Macquarie dictionary defines ‘bridge’ as: 'a structure spanning a river, chasm, road, or the like, and affording passage'. It gives applied definitions in various contexts including engineering, nautical, anatomy, dentistry, music, optical and games.

As well as these literal bridges to which we can find references in books, stories provide us with bridges to experiences, personalities, places, events and situations that are totally "other" to our own. Stories can also provide bridges to events, experiences and people in our own lives and enable us to view them with more insight.

All titles this year fit the 'across the story bridge' theme, especially if you apply the 'bridge into other worlds' idea. Some examples from each of the CBCA Award sections include:

• Readers of Loving Richard Feynman may cross a story bridge to a better understanding of fellow students who belong to a different social group.
• Pearl Verses the World gives us a glimpse of the daily life of young people who are functioning at school whilst trying to come to terms with loved ones suffering dementia. It is also a bridge into another way of telling a story - in verse form.
• The Wrong Book and The Terrible Plop will have us reaching for other books because these two stories refer (bridge) to situations and characters in other popular books.
• The Hero of Little Street, using the bridge provided by famous paintings, takes us into another time and another place; while in Mr Chicken Goes to Paris, we are taken with the rascally Mr Chicken into an experience of Paris.
• In Maralinga: The Anangu Story, we hear the voices of the Anangu people themselves as they tell their stories of disruption and survival and this provides non-Indigenous Australians with a bridge to understanding and empathy.