A Tauranga author has won a prestigious Storylines Notable Book Award for Junior Fiction, for her debut novel published by Scholastic in July.

‘Kidnap at Mystery Island' by Carol Garden won the publishing contract last year, as the winner of the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award for an unpublished author. The book was launched in August and is gaining wide acclaim.

Carol says she wrote the book mostly during the 2020 lockdown, as a way to help alleviate ‘eco-anxiety' in children.

'Kidnap at Mystery Island is set in 2072, and it paints a picture of a future where humans are living successfully with climate change,” says Carol. 'Most novels set in the future are dystopic and scary – I wanted children to imagine a different possibility.”

She credits joining Tauranga Writers as the beginning of the book's successful journey.

'It was the president, Sharon Manssen, who suggested I enter the Tom Fitzgibbon competition. I'd no idea that such competitions even existed.

'Since then I've learned so much about how to write fiction and the book went through many drafts before it was finished.”

A conversation with her hairdresser highlighted the impact of eco-anxiety in children.

'She told me that her eight-year-old son burst into tears whenever a climate disaster story came on the news. He thinks that we are doomed and it's affecting his ability to live his life fully.”

The book's main characters are children with super powers who live in a high-tech world where adults and kids work together to fight climate criminals. When one of them is kidnapped, the rescue is high-speed excitement with loads of drama and action.

Carol has since written a second novel which introduces the characters to a new adventure on Great Barrier Island. She hopes it will be considered good enough to publish.