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National Library of Australia National Audio Book-of-the-Year Award
or The TDK Australian Audio Book Awards
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

'The TDK Australian Audio Book Awards were established by the National Library of Australia in 1988 and sponsored by TDK from 1991. They were the leading audio book awards in Australia between 1989 and 1999, and were open to both commercial and non-commercial publishers. 

'The aims were: to improve the quality of Australian audio book production by recognising the achievements of the producers/publishers and narrators; to increase public awareness of books in this format; and to promote consumer access to a wide range of Australian audio books.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TDK_Australian_Audio_Book_Awards)

Latest Winners / Recipients (also see subcategories)v371

Year: 1999

winner (Audiobooks for Young People) y separately published work icon Staying Alive in Year 5 John Marsden , Sydney : Piper Books , 1989 Z837344 1989 single work children's fiction children's

'Scott and his friends are simply staying alive in year 5 until their surprising new teacher, Mr Murlin, comes along.

'Boring textbooks go into the bin, eating chocolate in class becomes compulsory and suddenly it's OK to be weird.

'But Mr Murlin is not popular with everyone...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

winner (Unabridged Non-Fiction) y separately published work icon Caddie: A Sydney Barmaid : An Autobiography Written by Herself Catherine Elliot-Mackay , Dymphna Cusack (editor), London : Constable , 1953 Z812153 1953 single work autobiography

Year: 1998

winner (Abridged Audio Book) y separately published work icon Picnic at Hanging Rock Joan Lindsay , Melbourne : Cheshire , 1967 Z305085 1967 single work novel historical fiction mystery (taught in 2 units)

'It was a cloudless summer day in the year 1900. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of the secluded volcanic outcropping. Farther, higher, until at last they disappeared. They never returned. ...'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Penguin Random House, 2014).

winner (Unabridged Non-Fiction) y separately published work icon Dreamtime Alice : A Memoir Mandy Sayer , Milsons Point : Random House Australia , 1998 Z186806 1998 single work autobiography This work, which was a finalist in the 1988 Vogel Award, recalls the author's itinerant early life as a tap dancer with her jazz drummer father on the streets of New York and New Orleans.
winner (Audio Book for Young People) y separately published work icon Blueback Tim Winton , Sydney : Pan , 1997 Z935140 1997 single work children's fiction children's 'Abel Jackson loves to dive. He's a natural in the water. He can't remember a time when he couldn't use a mask and snorkel to glide down into the clear deep. Life is tough out at Longboat Bay. Every day the boy helps his mother earn their living from the sea and the land. It's hard work but Abel has the bush and the sky and the bay to himself. Until the day he meets Blueback, the fish that changes his life. An ecological novel on a boy who protects a fish from property developers and rapacious fishermen. The boy befriends the fish, a blue grouper while diving for abalone, his family's trade. Blueback is about people learning from nature.' (Source: Trove)

Year: 1997

winner (Abridged Fiction) y separately published work icon Eating Out and Other Stories Natalie Scott , Sydney : Natalie Scott , 1995 Z1136063 1995 selected work short story
winner (Abridged Non-Fiction) y separately published work icon 50 Years of Silence Jan Ruff-O'Herne , Sydney : Editions Tom Thompson , 1994 Z857203 1994 single work autobiography

'The long idyllic summer of Jan Ruff-O'Herne's childhood in Dutch colonial Indonesia ended in 1942 with the Japanese invasion of Java. She was interned in Ambarawa Prison Camp, along with her mother and two younger sisters. In February 1944, when Jan was 21, her life was torn apart. Along with nine other young women, all of them virgins, she was plucked from the camp and her family, and enslaved into prostitution by the Japanese Imperial Army.' (Publisher)

winner (The Trish Trinick Prize for the Best Narrator) y separately published work icon The Fiftieth Gate : A Journey Through Memory Mark Baker , Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 1997 Z1296530 1997 single work biography

'A love story and a detective story, a study of history and of memory, this spellbinding new work explores a son's confrontation with the terror of his parents' childhood. Moving from Poland and Germany to Jerusalem and Melbourne, Mark Raphael Baker travels across the silence of fifty years, through the gates of Auschwitz, and into a dark bunker where a little girl hides in fear. As he returns to scenes of his parents' captivity, he struggles to unveil the mystery of their survival. The Fiftieth Gate is a journey from despair and death towards hope and life; the story of a son who enters his parents' memories and, inside the darkness, finds light.' (Harper Collins)

Year: 1993

winner (Children's Literature) y separately published work icon Letters from the Inside John Marsden , Chippendale : Pan Macmillan Australia , 1991 Z193240 1991 single work novel young adult The relationship between two teenage girls who become acquainted through letters intensifies as their correspondence reveals some of the terrible problems of their lives. (Source: Trove)
winner (Abridged Material) y separately published work icon My Own Life : An Autobiography Hazel Hawke , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2012 5987862 2012 single work autobiography

'Hazel Hawke's story spans decades of enormous change in the way Australian families live - and live together.

As the prime minister's wife, she lent her support to endeavours that reflected her own concerns and experience, including her great love, music. She enjoyed herself enormously - and swept others along with her enthusiasm for ideas and talk.

My Own Life is an absorbing autobiography and a graphic slice of the social history of sixty years of change in Australia....' (Publisher's blurb)

Year: 1992

winner (Children's/Young Adult Literature) y separately published work icon The Dream Rae Harris (illustrator), Rae Harris , Beryl Harp , Broome : Magabala Books , 1991 Z843311 1991 single work picture book dreaming story A dreamtime story about Bami, a young girl who is carried away to a far land by a Wanbar before being rescued by two children and the wind, Mam Maarang.

Works About this Award

Reading Through Listening Penelope Layland , 1990 single work criticism
— Appears in: National Library of Australia News , December vol. 1 no. 3 1990; (p. 11-13)
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