Deborah Abela
In 2011 when we launched Creative Kids Tales, Deborah Abela was right there beside us.
Three years later and Deborah is still a great supporter of Creative Kids Tales. That’s why we felt it only fitting to see what she has been up to since we last chatted and welcome her as the first featured author for our fresh new website.
Deborah is one of my favourite writerly people. She is warm, giving and a total professional.
She is a multi award winning author of the Max Remy and Jasper Zammit series. The Max Remy series has an amazing ten books in the series. There are three in the Jasper Zammit series which was written in partnership with soccer legend, the late Johnny Warren. The Ghost Club is about a ghost busting brother and sister duo Angeline and Edgar Usher. Each story in the three book series is packed with paranormal fun and other worldy inventions.
Max Remy is an 11-year-old schoolgirl whose workaholic PR mother leaves her with her eccentric uncle and aunt over the school holiday break.
Cranky and determined to have a bad time in the bush, she meets a farmboy called Linden, and despite Max’s reluctance to accept his friendship, she is soon won over by his charm and humour. She also discovers that her uncle and aunt aren’t country hicks, but brilliant scientists on the verge of creating a Time and Space Machine!
There are 10 Max Remy adventures in the series. In them, Max and Linden are invited to become part of the elite intelligence agency called Spyforce. As secret agents fighting bad guys across the globe, they are lowered into giant vats of green jelly, plunged into a terrifying Nightmare Vortex, swept over huge waterfalls and dangled from the top of the Eiffel Tower by an evil genius.
Perfect for 8 - 12-year olds, Max Remy is published around the world and being enjoyed by children everywhere.
Just check out the accolades for the Max Remy Superspy series:
- 2005, 2007, 2010 KOALA awards (NSW children’s choice)
- Shortlisted Best series 2007, 2010 YABBA awards (Victorian children’s choice)
- Shortlisted Best series, 2008 Angus & Robertson’s Top 50 kids Books
- 2007 Shortlisted CBC Children’s Choice Awards US
- 2007 WAYRBA (Western Australia Children’s Choice Awards)
- 2007 CROC awards
- 2006 Annual Ellie Awards, Madison Alabama, USA - Honor Book
- 2005 Winner Gold Oppenheim Award, New York: Max Remy Part 1
- 2004 Australia Council Literary Grant New Work/Developing Writer
- 2003 Shortlisted Aurealis Awards Max Remy The Hollywood Mission
- 2002, 2003 Winner of Read and Write Award by Vocaleyes Narrator of audio books
In 2009, the delightful Aurelie Bonhoffen hit the bookshelves in The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen.
Ever since Aurelie Bonhoffen was a child, she has juggled, played the dead girl on the ghost train and the back end of the cow in the marquee of Bonhoffen's Seaside Pier. She adores her family - especially her uncles Rolo and Rindolf - but on her twelfth birthday, she stumbles on her family's remarkable secret. It's hard to accept at first, but when her new friend at school reveals a dangerous plot against the pier, the secret helps Aurelie confront the greatest threat her family has ever faced.
The Remarkable Secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen was shortlisted in the 2012 USBBY Outstanding International Book Awards (US) and the 2010 Aurealis Awards for Best Children’s Book. It was awarded the a Notable Book in the 2010 Children’s Book Council Awards.
Frustrated with Governments around the world and their denial about climate change, Deb’s 2010 cranky novel, Grimsdon was released. Grimsdon posed the question: What if we woke up and everything we knew had been changed forever? Introducing Isabella Charm, her best friend Griffin and her adopted family Fly, Xavier, Bea and Raffy. This story is about a city hit by a massive wave that left it uninhabitable. Isabella and her friends were left behind and must rebuild their new world. By creating flying machines and other inventions just to survive. But danger is not always scene and what lurks beneath the water might just be their biggest threat of all.
Grimsdon won the 2011 Speech Pathology Book of the Year Awards. Was awarded the 2011 Most Enthralling Junior Fiction Award, Kids Book Review and was shortlisted in the 2011 Aurealis Awards and REAL awards (children’s choice Vic, NT, NSW, ACT)
In 2014, the sequel to Grimsdon, New City was released. Just as exciting as the first this time Isabella and her friends have escaped the floodwarters of Grimsdon for the modern world of New City. But not all is as it seems.
In 2012, Deborah was nominated as an Ambassador for the National Year of Reading and also an ambassador for the Premier’s Reading challenge in NSW. Before that she was awarded by the Federal Government the title of National Literacy Ambassador she is also an Author Ambassador for Room to Read.
In 2013 Deborah received the Maurice Saxby Award for Services to Children’s Literature and recognition for Ghost Club through the 2013 Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards.
Deborah has travelled the world from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and the UK absorbing stories along her journey. Her website is packed with writing tips, entertaining book trailers and fascinating information about this gifted author.
I am lucky enough to have a shelf dedicated to Deb’s books in my reading room.
If you want to find out more about Deborah, visit her website: www.deborahabela.com
Deborah Abela - Interview (Dec 2014)
Deborah Abela - Interview (Dec 2011)
Or listen to my interview with Deborah on The Author's Shelf last year (SoundCloud): Interview