This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of thePremier’s Reading Challenge, a fantastic initiative to encourage the joy and love of reading amongst school students. With curated lists of fabulous books for young readers from Kindergarten right through into Year 9 and above, the Challenge isn’t a competition but an encouragement to read, read more and read widely, and is strongly supported by State Governments and schools across Australia. As well as readers, PRC supports authors and illustrators across Australia, by bringing attention to their books across thousands of schools. And I’m lucky enough to have more than 20 titles listed in the NSW PRC, across a variety of age ranges (you can see a selection of those in the last photo below).

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of PRC, a fabulous new companion initiative is being launched today, the 23rd February, on the same day that the 2026 NSW Premier’s Reading challenge kicks off. It’s a podcast called Book Bites and features authors reading an extract from one of their books listed in PRC. And I am absolutely honoured and delighted that my reading of the first chapter of Bold Ben Hall was chosen to be the launch episode of Book Bites in the Years 5-6 category. It was huge fun to record it and meet the team at the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge and I am thrilled that it will now be available for listeners to enjoy.

Happy 25th birthday, Premier’s Reading Challenge, and thank you all so much for such a wonderful resource and encouragement of the joys and pleasures of reading!