Phil’s Story

Phil Cummings was born in the small seaside town of Port Broughton in South Australia. He is the youngest of eight children with four brothers and three sisters. Life as a kid for Phil was a fabulous adventure. He was on a farm for the first seven years of his life. When his family left the farm they moved to the mid north of South Australia to a railway town called Peterborough. His older brothers worked on the steam trains. The windows in his house would rattle constantly as the trains rumbled through the rail yards. When Phil left school he worked in a local garage, in the abattoirs and played sport constantly.

Phil’s interest in writing began with poetry and writing songs. With the beginning of teacher training, Phil was exposed to a great deal of children’s literature, particularly picture books. Phil decided to sit down and write one! He mistakenly believed it would not be difficult at all! His work was rejected time and time again but, having the writing bug, he kept going. He soon learnt that writing for children was a lot harder than he ever imagined. Seven years after his first attempts, Phil had a book published.
Goodness Gracious!– illustrated by Craig Smith – was published by Omnibus Books in 1989. and in the U.S. in 1990. 

Since that time Phil has published over a hundred books for children - from pictures books to novels. He has received numerous awards for his books including Children’s Book Council of Australia honours. Ride Ricardo Ride was a CBCA honour book in 2016. ‘Danny Allen was here’ was shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival of Arts Literary Awards and ‘Feathers’ was shortlisted for the Prime Ministers Literary Awards. His book BOY (illustrated by Shane Devries) was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year Awards and won the Children’s Peace Literature Award in 2017.

Phil’s books have been published extensively overseas, with BOY being named an outstanding book for children with disabilities by the International Board of Books for Young People in Basel, Switzerland. His book Newspaper Hats recently won the Chronos Award for Alzheimers in France.

Phil has also written musicals for schools and songs for school choirs with arranger composer, Glyn Lehman. This culminated in a performance of ‘Space Race’ (a suite of songs telling the story of the Space Race in the sixties, featuring Phil’s book Touch the Moon) with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in 2019.