Vote Opens to Find Public’s Number One Ahead of Academic Book Week
London 1 Mach 2019: From Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, to Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, Academic Book Week (4-9 March 2019) has revealed the twenty most influential banned books.
Selected by academic booksellers across the UK and Ireland in association with Index on Censorship, the public are now invited to vote on the most influential banned book, with the winning book revealed during Academic Book Week.
The public vote is open from Friday 1 March until 11:59pm on Wednesday 6 March, to find the book that has been most influential: https://acbookweek.com/bannedbooks/
Academic Book Week’s Most Influential Banned Books:
1984 by George Orwell (PRH)
A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller (PRH)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (PRH)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (PRH)
Country Girls by Edna O’Brien (Faber)
His Dark Materials (series) by Philip Pullman (Scholastic)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (Virago, Hachette)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D H Lawrence (PRH)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (PRH)
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (OUP)
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (OUP)
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (PRH)
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (PRH)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker (W&N, Orion, Hachette)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (PRH)
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (PRH)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (PRH)
Ulysses by James Joyce (PRH)
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (Faber)
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (PRH)
Building on the success of previous years, Academic Book Week 2019 is being coordinated by the Booksellers Association in partnership with University College London.
Emma Bradshaw, Head of Campaigns at the Booksellers Association, said: “Academic Book Week’s Top 20 Most Influential Banned Books will spark debate in Academic Book Week and beyond. Each of the books on this shortlist has been hugely successful, despite attempts to ban them and we look forward to seeing the result of the public vote.”
Academic Book Week celebrates the diversity and influence of academic books throughout history, now and in the future.
Apart from making excellent contacts and meeting some old friends I contributed towards the creation of a bibliography of children’s books on migration, refugees / migrants and multicultural living. I have no idea why I have never shared it before, but it can be downloaded below.
‘Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse
Out in his sett the old badger was resting
In the eves of my house a rook was still nesting.
The pike it was swimming in the depths of the lake
Just waiting for prey to make a mistake!
On my nightstand lay McGowan’s book Lark
The perfect read for bed after dark!
The final story about Kenny & Nicky,
Two brothers who have come through situations quite sticky!
The strength of the books lies in the love that they had
One for the other, their dog and their dad!
But in this dark tale the stakes are so high
Will the brothers both live, or will one of them die…
Out on the moors with the temperature dropping,
with a bitter, cold wind and snow that’s not stopping?
I read this story with my heart in my throat
My tea grew ice cold but I did not know it!
The reading was fretful, I wanted to stop!
When out in the hall there came a soft ‘pop’
My daughter was roaming so I took a break
and put her to bed, my head I did shake.
Oh! Lark I did finish and so went to bed
With thoughts of the brothers and the North, in my head
The Truth of All Things sequence is a masterpiece! I have covered Tony’s work quite a bit over the years and do not want to rehash what I have already said. You can read my opinions on the first three books here.
I will just say that I stand by my words and to my mind Lark is a fitting coda to the story and slots in very well with my theory of the books being based on the elements.
Thank you Tony! It has been an honour and a pleasure following and sharing in Nicky and Kenny’s exploits over the years!
Lark is a must-read book for 2019 – along with Brock, Pike and Rook!
Tomi publicly accused Nora of plagiarism on Twitter due to the similarity of the titles:
This led to the usual mob pile on of fans calling Nora out on multiple platforms; who reached out to Tomi to try and smooth over the trouble that was erupting.
Tomi then tweeted an apology and explanation to calm her fans:
However, she left the original tweet up, which has kept the hate cycle rolling.
Requests from Nora’s side to have the tweet taken down have, so far, remained unanswered.
This post gives a brilliant insight to what people under attack online can experience. It can also be used to discuss plagiarism, how the publishing industry works and also (and very importantly) online bullying as well as the importance of having all your facts in order before attacking someone publicly.
Nora and Tomi are both amazing writers, one with 30+ years experience and the other a first-time author, this contretemps seems to have soured views in both fan camps which may lead to many people not experiencing the wonderful work both authors have produced.
Fan is short for fanatic and sometimes the fanaticism comes to the fore and events can occur that damage fandoms, publishing and book lovers are not immune to this, as this event shows.
In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success — but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in rural Pennsylvania.
Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western – she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry’s meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris’s very soul.
With We Sold our Souls Grady Hendrix has forced his way into a *very* short list of authors for whom I will drop whatever I am reading to read whenever a new book comes out!
We Sold Our Souls is the most metal book I have ever read! It is a completely mad road trip of a novel with chapter titles ripped from the albums of the greatest metal bands that bestride the earth, Kris Pulaski is an awesome, if slightly worn (but not broken) protagonist that I found impossible not to root for.
Metal Never Retreats.
With the world and all the power of a mighty media machine set against her, she sets off to confront her nemesis and reclaim what is rightfully hers. Losing friends, and finding compatriots set against her she refuses to give up; even at the possible cost of her sanity. Metal Never Surrenders.
With only one doubtful ally at her side (who may be more damaged and paranoid than she is) and unable to rely on fellow travelers, she sets off towards Hellstock ’19 and her destiny!
Metal Never Dies!
With enemies on all sides, no allies behind her and facing almost certain destruction ahead, Kris gets the band together one last time for an explosive finale that left my eyes ringing for hours after I had finished!
Grady Hendrix’s writing is so powerful that at one point I had to put down We Sold Our Souls and just breathe, as he had set off an attack of claustrophobia. It was in the chapter titled Sleep’s Holy Mountain as it brought back a memory of a time when crawling through Boomslang Cave that I thought I had become stuck, it only lasted for a moment but the memory of having a mountain pressing down against me has forever lurked in my subconscious.
When I finally turned the final page, I knew two things were true: Black Iron Mountain is real and I really, really want to hear Dürt Würk’s Troglodyte (three things if you count “it is better to burn out than sell out”).
For those about to read We Sold Our Souls I salute you!
PAYBACK is my first (published) novel in which I write using a first-person perspective. The protagonist of the book, Tom Rendall, is a boarding-school kid back home for a hot and listless summer awaiting exam results. Tom’s still got some growing up to do; an extrovert risk-taker with his own bonkers YouTube channel, he’s an aspiring actor who fast finds himself embroiled with a famous anti-capitalist group, Payback, who accidentally acquire him during a break-in.
I had to write my way into Tom’s head; try and capture some of his wide-eyed, lunatic decision-making, his comic ignorance (Georgian furniture was made during the reign of Queen Georgia, right?) and his growing awareness of his own power and responsibility. His voice began to emerge as I went and was wildly inconsistent to begin with. Beta-readers pointed out bum notes by the hundred. Whole sections got cut. Now it’s been drafted and re- drafted, I hope Tom’s voice feels fully formed to the reader. It does to me, but as I’ve learned, I’m not often best-placed to judge…
If PAYBACK isn’t on your TBR (It should be, I promise. But I know you’re busy,) here are two YA novels whose first-person perspectives have recently impressed and delighted me.
Karen McManus’s One of Us is Lying had me from the first page. Four high school students witness the death of a fifth, and each tells their story in turn. One voice was hard enough for me… MacManus does four. And she executes each with real panache. We leap from point-of-view to point-of-view, and the voices are consistent, clearly differentiated, and imbued with personality, rich in a set of implied attitudes and values. Unlike PAYBACK, whose narrator admits to regularly lying but is too guileless for any artfully extended deception, MacManus plays with our perception of each narrator’s reliability. All of them have something to hide, it’s clear. But what?
I’ve had a blast with Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle. A conflicted protagonist struggling to identify his sexuality is caught in a love triangle of sorts. Austin is a wisecracking, sex-obsessed razor-sharp cynic, feverishly recording his history and that of his small town, Ealing. His perspective alone is worth the price of the book. An added bonus – for me at least – is the predatory-grasshoppers-invasion-apocalypse plot that serves to barrel the book forward. A weird and wonderful read.
I enjoyed writing PAYBACK more than anything else I’ve done so far, and part of the reason, I think, has been the opportunity to get inside Tom’s skin and see the world through his eyes. Now that I’m working on another book, I miss Tom. I’ve enjoyed dipping into PAYBACK to read aloud to audiences. Anything to be Tom Rendall again, even for a moment!
PAYBACK by M. A. Griffin out now in paperback (£7.99, Chicken House)
#Payback
Follow M.A. Griffin on twitter @FletcherMoss and find out more at
Hi Candy, welcome to TeenLibrarian and thank you for giving up your time to submit to the third degree!
My pleasure! Unless of course this really turns out to be a third degree (long and harsh questioning) in which case, I invoke the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Author (if it exists).
I feel the need to apologise to you – for years you have been one of my favourite people to bump into at literary events and we have known each other for years (online mostly) but this is the first time I have interviewed you on TeenLibrarian – it is long overdue!
I would have nagged you incessantly over the years, except you are always in a new, nefarious disguise whenever we meet!
You have two books out this year (that I am aware of) your first picture book Is It a Mermaid? out now from Otter Barry Books, and Bone Talk … coming soon from David Fickling Books.
Yes! This is going to be my year of promotion … but I’m trying to write another novel while jumping up and down and begging people to pay attention to my new books.
How did you come to write a picture book work with artist Francesca Chessa?
I wrote the words of the picture book two years ago now. My editor, Janetta Otter Barry, then launched a search for the right illustrator. I suggested all my friends, as you do, but Janetta was looking for something in particular. A picture book is not just the work of a writer and an illustrator, there is a third vision involved that the world is usually not aware of – the editor. The editor is like a Third Eye that puts it all together. Janetta had worked with Francesca on her eco-Christmas book Elliot’s Arctic Surprise, written by Catherine Barr, in which children all over the world set sail to rescue Father Christmas. Then of course there is the Art Editor, in this case, Judith Escreet, who saw Francesca through the long months of illustrating the book. It was very strange, after working on novels, which requires long periods of solo creativity, to experience the coming together of a picture book! I was delighted and astonished by the final product!
Without giving too much of the plot away can you tell me what Is It a Mermaid is about (I am guessing mermaids feature somewhere in the story)?
I’ve begun speaking to Nursery, Reception and Year 1 children, and the first thing I do is hold up the book and ask them where the mermaid is on the cover. Their responses are hilarious! I wrote the story after I heard that European sailors arriving on our shores in the Far East back in the Age of Discovery, mistook dugongs (sea cows) for mermaids. How do you do that? Perhaps they’d been at sea for looooong time! I wondered what would happen if someone met a dugong that thought she really was a mermaid!
What inspired you to write Bone Talk?
I actually wanted to write another book, set in a World Fair in 1904 where American exhibited Filipinos in a human zoo. But it would have been a disservice to the tribal people AND to Americans not to show the context of that story. So I decided to begin at the beginning, when the United States invaded the Philippines in 1899 and annexed it as “unincorporated territory”. We became a republic in 1945 but Puerto Rico, which was annexed by the US on the same year, continues to be unincorporated territory. It’s odd how so much of the world has no idea of this. I realise that the Philippines is a small state that doesn’t do much to influence the world but the United States is a major world power.
Is there much resentment against America in the Philippines because of their history?
To be honest, there is a lack of awareness of our shared history. I memorised dates and events in my history classes, but nobody ever told me the context of these stories. And more importantly, ours is an unfinished story.
My grandparents were part of a generation that lived under American colonial rule. They were taught to despise their own culture, to be ashamed of their race and to look up to everything American. My parents’ generation survived the second world war and their formative memories are of gratitude at the flood of American help that arrived after the war. My father used to wish that we could become another state of the United States! My own generation parroted our parents’ love for anything American, grew up watching American TV and being encouraged to speak American.
To this day, the Philippines is a work in progress – nationhood doesn’t happen overnight, nor does it happen over a mere century and we’ve only properly been a nation since 1945.
I know it is fiction, but how accurate are the representations of Samkad and his people?
As I write in Bone Talk‘s afterword, it was difficult to hear the authentic voices of people from that forgotten era because all of the documentation was done by or curated by the United States, and tinged by the racism of that era. The observations of professionals like historians, anthropologists and state officials treated the Bontoc people as objects. It was only when I read the diary of an American housewife living in Bontoc, who documented her daily encounters with children and ordinary people, that I began to hear the Bontoc as real people. It gave me the confidence to create characters who would have been like a child of today.
I visited Bontoc and asked a lot of questions about specific events in the story, especially about ritual and belief. It was difficult to be totally accurate because the Bontoc of 1899 was made of tiny communities, each with their own specific practices. I was careful not to name the community where my characters lived, so that no community in today’s Bontoc would feel slighted if there was a deviation from their practice.
I based a lot of domestic detail on an anthropological description of Bontoc The Bontoc Igorot by the American anthropologists Albert Jenks. But Jenks was short on human detail and I also read many books on pre-Christian belief in the Philippines, going back to before the first Spanish explorers arrived in the Philippines in the 1500s. An American historian named William Scott Henry , realising that Filipino voices were missing from historical accounts, attempted to glean these voices from the written record. His books were a godsend.
I was enthralled by Bone Talk, can you suggest sources of information I can use to find out more about the history of the Philippines?
A great history (despite the focus on our relationship with the US) is In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow. America’s Boy: America and the Philippines by James Hamilton Paterson (although I disagree with some of Paterson’s conclusions about the Marcoses, he’s a gorgeous writer). You might also read the story of how Magellan “discovered” the Philippines in Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen, which his a thriller of a book! There are other brilliant books but they are written with Filipino readers in mind.
I must admit that you are the only writer from the Philippines that I know (personally and as an author), are you able to suggest works by other Filipino authors that are available in the UK?
When I was a child, there was virtually no publishing in the Philippines, but now, the Philippine book industry is thriving! Unfortunately it is hard to access books over here so I have to load up suitcases with books whenever I go home. The works of Filipino Americans are widely available in the UK however. Erin Entrada Kelly recently won the Newbery Medal for her middle grade book Hello, Universe. Another Filipino American, Elaine Castillo, has been getting rave reviews for her debut America is Not the Heart. It riffs on another book worth reading by Filipino author Carols Bulosan, America is in the Heart, about the dehumanising experiences of Filipino migrants at the beginning of American colonial rule in the Philippines. I’ve just begun reading Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan, a serial killer story. Very promising.
Will you be visiting schools and libraries to promote your books? If yes, what is the best way to get hold of you to book a visit?
Oh yes! I love doing school visits! Please contact me by messaging me on Facebook or via the contact form on my website, candygourlay.com
Thank you so much for giving up your time to answer these questions!
It was my pleasure, Matt. May the best stories follow you wherever you go.
A selection of picture books, fiction, non-fiction and graphic novels featuring LGBTQ+ characters in either main or supporting roles.
Usual caveats apply: there are many more titles available, but these are books that I have in my library collection and I do recommend them. If anyone would like to recommend additional titles, then please leave a comment below.
Picture Books
Pride the story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders & Steven Salerno
A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill twiss & E.G. Keller
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell & Henry Cole
The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman and Ros Asquith
Introducing Teddy by Jessica Walton and Dougal MacPherson
Fiction
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda
The Upside of Unrequited
by Becky Albertalli
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Kaleidoscope Song by Fox Benwell
Alex as Well by Alyssa Brugman
The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Undone by Cat Clarke
The Miseducation of Cameron Post Emily M. Danforth
Wildthorn by Jane Eagland
If You Could be Mine by Sara Farizan
Tessa Masterton Will Go to Prom by Emily Franklin & Brendan Halpin
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan
Noah Can’t Even by Simon James Green
Skylarks by Karen Gregory
Read Me Like a Book by Liz Kessler
Pantomime by Laura Lam
Boy Meets Boy
Two Boys Kissing
by David Levithan
A Line in the Dark
Ash
Huntress
by Malinda Lo
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Lee Mackenzie
The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew
The Rest of Us Just Live Here
Release
by Patrick Ness
Things a Bright Girl can Do by Sally Nicholls
Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero
Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson
Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde
Playing the Oart by Daria Wilke translated by Marian Schwarz
Graphic Novels
Giant Days by John Allison
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
The Authority by Warren Ellis & Bryan Hitch
Death: The High Cost of Living
Death: The Time of Your Life
by Neil Gaiman & Chris Bachalo
The Wicked + The Divine
Young Avengers
by Kieran Gillen & Jamie McKelvie
Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley
The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded by Jim Ottaviani & Leland Purvis
Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka & J.H. Williams III
Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooklyn Allen & Shannon Watters
Skim by Mariko Tamaki & Jillian Tamaki
Supergirl: Being Super by Mariko Tamaki & Joëlle Jones
Drama by Raina Telgemeier
Pedro and Me by Judd Winick
Non-Fiction
Issues: Sexuality and Gender edited by Cara Acred
How to Transform your School into an LGBTQ+ Friendly Place: a Practical Guide for Nursery, Primary and Secondary Teachers by Dr Elly Barnes MBE and Dr Anna Carlile
Queer : the ultimate LGBT guide for teens by Kathy Belge
This Book is Gay
The Gender Games
by Juno Dawson
From Ace to Ze: The Little Book of LGBT Terms by Harriet Dyer
LGBTQ Comedic Monologues That are Actually Funny by Alisha Gaddis
Understanding Sexuality: what it means to be Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual
Understanding Transgender
by Honor Head
GLBTQ: the Survival Guide for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Teens by Kenny Huegel
From Prejudice to Pride: a History of the LGBTQ+ Movement by Amy Lamé
Identity and Gender by Charlie Ogden
Straight talk About… Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity by Rachel Stuckey
Hi Matt, thanks for inviting me on your blog today and for being part of the amazing blog tour for THE GIRL IN THE BROKEN MIRROR!
So for my guest post today, I wanted to tell your readers about my teen library group’s favourite reads. I started the group because as a teenager I spent hours in the library and if there had been a group like this I would have joined it in a heartbeat!
The kids in my group range from 10 to 16 years old, it’s a diverse group and it’s half boys and half girls, so the huge range of books we read are reflected in the dynamics of the group. Also, because it’s a library group and we only have access to books on the library catalogue, we don’t get all the books that are published for middle grade, teen or YA readers, which is a real shame. It would be brilliant if all public libraries would stock at least one book of every title published, wouldn’t it?
So here’s the list, which comes highly recommended by my teen library group:
Rooftoppers and The Explorer by Katherine Rundell – both of these books have been loved by my teen reading group – the older teens and younger teens alike, which tells you that Rundell’s writing can be enjoyed whatever age you are.
The Unlikely Hero of Room 13b by Teresa Toten – this book is about a group of teenagers with various problems/issues such as OCD and ADHD, who meet with a counsellor once a week. It’s the characters that my teens fell in love with, and the book opened their eyes to the types of problems some teenagers face.
The Last Leaves Falling by Fox Benwell – this book made them cry pretty much without exception. The book is set in Japan and the main character has a rare terminal illness that makes him age too quickly.
I’m not going to tell you all about every book on the list – but I hope you will go and look them up, find the right book for you and read it.
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
Booked by Kwame Alexander
The Book Thief by Marcus Suzak
The Harder They Fall by Bali Rai
Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead
The Astounding Broccoli Boy by Frank Cotterell Boyce
Gorilla Dawn by Gill Lewis
Phoenix by S F Said
Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven
Beetle Boy by M G Leonard
Wonder by R J Palacio
The Stars of Oktober Bend by Glenda Millard
Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
Hidden by Miriam Halahmy,
A Library of Lemons by Jo Cotterill
The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Milwood-Hargrave
The Last Wild trilogy by Piers Torday
The Child’s Elephant by Rachel Campbell-Johnston
Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness
Moonrise by Sarah Crossan
Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sacher
She is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick
Orangeboy by Patrice Lawrence
The Fault in our Stars by John Green
Harry Potter books by JK Rowling
The CHERUB books Robert Muchamore
I could go on – my library group read four or five books a month – but I think your readers have enough there to be going on with there, Matt!
It’s been great fun looking at all the books my teens have been reading. I think it’s a great list – wide in range, subject matter, scope, from poetry to prose, from stand alone novels to series fiction, from fantasy to contemporary to historical!
Thank you so much for hosting me on the blog tour for THE GIRL IN THE BROKEN MIRROR. My book is not an easy read for younger readers, so I would recommend it for 14+ readers.It’s the story of a fifteen year old British Asian girl and her journey after a terrible trauma. It’s also a story about negotiating your way between two very different cultures – the world at home and the world outside. If your readers want to find out more about me, here’s my website www.savitakalhan.com, or they can chat to me on twitter @savitakalhan. I love to hear from my readers!
The shortlist for the 2018 Branford Boase Award is announced today (Wednesday 2nd May 2018). The Branford Boase Award is given annually to the author of an outstanding debut novel for children. Uniquely, it also honours the editor of the winning title and highlights the importance of the editor in nurturing new talent.
Now in its nineteenth year the Branford Boase Award is recognised as one of the most important awards in children’s books with a hugely impressive record in identifying authors with special talent at the start of their careers. Previous winners and shortlisted authors include Siobhan Dowd, Meg Rosoff, Mal Peet, Philip Reeve, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Patrick Ness; Costa Book Award winner Frances Hardinge won with her debut novel Fly By Night in 2006. The shortlist for the 2018 award is as follows:
A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe, edited by Fiona Kennedy (Head of Zeus: Zephyr)
The Starman and Me by Sharon Cohen, edited by Sarah Lambert (Quercus Children’s Books)
Fish Boy by Chloe Daykin, edited by Leah Thaxton (Faber)
Knighthood for Beginners by Elys Dolan, edited by Clare Whitston and Elv Moody (Oxford)
Kick by Mitch Johnson, edited by Rebecca Hill and Becky Walker (Usborne)
Potter’s Boy by Tony Mitton, edited by Anthony Hinton (David Fickling Books)
The City of Secret Rivers by Jacob Sager Weinstein, edited by Gill Evans (Walker Books)
This year the judges are Urmi Merchant of children’s bookshop Pickled Pepper Books; Helen Swinyard, librarian at Heartlands High School and founder of the Haringey Children’s Book Award; author and reviewer Philip Womack; and M.G. (Maya) Leonard, author of Beetle Boy, winner of the 2017 Branford Boase Award. The panel is chaired by Julia Eccleshare, children’s director of the Hay Festival.
Julia Eccleshare says: Each year the Branford Boase Award discovers authors with outstanding talent and promise: this year is no exception. The BBA also celebrates the lively state of children’s publishing in the UK and we were excited that no less than 26 different publishers entered books with seven making the shortlist. By concentrating on the most exciting new voices, the Branford Boase consistently highlights trends in contemporary children’s fiction: our 2018 judges were struck by the huge predominance on the longlist of domestic dramas. Children’s adventure it seems has become internal, the setting no longer the outside world but frequently the family, with narrative tension and action arising from issues such as mental health and individual trauma. Nonetheless, our seven shortlisted books have new stories to tell and vibrant new voices to tell them.
The winner of the 2018 Branford Boase Award will be announced on Wednesday 4th July at a ceremony in London. The winning author receives a cheque for £1,000 and both author and editor receive a unique, hand-crafted silver-inlaid box.
For more information about the award, including a full list of past winners, and the Henrietta Branford Writing Competition visit www.branfordboaseaward.org.uk