UKLA longlists - here they are!

So, after wading through over three hundred submissions, we met last week to come up with our three longlists for the 2012 UKLA award. And they're announced today! The award is given for books for children and teenagers in which the writing uses language in ways that's particularly powerful/interesting/effective.

The longlists (one for each age range covered by the award) are as follows:

Longlist for 3-6 category
A Splendid Friend, Indeed (Suzanne Bloom)
Mine (Rachel Bright)
When Titus Took the Train (Anne Cottringer)
A Place to Call Home (Alexis Deacon)
I Want a Mini Tiger (Joyce Dunbar)
Just Because (Rebecca Elliott)
Eddie's Toolbox (Sarah Garland)
Wolf Won't Bite (Emily Gravett)
A Bit Lost (Chris Haughton)
Rollo and Ruff and the Little Fluffy Bird (Mick Inkpen)
Up and Down (Oliver Jeffers)
The Boy Who Cried Ninja (Alex Latimer)
Little Red Hood (Marjolaine Leray, tr. Sarah Ardizzone)
Marshall Armstrong Is New to Our School (David Mackintosh)
One Two That's My Shoe (Alison Murray)
Iris and Isaac (Catherine Rayner)
Busy Boats (Susan Steggall)
Chill (Carol Thompson)
Mole's Sunrise (Jeanne Willis)
Scruffy Bear and the Six White Mice (Chris Wormell)
Frank and Teddy Make Friends (Louise Yates)

Longlist for 7-11 category
Farther (Grahame Baker-Smith)
Noah Barleywater Runs Away (John Boyne)
A Girl Called Dog (Nicola Davies)
The Memory Cage (Ruth Eastham)
Small Change for Stewart (Lissa Evans)
Grace (Morris Gleitzman)
Three By the Sea (Mini Grey)
The Young Chieftain (Ken Howard)
One Dog and His Boy (Eva Ibbotson)
Animal Tales (Terry Jones)
Sky Hawk (Gill Lewis)
Moon Pie (Simon Mason)
Caddy's World (Hilary McKay)
Scrivener's Moon (Philip Reeve)
The Girl Savage (Katherine Rundell)
Nobody's Horse (Jane Smiley)
When You Reach Me (Rebecca Stead)

Longlist for 12-16 category
My Name Is Mina (David Almond)
Long Lankin (Lindsey Barraclough)
Flip (Martyn Bedford)
Buried Thunder (Tim Bowler)
iBoy (Kevin Brooks)
Tyme's End (B.R. Collins)
Bracelet of Bones (Kevin Crossley-Holland)
The 10pm Question (Kate de Goldi)
Annexed (Sharon Dogar)
You Against Me (Jenny Downham)
Being Billy (Phil Earle)
Quarry (Ally Kennen)
Everybody Jam (Ali Lewis)
Pull Out All the Stops (Geraldine McCaughrean)
Trash (Andy Mulligan)
A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness)
Half Brother (Kenneth Oppel)
Bruised (Siobhan Parkinson)
My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece (Annabel Pitcher)
The Dead of Winter (Chris Priestley)
White Crow (Marcus Sedgwick)
The Last Summer of the Death Warriors (Francisco X. Stork)

We're all really happy with our choices. Do give them a try!

D.H.

(P.S. You'll have to wait till the New Year for the shortlists, I'm afraid...)

UKLA longlist

This post is not to tell you what's on the UKLA longlist, because I can't do that. It's only to tell you that we do now have a longlist (chosen today), and that it's great, and that you'll know what it is on the 26th. Which isn't very interesting information for you, I grant you, and is really just a bit of a tease, but *I'm* very pleased with it so wanted to say something. So there.

Details this time next week.

D.H.

A very general update...

Even though we're not currently at work on an edition of The Ultimate Book Guide, there's been plenty of children's books activity in my summer, some of which I've mentioned here already and some not. But here's a little run-down...

• In mid-May, Leonie and I were in Qatar, running a two-day workshop for local teachers and teacher-trainers on 'Getting Children Reading'. Also in May we concluded our Books of the Week series with our 100th recommendation, for Hilary McKay's delightful Caddy's World, and I wrote a couple of YA reviews for the Indy.
• June then began with the Hay festival (I chaired an event with Jason Wallace, Jim Carrington and Irfan Master); and the following day saw the start of the Pop Up schools programme, which ran right through the month (I'm proud to be on the board of Pop Up, and it was lovely to see it become a reality after all the planning!), culminating in the Pop Up public festival in Coram's Fields in July. Which was wonderful. (Plans afoot for the next already...)
  
• Then there was August with Edinburgh, and early September in which I - sort of by accident - wrote my first picture book... Of which I'm rather proud. But more of that in another post...
• And throughout the summer, I've also been working on a number of ideas for promoting more translated children's books in the UK; and reading reading reading for the UKLA award (over three hundred books submitted! Help! Drowning!...) - I'm on the selection panel and we meet to longlist on Monday 19th; I've been going through about seventy abstracts sent in by people who want to speak at our IBBY congress next year; and meantime attempting to make progress on the rather massive undertaking which is my new Oxford Companion to Children's Literature.

So: busy-busy. But that's all in the past; so what's next on the blog for this month coming up?

Well, we'll have the announcement of the UKLA longlist, just as soon as we've made our final selection; I'll be reviewing Wonderstruck, the beautiful new book from Brian Selznick, author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret (a particular favourite of mine); and I'll be telling you all about that surprising new picture book I've been working on (publishing in the New Year). And then going into October there will be some lovely events at Cheltenham, as usual.

But before all that, we're going to be announcing a very exciting special guest who's going to be visiting us on this blog in just a couple of weeks... Watch this space...

D.H.

Teen writing competition

Delighted to announce that today we launch the third edition of Right Words, the writing competition for 14 to 16 year olds in the UK. It's something I started a few years ago with the Human Rights Watch London Network, and this time we're running it in association with the Readers and Writers programme at English PEN, too. The theme is 'freedom of expression'. The competition will run into January (we're running free workshops in schools throughout the period), and then the best bits of work in each of the categories (story, poem, essay, song/rap) will be chosen by our amazing panel of judges (Tim Minchin!) and we'll publish those pieces in an anthology in the spring. I'll keep you up to date with it all on this blog, of course.

You'll find all the information here - do encourage any teenagers you know to enter, teachers you know to use our resources with their classes, etc., and of course drop me a note to ask if you'd like to know any more. It's a good thing.

D.H.

Neil Gaiman event

Loved doing the event with Neil Gaiman on Tuesday! He arrived just in time for the event and afterwards was whisked off to a three-hour signing queue, so I didn't get a chance to have any kind of chat with him off-stage at any point, but I had him all to myself for an hour on stage (just the two of us, and five hundred other people in the tent eavesdropping) and he was just great. And The Graveyard Book is still one of my very favourites ever. Read it if you haven't already.

The festival haven't put up the audio/video of the event - tho' they might? - but in the meantime the Guardian have helpfully published some of the highlights here. Fortunately, the Milk, eh? Brilliant.

D.H.

Edinburgh 2011!

If it's August, it must be...

Yes, time for the Edinburgh International Book Festival again. And great programme, as usual.

I'm there for the day tomorrow, to introduce the lovely Geraldine McCaughrean, and then to chair two events - one with Tim Bowler and Mike Lancaster, and the next with the amazing amazing Neil Gaiman. I know Geraldine and Tim, and I've met Mike before, too - and tho' I've never met Mr Gaiman I think he's amazing amazing amazing (might have mentioned) so I imagine it's going to be a lovely day.

Then going up again next week, to introduce Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, introduce Charlie Higson, and interview Ali Lewis (Saturday 27th); introduce Steve Cole, introduce Anne Fine and chair a discussion on Partition between Jamila Gavin and Irfan Master (Sunday 28th); and finally interview David Almond about his extraordinary new teen/adult novel, The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean (Monday 29th).

Fun!

Come say hello if you're around.

D.H.

Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur

At the beginning of this story Elise is eleven and still a child. An orphan, she lives with her aunt and uncle in the country and plays with the best friend, Franklin, inventing epic stories where they fight evil. But Elise is about to move up to her next school, and from the day she starts there things change. Her world has always been safe and secure, without doubt or thought for anything much more than what to do today - people have always been kind and Franklin has always been the perfect companion...

The steep learning-curve that Elise runs through is painful. Suddenly she's at sea with everything from her friend, to her enemy and her home. Bullied at school, failing academically and struggling with seeing the world from a more teenage perspective, she suddenly starts to find a series of keys; keys that fit doors on the upper floor of barn behind her house - a place she has always been forbidden to go.

Elise's struggles with friendships - and with finding out who she is becoming - are very real. Even though this book is quite slight it packs a real emotional punch as the reader learns, along with Elise, about her story and the love her parents had for her.

There is nothing here that makes it a teen book, but if I was going to choose an ideal recipient I'd pick a girl, about the same age as Elise. Though this isn't a handbook for growing up, it certainly shines a light on many of the predicaments any child on the cusp of maturity will encounter.

Simply written, beautifully told, Elise's story stays with you - I loved it and dearly wanted to know more (Amanda's story next, please!).