My father was a scientist and head of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Bacteriology,affectionately known as ‘The Bug School’. It was located in an old building on Swanston Street (now the Ian Potter Museum of Art). He assembled around him a dedicated and, from memory, eccentric, team. It included Holocaust survivors, Nobel Prize winners, and aspiring musicians. For us kids, visits were a source of stationery, test tubes and other exciting paraphernalia, as well as the occasional rabbit or guinea pig rescued from an experiment. One of his colleagues was Adrien Albert. When Uncle Adrien moved away to the ANU, he would often send me a carefully chosen book. They didn’t seem to mark any particular occasion, but I remember the intense excitement and pleasure when the parcel arrived. I can’t remember many of the titles but Orlando The Marmalade Cat and This is Rome by Miroslav Sasek stick in my mind.

When my grandchildren were born, I wanted them to experience the delight of that surprise parcel arriving. So I’d ask our wonderful children’s booksellers to select something for me, as Uncle Adrien probably did, but I was disorganised and erratic. I longed for someone to organise it for me. Each month our booksellers sift through hundreds of new titles. I wondered, could they pick one outstanding book for me each month? Ever accommodating, the response was yes! It occurred to me that I probably wasn’t alone in this desire, that there are lots of other grandparents, uncles, aunts or other people with special children in their lives who are busy, but would also love to have a beautiful book delivered to that child once a month. So, if you are one of those people, you can now have a carefully selected book sent every month with a special message from you. It’s a great deal and we have six- and ten-month packages that include delivery. You can arrange a subscription online.

It’s been five years since we established The Readings Prize for New AustralianFiction. Since then, we’ve added a prize for books for younger readers, and most recently, an award for Young Adult writing. As you may have noticed, this year’s winner of The Readings Young Adult Book Prize was Eleni Hale for her remarkable novel, Stone Girl. As you can imagine, running the prizes takes a lot of effort, particularly on the part of our staff judges, and a notinconsiderable cost as each winner receives award money. We started the prizes to bring new Australian writing to the attention of readers and to encourage new and emerging writers in their endeavours. We think we achieve this, but were all very pleased to get a lovely message from Eleni: ‘… please know it has been a great gift. Some of the ways the Readings’ Book Prize hashad a positive impact includes: the many emails I have received from new readers, new speaking engagements including The Today Show and Jon Faine, multiple producers have been in touch since the prize to discuss an option to turn

Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Readings.