition of: ‘her dedicated personal contribution to the creation of the Children’s Book Network and stimulating the love of reading among disadvantaged children, opening a whole new world to them.’
2017

Young Adult novel Hap, Gold Winner in the Sanlam Award for Youth Literature.


Magazines

  

1990 Winner of the Fair Lady Travel Writing competition


Personal

  

1989 Cosmopolitan Woman of the Year


Websites

 

2011 The Kalahari Peoples Network was runner-up in the not-for-profit category of the Highway Africa Media awards for 2010

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