Two Mates, by Melanie and Maggie Prewett, has just won the Best Book for Language and Literacy – Indigenous Children Award. Other awardees include Morris Gleitzman and Ursula Dubosarsky, who was this year inducted to Speech Pathology of Australia’s Hall of Fame. 

When you’re a kid in Broome, weekends and school holidays crackle with adventure. Kids here rip around on quad bikes, fish for salmon, scoop tadpoles from slow-moving water. It’s these out-of-school hours that are depicted in the picture book Two Mates. But it’s the friendship between the young boys in the book that really makes the story sing—and the judges of this year’s Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards thought so too.

The best thing about Two Mates is that it’s a story about inclusion and about a friendship that transcends difference. It encourages kids to look past someone’s disability to the actual person, and to appreciate what people with a disability can do, not what they can’t.

Other Magabala Books shortlisted in this year’s award included, Animals Move; Claws, Eyes, Flippers; A Beach for us to Play; and I Have… 

It’s not the first time Magabala has taken out the Best Book for Language and Literacy – Indigenous Children Award, with Our World Bardi Jawi: Life at Ardiyooloon winning in 2011.