Congratulations to Magabala author and illustrator Gregg Dreise whose book Silly Birds recently won Speech Pathology Australia's 2015 Indigenous Children's Book of the Year Award.

The awards ceremony was hosted by the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) on Thursday 15 October 2015. 

Upon receiving the award, Gregg spoke of his hopes that Silly Birds would make reading an easier task for Indigenous kids. "I am proud to receive an award from such an important and hard working organisation," he said. 

"Reading is an essential skill for all. Sadly, a lot of people have some kind of difficulty with speech, and reading is a wonderful gift that can help people to shape their mouth and tongue to make a variety of sounds."

Silly Birds is a charming and humorous morality tale, in which Maliyan, a proud eagle meets a turkey, Wagun, who is a silly bird, and together these two new friends begin to do silly-bird things. The theme of book, Gregg says, is "it's hard to soar like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys."

As a primary school teacher, Gregg knows Indigenous kids make up a large percentage of children needing help with their speech. "I am glad that teachers, speech pathologists and students enjoy reading my book to help. I am glad that there are plenty of 'eagles' out there helping others to soar," he said.

The Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards raise awareness of the role speech pathologists play in assisting people of all ages to develop their language and literacy skills.