Carnegie Shortlist is here!

Yes! Sure, it was announced about three weeks ago but I've been BUSY! Books don't just publicise themselves dontchaknow and in the last six weeks I have been ALL OVER THE PLACE, including *deep breath* all over London (literally from East to West which is genuinely a long way. Just ask poor Barry Hutchison who was in the cab with me) Windsor, Bristol, Berlin (ok, that was a holiday, whatever), Preston, Lancaster, Liverpool, Bath, Southampton and Reading... Phew! No wonder my body has essentially packed it in and left me eating naught but crumpets and ricey broth stuff....

So anyway, whilst all this country spanning travel was going on, I found out the shortlist had been announced, and I was quite surprised by the result...

David Almond
MY NAME IS MINA
Hodder (9+)
READ 

Lissa Evans 
SMALL CHANGE FOR STUART
Doubleday (8+)
READ

Sonya Hartnett 
THE MIDNIGHT ZOO
Walker (9+)

Ali Lewis 
EVERYBODY JAM
Andersen (12+)
READ

Andy Mulligan 
TRASH
David Fickling (12+)
READ

Patrick Ness
A MONSTER CALLS
Walker (9+)
READ

Annabel Pitcher
MY SISTER LIVES ON THE MANTELPIECE
Orion (10+)
READ

Ruta Sepetys
BETWEEN SHADES OF GREY
Puffin (12+)

So as you can see, the only two I haven't read are Between Shades of Grey and The Midnight Zoo. At the FCBG conference this weekend I mentioned that I was surprised not to see Blood Red Road or Life: An Exploded Diagram on there, to which the reply was that the list was aimed more towards younger fiction this year. But ay me for teenage fiction! There are so few high quality prizes awarded to teenage fiction now, especially with the cutting of the BookTrust Teenage Prize that I lament this decision! Someone enlighten me if there is some other reason, except Mal being a previous winner...? 

Anyway, I'm THRILLED to see Small Change for Stuart on there, which used to be one of my titles, hurrah for Lissa and her beautiful little tale. Monster Calls was a dead cert really, deservedly but no surprise there... Probably same for My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece. Everybody Jam was an interesting one - I haven't reviewed this yet, but I loved it - only problem was that the small person I know who is half Australian and would've loved it wouldn't be allowed to read it yet, simply down to a few inappropriate topics and swearwords. Difficult to know the age pitch because of that.

Well I better get on with reading the two I haven't read yet (and the rest) and do some reviewing!! I am currently on The Midnight Zoo and it's absolutely beautiful so far - absolutely escaped into it on my commute. Watch this space!

Carnegie review number 6 - White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick

Oooooh it's a goodie! I've been meaning to pick up Marcus' books for actual years - I remember being at some SYP event in Foyles before I got into publishing and I was going to every book talk I could find. Marcus was the only speaker who was a kid's author and he asked if anyone worked in children's publishing. I'm pretty sure I put my hand up like a right nerd even though I wasn't technically employed yet! I thought it was interesting he'd worked for Walker before he became an author, so knew the technical side of things (also, later found that lovely Jonathan Stroud also worked for Walker before becoming an author, so it's a trend clearly!). Then a wonderful friend at Norwich Library, who gave me massive help in getting in to publishing, also recommended his books (cowabunga, if you're reading this). So it's been something I've been getting around to for a while...

Well I'm going to have to gradually acquire the whole backlist because White Crow was an absolutely brilliant read. Naturally written in an extremely graceful and vivid descriptive style, it was not only beautiful but very thought provoking. And having taken one whole unit on the American Gothic at UEA, and thus considering myself an expert, I can tell you it's very gothic! A fascination with death, themes of doubles, creepy houses... oh and a crow! All of the above are major gothic symbols.


White Crow is a story about a teenage girl who moves to a small coastal town for the summer with her dad. For reasons I won't divulge and spoil, Rebecca and her father's relationship is very strained. She soon meets Ferelith (rumoured to be named after the brilliant librarian! Now if that won't get you a nomination what will!) a strange, lonely and extremely intelligent girl who seems preoccupied with thoughts of death, the afterlife and the gradual ruin of the town as it falls into the sea. Another story runs alongside this modern day one, of a rather naughty priest in the 1700s who is involved in some grizzly work by a French doctor who is also preoccupied with the afterlife.

I found when I first started reading I was expecting this book to be quite whimsical and romantic as I didn't know much about it, but it quickly turned into a tense, chilling, gothic thriller with a deep philosophical element. It's really not a long book at all, and so packs an awful lot of thought and description into a succinct narrative. I found every time I had to put this book down I couldn't stop thinking about it and was mulling it over after finishing it too. Having a proper think about death and what happens next is something I don't often do - I tend to look sideways, above and around it. Really thinking about it can only last a few minutes before I feel like I'm leaning over the edge of something I can't really balance on. If you ask me, the real magic of books, and particularly children's books is that feeling that you're being shown something for the first time and taking a perspective you'd never imagined before. Whether, as adults, it's not really the first time, that feeling in a great book is just magic. White Crow really had that and prodded my brain into thinking over things I usually avoid. That's why I would say this is not only a major contender for this year's Carnegie but a genuine crossover title that adults and children alike should read.

White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick is published by Orion and is out now in paperback. It is longlisted for the 2012 Carnegie Medal.

Carnegie Meal Number 3 - One Dog and His Boy by Eva Ibbotson

Positively speeding through now. I'll have finished this lot before you can say pneumonoultrasilicovolcanoconiosis... Soon after finishing Shadow I popped by book boy's house as I knew he had some of the books on my hit list. Being a bookseller, he is one of these lucky people who get sent proofs and one such example was One Dog and His Boy by Eva Ibbotson. When I worked in a library, I shelved a helluva lot of Eva Ibbotson books as they were always flying in and out. So when this book proof was released, it clocked on my radar, but tragically even more so due to the sad news that Eva had passed away at the age of 85. I knew I just needed an opportunity to steal borrow this and get reading - so thank you Carnegie folk for nominating this one!

From One Dog and His Boy, it seems very obvious that Ibbotson was indeed a master of children's storytelling. I don't specify "children's" to in any way belittle her writing - I think when you write for children in the best way, you have created something that does not speak down to children but is still most definitely created with them in mind. With the dreams and beliefs that you hold as a child at the forefront.

This story has at its centre a young boy called Hal, who lives a privileged life with all the toys and gadgets he could ever want. With a wealthy businessman for a father and a prim shopaholic for a mother, the only thing Hal yearns for is a dog. But he has never been allowed one. In a cruelly thoughtless move, his parents rent him a dog for the weekend, but let Hal believe it's for life. Hal and the dog he rents, Fleck, find a strong connection straight away and their separation is heart breaking. Back at Easy Pets, the dog rental agency, there are a whole room of cell mates to Fleck who have their own tragic stories that have led them to their ownerless existence. The dogs' back stories were revealed in effortlessly natural narration, with delightful details set up for later heart wrenching moments. A whole host of other characters come into the story and every one is just perfectly woven in to create a classic adventure tale with a really simple but lovely emotional core. This really was pretty much perfect - funny, sad, emotional, exciting and filled with a kind of magic that needs no wands or sorcery.

I will place this book very high up on my recommendation list for any children aged 9 and up, and any adult with a young soul!

One Dog and His Boy by Eva Ibbotson is out now in hardback, and will be released in paperback in March 2012. It is long listed for the Carnegie Medal 2012.

My first Carnegie bite - My Name is Mina by David Almond

A couple of weeks ago I decided I would set myself a little challenge - to read all the Carnegie long listed titles before the winner is announced next year. This is no mean feat, as although I've read 11 of them already - there are 52 in total! Well I would have started my challenge immediately but I was part way through reading the second Department 19 book, The Rising. I will refrain from talking too much about that as I know it will make many of you painfully jealous and there are SO MANY AWESOME plot points I don't want to give any away!

So once I finished that I finally got myself down to Daunt books to visit my friendly book boy and request he buy me a book with his discount (book purchasing method 1 - let's call it supporting a friendly Indie) and that book was My Name is Mina by David Almond. This book is a prequel to David Almond's first book, the Carnegie winning Skellig. Ashamedly I have never read Skellig, so found myself coming to this book as a fresh standalone. Which, for any of you in the same position, is absolutely fine, aside from you may get slightly less satisfaction from the ending.

I have to say when I first started reading this I couldn't get my head into it. I couldn't work out why - perhaps coming to it from such a high action thriller? Perhaps because all my reading is done on my commute and I'm largely standing and feeling rushed? The book reminded me a lot of Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli which I just adored so I just couldn't understand why I was less interested in this. I stopped and thought about it, quite literally as I was walking along the street in a rush. I had a slightly obvious epiphany - I am a grown up, in a sometimes stressful and always busy profession. I live in a city thats always rushing and jostling me around and often surrounded by people huffing and sighing and grumping about like we grown ups do. When I read Stargirl I was a teenager with plenty of free time, less cynicism, and more belief in everything being just wonderful. I was quite whimsical! But wait! I still am whimsical and childish and I got really cross at myself for not letting this story carry me away just because I was having a busy week.

So I came back to the story and paid attention - I looked around me on the tube and felt sad for anyone else who wasn't using their journey to have a little escape like me. An escape back into the mind of a child, where the world is full of completely amazing things - in Mina's journal she writes words she thinks are particularly delicious over and over, or really big across the page. She writes mini stories and poems and spends lots of time sitting in a tree, watching the world and waiting for the eggs in the nest above her to hatch. She's by no means always happy, as she finds the process of being a child and growing up quite painful, and philosophizes on this transition throughout. She has perhaps clung to her more "childish" ways longer than most others her age, but this only means she still knows how to take notice of all the little things and take delight in them.

I was just enchanted by the book once I got my brain in the right mode. Everyone should be a little bit like Mina - her "strangeness" is to me what makes her more sensible than most - I think as we grow up, we lose the strangeness of being a child, where we create magical worlds and imaginings in our head, and question things that grown ups accept. I think that's something to lament - which is of course really why I work in the world of children's books!

Most appropriately, Mina does seem to have something quite apt to say on this, so I will leave you with a lovely quote from the book:

"It's so strange: grown ups trying to become young, young ones trying to grow up and all the time, whatever people want, time moves forward, forward."

My Name is Mina by David Almond is available now in paperback, and is longlisted for the 2012 Carnegie Medal - see the full longlist here.