Australian Children’s Laureate Week announced

The Australian School Library Association (ASLA) and the Australian Children’s Laureate Foundation (ACLF) have announced the inaugural Laureate Week, beginning on 28 July 2025, and ‘aimed at supporting students and inspiring a love of stories across regional Australia’.

According to the organisation, the initiative began from conversations around declining literacy rates.

‘Recent research by the Grattan Institute found one in three Australian children do not read proficiently,’ said the organisation. ‘While research by Australia Reads has found a critical relationship between literacy and reading for pleasure.’

The current Australian Children’s Laureate Sally Rippin and past laureates Leigh Hobbs, Ursula Dubosarsky and Gabrielle Wang will tour Australian schools during the week and speak to students ‘about the power of story’. The aims of the week include allowing children in regional Australia to experience author and illustrator visits, and also to ‘support school libraries and spotlight the importance of stocked libraries and librarians’.

ASLA president Martha Itzcovitz said: ‘Bringing laureates into regional school libraries and giving children the opportunity to meet authors they may never otherwise encounter is a powerful way to spark imagination, nurture a love of reading and writing, and show young people that their voices and stories matter.’

The ACLF chair Bruce Ellis said: ‘Expanding the reach of our current and past laureates to more communities and children is a priority for the ACLF. We are thrilled at the opportunity to partner with ASLA and hope to share the power of story in even more regional locations in years to come.’

Laureates will begin the week in Darwin in the Northern Territory, followed by Burnie in Tasmania, Kewdale in Western Australia and Whyalla in South Australia.

More information about the week is available on the Children’s Laureate website.

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