Waterstone's Children's Book Prize Short List

The shortlist was revealed yesterday and I am so pleased to see several authors and books that I "know" through having read / reviewed / received them.

Here's the listing with some information about the books and the nominated authors:

FLYAWAY BY LUCY CHRISTOPHER

In this poignant novel, Lucy Christopher explores the extraordinary attachment between a young girl and a wild bird. 13-year-old Isla doesn’t want to think about the fact that her dad may be dying until she meets Isthmi, a young swan who can’t fly.

About the author

After various attempts at being an actor, a coffee maker, a waitress and a nature guide, Lucy earned a distinction in a Creative Writing MA. In her spare time, Lucy helps run a children’s wildlife group at Newport Wetland.

THE GREAT HAMSTER MASSACRE BY KATIE DAVIES

A natural and honest version of life’s events from the perspective of a young girl – from her suspicions about her neighbours, to her rocky friendship with the girl next door; from the sudden death of her granny to her relentless quest for a pet hamster. The Great Hamster Massacre is a bittersweet but hilariously funny domestic tale.

About the author

Katie is the wife of comedian Alan Davies and recently gave birth to their first child. She is a literary agent who has also written for radio. The Great Hamster Massacre is the first in a charming series of pet-related dilemmas drawn from real-life experiences of friends and family.

THE GIRL WHO COULD FLY BY VICTORIA FORESTER

Piper McCloud can fly, but even at her top-secret, maximum-security school for kids with exceptional abilities she’s special, and there are consequences.

About the author

Victoria Forester lives in Los Angeles with her husband. She has spent most of her time writing screenplays; this is her first book.

SEVEN SORCERERS BY CARO KING

Enter the Drift, a land filled with the fabulous and the dreadful; tombfolk, mudmen and the spirits of the seven sorcerers who once ruled the land. Our heroine must cross the Drift to retrieve her brother, stolen by the bogeyman and taken to the terrible House of Strood.

About the author

Caro tackled a series of widely varied jobs before joining the Civil Service, working in the Official Receiver's Office. She now works part-time and lives in Surrey with her husband, writing and restoring their Edwardian house.

LOVE, AUBREY BY SUZANNE LAFLEUR

Something terrible has happened and 11-year-old Aubrey is on her own. She’s determined to hide away and take care of herself, because facing the truth is too much to bear. Love, Aubrey is a must-read with the emotional power of Before I Die, the readability of Gathering Light and the comfort of Little Women.

About the author

Suzanne grew up in Massachusetts, where she used to read her stories out loud to anyone who would listen. She began writing her first novel Love, Aubrey at graduate school and now lives in Manhattan, where she works at The Anderson School, a New York City Public School for gifted children.]

THE TOYMAKER BY JEREMY DE QUIDT

What good is a toy that will wind down? What if you could put a heart in one? A real heart? From the moment Mathias finds a mysterious piece of paper he is entangled in devious plots and pursued by the sinister Dr. Leiter and his devilish toys. The Toymaker is a truly chilling story that will haunt you long after you reach the end.

About the author

The Toymaker was written after the author Jeremy was asked to do some story-telling at a local school. He went in and each week told them a new chapter of a story he had begun writing especially for them – that story became his first published work.

DESPERATE MEASURES BY LAURA SUMMERS

Vicky and Rhianna are twins but they couldn’t be more different. For their fourteenth birthday,

Vicky wants a card from the hottest boy in school. Rhianna, brain-damaged at birth, wants a Furby. Instead they get a nasty shock – their foster parents can’t cope and it looks as if Vicky and Rhianna and their younger brother Jamie will have to be split up. How can they stay together?

Desperate times call for desperate measures …

About the author

Laura Summers grew up in South London and was a teacher before turning to writing full time. She has written extensively for many popular children’s television series and was recently nominated for a children’s BAFTA for one of her scripts for The Little Princess - a pre-school animation series based on the picture books by Tony Ross. Laura now lives in North Devon with her husband and children and when not writing loves to draw and paint.

SUPERHUMAN: METEORITE STRIKE BY A.G. TAYLOR

Introducing mesmerizing heroes with mind-blowing powers, this roller-coaster read of chilling conspiracies and secret organizations is the perfect escape for anyone who’s longed to be just a little bit special.

About the author

Andrew Taylor was born in New Zealand and grew up in England, and has worked as a teacher in England, Poland, South Korea and Australia. He lives with his girlfriend, her whippet and his Italian greyhound. This is his debut novel.

THE CROWFIELD CURSE BY PAT WALSH

What happens when you bury an angel? It’s 1347 and Will, an orphan boy, lives at Crowfield Abbey. When two hooded strangers arrive at Crowfield asking questions about the angel’s grave, Will is drawn into a world of dangerous Old Magic. The Crowfield Curse is a thrilling clash between the forces of old natural magic and new ideas of Christianity.

About the author

Pat spent summers and school holidays working on archaeological digs, took an archaeology degree and spent most of her life since then working as an archaeologist. From the age of twelve she has written short stories based in history and fantasy, and The Crowfield Curse is her first novel for children.

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I wish all of these authors the best of luck! The winner is announced on February 2010 here in London.

The Toymaker by Jeremy de Quidt

Synopsis:

What good is a toy that will wind down? What if you could put a heart in one? A real heart. One that beat and beat and didn’t stop. What couldn’t you do if you could make a toy like that?

In The Toymaker we meet someone we should all really like, especially if we are children: the toymaker, Menschenmacher. His creations sound amazing, creations we would all want to play with. Very soon, within a page, we do realise however that the toymaker, the "people maker" is not a cuddly friendly type of elderly uncle whom we can run to with a broken doll to fix. No, here's someone who is part scientist, part explorer, part nightmare maker. His toys are automatons, beautiful creations that the rich and famous strive to own. But there is that element of where he wants to meld the inanimate with the animate that is just shiver-inducing.

The Toymaker is set in an undisclosed European country over a short span of time for the reader - with that comes the bitter cold, the distant almost unfriendly populace and a feeling that really bad things can happen to good people. It's a harsh winter, wolves prowl the woods and people's lives are hard.

We also meet Matthias, a young boy who works as a Conjurer's assistant in a travelling circus. Well, he doesn't really work as anything to be honest. He's more a dog's body, doing things his grandfather, the conjuror wants, and then gets treated abysmally, beaten, starved and shouted at by everyone else in the circus; in other words, Matthias's life is hell. That is until his Grandfather suffers some kind of attack on stage and then dies. Matthias is in shock. A man he doesn't know walks up and starts searching his grandfather for something and Matthias realises that his grandfather may not have been the man he thought he knew. The well-dressed stranger leaves to speak to the owners of the circus and Matthias discovers a crumpled piece of paper in his grandfather's mouth that he was keen to hide...

Matthias and all his grandfather's belongings are "sold" to the mysterious man, Dr. Leiter and Matthias is bundled into a coach and driven through the night to an inn where he's questioned by the doctor and the odious coachman, Valter, a mishappen dwarf with the strength of ten men and a heart blacker than the abyss. One of the girls working at the inn, Katta, realises these two men are hurting Matthias and rescues him after he is thrown out of the window of the inn and together they go on the run.

Soon they throw in their lot with the mysterious and ruthless Koenig who is keen to figure out what Matthias's secret is and ultimately what the strip of torn paper is that he carries with him.

The Toymaker is beautifully written by Jeremy de Quidt. It's deeply dark and disturbing with touches of the macabre that will scintillate younger and older readers alike. The action is vivid and moves the story forward as much as the quest to find out the secret of the scrap of paper. The ending is a twisty turning thing that had me re-reading it because it took me that much by surprise.

I'd recommend The Toymaker to read out loud too - there is a dark magic to the writing that just begs to be heard aloud. And some fantastic news: The Toymaker has been short-listed for the Waterstones Children's Book Award 2010 which is excellent. I am so happy for Mr. de Quidt who clearly had a great time writing this wonderfully evocative and dark piece of literary horror for the younger folk.

The Toymaker is out now in paperback from David Fickling Books.

Michelle Harrison Interview

Author photograhed by Charlie Hopkinson

Michelle Harrison is a young Simon & Schuster debut novelist who wrote the fantastic The Thirteen Treasures. Michelle works as an editorial assistant at a publisher, she is 28 years old and currently lives in Oxfordshire with her partner (Darren) and a badly behaved cat, Pepper.

1. You are clearly very fond of what you do, both as writer and illustrator. Do you have any favourite writers and artists that influenced you in your own career?

Artists such as Arthur Rackham, Alan Lee and Brian Froud have all influenced my artwork style, particularly where fairies are involved. With writers it’s harder to pin down specific influences, as I read so much. I think to an extent you can take something away from everything you enjoy, but writers I’m especially fond of are Roald Dahl, Julie Hearn and Eva Ibbotson.

2. What was the very first thing you did when you heard back from S&S that they have decided to publish The Thirteen Treasures?

I was taken to the pub by my agent and treated to a glass of wine! I then spent the rest of the day telephoning relatives and friends to share the good news, and staring at the Simon & Schuster catalogue, wondering what my book cover would look like.

3. Tell us more about The Thirteen Treasures and can you hint about its upcoming sequel (if you’re allowed!)?

The Thirteen Treasures has been described as ‘dark faerie fiction with a classic feel’, and I feel this sums the book up well. It’s quite a dark story as it deals with secrecy, betrayal and revenge, and at the centre of it all is 13-year-old Tanya, a girl who has the extraordinary ability to see fairies. Most strands of the story are tied up at the end of the book, but there is one plot element (with one character in particular) that’s left unresolved. The sequel is going to lead on from this strand, and will be from this character’s point of view, though all the characters from book one will be part of this story.

4. Tanya and Fabian are two very different character types, with Fabian being the more dark and strange of the two. They represent different points of view – the believer and the unbeliever – how difficult was it to maintain the two views, to let the characters ring this true in your novel?

I didn’t find it at all difficult to maintain the different viewpoints of Tanya and Fabian, as both of their characters felt so different and so clear to me in my mind. I was aware that there would come a point when Fabian would be faced with a choice whether to believe what was happening to Tanya, and so I knew it would have to be something major that presented him with this choice. Fabian is a very scientific person, but a small part of him – perhaps the capacity to ‘believe’ that adults tend to lack – still remains. Tanya can see this because of Fabian’s feelings towards the gypsy woman, Mad Morag, who is rumoured to have powers.

5. What came first – the characters or the storyline?

It was a bit of both. The character of Tanya was my true starting point - I named her after my niece. I knew the main theme of the story was to be Tanya’s persecution by malicious fairies, and that the setting would be the creepy, shabby manor house, but many aspects of the story developed as I was writing it. The fairies were the second lot of characters that I developed, while Fabian, Warwick and Amos arrived with me only as Tanya arrived at the manor for the first time. Red’s character was the last to make it into the book – I had initially been saving her for my second book, but decided to introduce her in The Thirteen Treasures as I felt the story was in need of a stronger subplot.

Art by Brian Froud

6. Did you do a lot of research into the world of fairy and its associated myths and legends?

Yes, I did a fair amount of research. I have an ever-increasing collection of books on fairy folklore and legends. A number of things I discovered made it into the book, such as the methods Tanya uses to deter the fairies from bothering her. I also came across the legend of the Thirteen Treasures, which is closely linked to Avalon, the fairy realm, although I’ve adapted the legend to fit with my story.

7. Have you ever been anywhere as odd and mysterious as the manor house you describe in The Thirteen Treasures?

Elvesden Manor is a mixture of several odd places I’ve been to. When I was young I visited an old farmhouse that belonged to a friend of the family – it had a really creepy cellar, and was full of dressers crammed with stuffed game. Another place that sticks in my mind is a pub in Essex where a staircase next to a fireplace is blocked off halfway up – this was the inspiration for the servants’ staircase at the manor. The forest that surrounds the manor – Hangman’s Wood – is based on an area of woodland of the same name very close to where I grew up. It’s much smaller than the forest in the story, but it has the deneholes that inspired the ‘catacombs’ in The Thirteen Treasures.

8. Did you do drawings of Fabian and Tanya whilst you were writing, as an aide memoire, to yourself?

I didn’t do any sketches as reference, but I drew several pictures of Tanya when I thinking about what kind of illustrations to put in the book. After following my agent’s advice I decided not to include any of the human characters on my illustrated letters, in order to allow the reader to imagine them fully.

9. What is your writing day like?

I work a full-time job, so all my writing is done in the evenings and at weekends – and frequently in the library at lunch times, these days. And whenever I write it’s usually supplemented by endless cups of tea.

10. Do you write to music / do you do soundtracks for your characters?

I’ve never thought of having character soundtracks, but I like the idea of it! On occasion I listen to instrumental music like the Edward Scissorhands or The Lord of the Rings soundtracks, or Loreena McKennitt’s music before I write or between breaks, but generally I find anything with words too distracting while writing.

11. What do you do to relax and unwind?

Reading or watching a film always helps me to unwind, but as I’ve got older I tend to like being busy most of the time.

12. What does it feel like, being on the other side of the spectrum now, as an author yourself? Do you feel famous?

I’m over the moon to be a published author now – it’s been my dream since I was a teenager, and I know I won’t ever forget what a challenge it was. Many writers find it difficult to break into publishing and I was no exception.

I don’t really feel famous - my work in publishing has involved meeting and working with other authors and illustrators who have been published for many years and are seasoned professionals. I still feel very new to it all!

13. Will you be touring to promote The Thirteen Treasures?

I have several events with schools lined up, and a launch party at the Stafford branch of Waterstone’s where I used to work as a children’s bookseller.

14. When did you find out that The Thirteen Treasures has been shortlisted as one of the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize and what was your reaction?

I knew about the shortlisting back in October but had to keep it confidential until the press release in January – which was difficult as my instinct was to tell anyone who would listen! It means a lot to be considered for this prize as I remember reading the shortlists when I still worked for Waterstone’s. To now be on the shortlist feels amazing.

15. What advice do you have for other budding authors out there?

Definitely to read as much as possible – it’s the best way to know what’s being published and to see how successful stories are constructed. Practise writing, even something simple like keeping a blog or diary is a good way to start, and always go back to see how you can improve your work. Getting someone you trust to give some feedback on your work can be really helpful. Finally, keep at it, don’t give up!

Michelle's website and more information on The Thirteen Treasures can be found here.

Competition News!

Michelle's lovely publishers have agreed to let me offer a copy of The Thirteen Treasures to give away to celebrate, not just its release, but being put on the shortlist for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. Now that is, as they say, made out of "awesome".

So, the rules are as before: UK residents only, one entry only per person/household, duplicates will be disqualified. Use the email address to the right to enter - send me an email, subject line titled The Thirteen Treasures with your name and address. I'll let the competition run for a week, from today, with the closing date being Saturday, 31st January. I'll announce the winner - randomly chosen by our dog Sparrow (he is a genius) - on Sunday morning. If you are the winner, I'll send you an email to let you know.