DescriptionSUPREME WINNER, The Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adult, 2019 WINNER, Picture Book Award, New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adult, 2019 WINNER, Scholastic New Zealand Award for Best Children’s Book, PANZ Book Design Awards, 2019 Storylines Notable Book Award, Picture Book, 2019ReviewsVanessa Hatley-Owen for Booksellers NZ ~ How brilliant! To see a young girl keen on invention and fully embracing her passion and dream. With concerns about the gender differential in STEM subjects (the number of girls continuing with science, technology, engineering and mathematics decreases as they progress through school), it is great to have an enthusiastic female inventor/scientist buzzing about her lab filled with beakers and cauldrons. Cotter and Morgan have shown that fun can be found in STEM fields and that it is cool to enjoy science – the Queen of Marbles displays her passion in the badge on her coat: an atomic whirl symbol containing a love heart.Delivered with energetic and engaging text, there is a powerful positive message hiding within the fun language and crazy scenes: a message of encouragement and of never giving up, even when you fail. Encouraging others to achieve, that they too may realise their dream is also a worthy message to pick up from Winston and also in the closing pages: “But there are lots of blank pages, too. That’s because there’s always room for more Magnificent Marble Makers. And you never know who might be next.”About the Kiwi authorSacha Cotter is an award-winning writer living in Wellington. She has a Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning, and spent six years teaching in New Zealand and Spain. She has completed several film courses, and her screenplay Wasabi Peas was a semi-finalist in the L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival in 2013.Sacha has collaborated on four picture books illustrator, writer and designer Josh Morgan (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata). Their third book, The Bomb was the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year – Supreme Winner, won the Picture Book Award and was a finalist in the Russell Clark Award for Illustration in the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2019. It also won the Storylines Notable Book Award – Picture Book Category in the same year and was selected as one of the New Zealand Listener 50 Best Books for Kids.
