Hip Hop artist Adam Briggs has taken out the 2021 Australian Book Industry Award for Children's Picture Book of the Year.
Briggs' book, Our Home, Our Heartbeart, features illustrations of renowned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander figures and "celebrates Indigenous resilience... and salutes emerging generations of the oldest continuous culture on earth."
The book was adapted from Briggs' 2015 track 'The Children Came Back', which was in turn inspired by Archie Roach's 'Took the Children Away', from the seminal 1990 album, Charcoal Lane.
Illustrated by Kate Moon and Rachael Sarra, the book features images of legends like Adam Goodes, Jimmy Little and Evonne Goolagong Cawley, along with rhyming prose.
Briggs has made a name for himself not only as a musician and now award-winning author, but also as an actor, comedy-writer and as the owner of record label, Bad Apples.
Also recognised last night was Gunai author Kirli Saunders. Her book 'Bindi' received the award for Small Publishers' Children's Book of the Year.
The book follows the eponymous 11-year-old as she experiences environmental degradation on Gundungurra Country.
