CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

The July/August 2008 Horn Book magazine has been published and some of the articles are already available online. The profiles of Newbery and  Caldecott awards winners Brian Selznick and Laura Amy Schlitz will interest Australian readers.

After taking the Bronze Medal at the (now defunct) Nestle Awards and being shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize for Here Lies Arthur, Philip Reeve has at last won a big award -  the 2008 Carnegie Medal, announced in London last night.

Emily Gravett won the Kate Greenaway medal for Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears. Emily’s technique in the making of this book was rather unorthodox.

It’s an interesting award, the Phoenix. Its aim is to celebrate a title that missed out on a major prize when it was first published, but with the hindsight of twenty years is reconsidered.

The award is given by the US Children’s Literature Association (ChLA) and named after ‘the fabled bird that rose from its ashes with renewed life and beauty. Phoenix books also rise from the ashes of neglect and obscurity and once again touch the imaginations and enrich the lives of those who read them.’

In 1989, Francesca Lia Block published WeetzieBat. She has just been announced as the winner of the 2009 Phoenix Award for this overlooked title. In 2007, Margaret Mahy received the award for Memory (published 1987) and in 2008, Peter Dickinson for Eva (1988).

A list of some past winners and their acceptance speeches can be found on the Children’s Literature Association wiki. Others can be found on the Phoenix Papers section of the ChLA website, although this is a work in progress and not all links are working.

Shaun Tan has been honoured again for The Arrival, with a special citation in the Boston Globe Horn Book Awards announced yesterday. Special citations are rare in these awards, which are among the most prestigious in the US for children’s and young adult literature.

The awards have been presented since 1967. Winners are selected in three categories: Picture Book, Fiction and Poetry, and Nonfiction and two Honor Books may be named in each category.

2008 Winners are:

Fiction and Poetry: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (this title, available in Australia in September, has won several other awards in the US including a National Book Award.)

Non Fiction: The Wall : Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís (to be reviewed in Fiction Focus, Issue 2, 2008)

Picture Book: At Night by Jonathon Bean (a book for young children, not yet available in Australia)

Neither of the two fiction Honor Books is available here yet: Savvy by Ingrid Law will be here in September and Shooting the Moon by Frances O’Roark Dowell has no indicated publishing date for Australia. Both are targeted at an upper primary / lower secondary readership.

At the Australian Publishers’ Association annual awards ceremony, held in Melbourne last night, the most glittering prizes of them all went to Geraldine Brooks for her latest novel, People of the Book. Book of the Year and Literary Fiction Book of the Year are two more awards that Geraldine Brooks can add to an already impressive CV that includes the Pulitzer Prize.

John Flanagan not only received the Book of the Year for Older Readers, but the International Success Award for his hugely popular Ranger’s Apprentice series, now being translated into film.

And the awards keep rolling in for Li Cunxin and Anne Spudvilas. The Peasant Prince was named Book of the Year for Younger Readers. Read about Anne’s trip to China with Li and the making of her stunning illustrations on the Papertigers website.

ALAN, the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, has announced the 2008 Award recipient is Laurie Halse Anderson.

This prestigious US award honours someone who has made a significant contribution to young adult literature in whatever capacity, not just writing. In receiving the award, Laurie Halse Anderson is in the company of authors such as Robert Cormier (1982), Madeleine L’Engle (1986), Cynthia Voigt (1989) and Jerry Spinelli (2005).

Anderson’s titles include Speak (2001) - also a Michael L. Printz Honor Book - Catalyst (2002), Fever 1793 (2002) and Prom (2005).

Having taken out the New Zealand Post YA Book Award in recent weeks with Salt, Maurice Gee is again in the running for a major New Zealand prize - the 2008 Esther Glen Award from LIANZA.

Other finalists for this award, won last year by Bernard Beckett’s Genesis, are:

• Losing It, by Sandy McKay
• Smashed, by Mandy Hager
• The Sea-Wreck Stranger, by Anna Mackenzie
• The Dumpster Saga, by Craig Harrison
• Time of the Eagle, by Sherryl Jordan

The winner will be announced in Wellington on August 18.

A Bentley-driving living skeleton named Skulduggery Pleasant is the unlikely protagonist of the latest book award winner from the UK.

The Red House Children’s Book Awards were announced at the Hay Festival this weekend, and Irish writer Derek Landy’s witty, gothic-horror title was declared overall winner. These children’s choice awards have been running an astonishing 28 years.

Skulduggery seems just as popular in Australia as in the rest of the English-reading world. The sequel, Playing with Fire, has recently become available.

Sonya Hartnett received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from Crown Princess Victoria in Stockholm on Wednesday night. You might be interested in this interview with her on Radio Sweden, given shortly before the presentation.

Her Australian-ness shines through.

The Guardian longlist for 2008 contains seven titles, of which Julia Eccleshare says:

Individual choice is a key issue in the seven books longlisted this year. Whether the setting is historical, futuristic or contemporary, these brave and ambitious books portray the journey from child to adult as complicated, hazardous and unpredictable. In doing so they encourage readers to wonder and to explore; above all, to think about the kinds of ’selves’ they may be or like to be.

Longlist:
• Frank Cottrell Boyce Cosmic
• Siobhan Dowd Bog Child
• Jenny Downham Before I Die
• Tanya Landman The Goldsmith’s Daughter
• Rhiannon Lassiter Bad Blood
• Anthony McGowan The Knife that Killed Me
• Patrick Ness The Knife of Never Letting Go

Winners will be announced in September.