Leon Davidson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Davidson, Leon is a writer of non-fiction for young adults.
He has worked as a furniture-maker, a chicken-plucker, a telephone sales operator for a bank, and now juggles writing while being a primary school teacher.
His first book, Scarecrow Army (Black Dog Books, 2005), is about the experience of the Anzacs at Gallipoli, and was described in the Australian Book Review (August 2005) as ‘…heartbreaking and evocative… This fine book is a worthy offering about a complex and sensitive subject.’ Scarecrow Army was the non-fiction winner at the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2006. It was also an Eve Powell Non-Fiction winner for the Children’s Book Council of Australia.
Red Haze (Black Dog Books, 2006) is about the experience of New Zealanders and Australians in the Vietnam War, and received the LIANZA Elsie Locke Non-Fiction Award at the LIANZA Children's Book Awards. The work was also shortlisted in the non-fiction category for the 2007 New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, was listed as a 2007 Storylines Notable Non-Fiction Book, and was an honour book in the Eve Pownall Award category for Information Books at the Children's Book of the Year Award. A reviewer in the Australian Book Review calls it: '...a book for a young audience that corrects much of the starry-eyed jingoism but that will nevertheless leave its readers with pride and a warm glow on Anzac Day.’
Leon Davidson's third book for young readers is Zero Hour: The Anzacs on the Western Front (Text Publishing, 2010), which tells the story of the plight of the Anzacs when they joined the fighting on the Western Front in 1916. Described by the publisher as 'a story many never lived to tell, and all of us should know.'
Author photo is copyrighted to Robert Cross.
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