Sue Bridges juggles part-time mahi as a PLD Facilitator for CORE Education (where she is the national facilitator for the TKI Primary Literacy Online community) and as Capability Facilitator for National Library Services to Schools. Other recent mahi includes specialist teaching at Te Kura (The Correspondence School), heritage tour guiding at Riccarton House, and supporting student teachers on teaching practice.

Sue has been smitten with children’s literature since becoming a Founder Member of The Puffin Club as a seven-year-old, many decades ago. Her collection of junior fiction emigrated to New Zealand with her in the early 1970s and she has been entranced with the taonga that our wonderful authors create for tamariki in this beautiful country ever since. Children’s literature authors are her ‘rock stars’ (she always finds it such a treat to meet them) – to the extent that one of her early rescue missions from her broken home after the devastating Christchurch earthquakes was of her childhood books and her autographed collection of New Zealand children’s literature!

Having worked in a bookshop as a teenager and turned to junior fiction as an escape during stressful university exam times, Sue went on to become a primary school teacher then teacher of the deaf. She later lectured (mainly in literacy) for decades at the Christchurch Teachers College/College of Education/University of Canterbury (weaving in great children’s literature wherever possible). An early stint on the Christchurch Children’s Literature Association committee (alongside Elsie Locke) led to opportunities to research and present at national and international conferences, as well as planning and running exciting Talented Young Writer and Illustrator Days for the Canterbury Literacy Association Committee over several years.

Helping at local Storylines Family Days with her young daughters became a family tradition early this century and she is delighted to be able to ‘give back’ a little through Notable Books judging panels and now the Storylines Management Committee, especially as the South Islander!