Zeno Sworder’s beautifully illustrated picture book Once I Was a Giant, which tells the tale of a tree transformed into a pencil who writes its own story, has won book of the year at the 2026 Australian Book Industry Awards.

It’s the Melbourne writer and illustrator’s third children’s book, following My Strange Shrinking Parents (2023) – winner of the Victorian Premier’s Literary prize; and This Small Blue Dot (2021), which took home best new illustrator at the Children’s Book Council of Australia awards.

Sworder’s hopeful and poetic bedtime read, written for ages zero to six, covers the span of a tree’s life and its relationships with the world around it. It also won the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary award for children’s literature in February, with the judges calling it “profoundly moving” with “glowing illustrations”.

At a ceremony in Sydney on Thursday night, the beloved children’s writer Mem Fox was recognised in the hall of fame for “outstanding service to the Australian book industry”. Earlier this year, Fox’s classic Possum Magic was voted No 2 in Guardian Australia’s reader poll of the best Australian picture book of all time. Author and former bookseller Paul Macdonald, who owned the Children’s Bookshop in Sydney for close to two decades, was also honoured in the hall of fame.

The annual awards, now in its 26th year, are judged by more than 50 representatives from publishing houses, distributors, literary journalists, agents, booksellers and librarians.

Winners of the adult book categories included Sally Hepworth’s thriller Mad Mabel, which was presented with the general fiction and the audiobook awards; Geraldine Brooks’ memoir Memorial Days, which won in the biography category; and the Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, which won the prize for general nonfiction.

A Piece of Red Cloth, a collaborative historical novel written by Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymura, about a Yolŋu elder trying to protect their granddaughter from being kidnapped, won social impact book of the year.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy won the literary fiction book of the year, and the Matt Richell award for new writer of the year was awarded to Angie Faye Martin for crime drama Melaleuca.