Greek Myth in Children's Fiction: Part 7

From the mother and daughter team that brought you Lionboy comes Halo, an enormously involving story in which a young girl is castaway on an island full of centaurs. She must dress as a boy to survive, and ends up in the centre of Athenian politics. It's a wonderfully original take on ancient myth, and Halo is a lively and intelligent heroine battling to find out about herself within the context of greater turmoil.

(The cover, by the way, shouldn't have been in Greek letters - the title reads EDLTH. Confusing for a book that has the Greek alphabet in the back.)

North Lanarkshire Catalyst Book Award Longlist

I've just found out the longlist for the North Lanarkshire Catalyst Award - and I'm thrilled to be on the same list as such brilliant children's writers. This is the full list:

* Day of the Assassins by Johnny O’Brien
* Dead boy Talking by Linda Strachan
* Drawing with Light by Julia Green
* Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper
* Firebrand by Gillian Philip
* Grass by Cathy MacPhail
* Halo by Zizou Corder
* Inside My Head by Jim Carrington
* Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace
* Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood
* Return to the Lost World by Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore
* Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick
* The Bride’s Farewell by Meg Rosoff
* The Liberators by Philip Womack
* The Returners by Gemma Malley
* The Thin Executioner by Darren Shan
* The Witching Hour by Elizabeth Laird
* Time Riders by Alex Scarrow
* Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes
* When I was Joe by Keren David
* Where I Belong by Gillian Cross
* Witchfinder: Dawn of the Demontide by William Hussey

The excellent Meg Rosoff; the marvellous Marcus Sedgwick; the brilliant Mary Hooper; Gillian Cross - who wrote one of my (and I'm sure everybody's) favourite books as a child, The Demon Headmaster... the list is a fantastic one, and I am so excited even to be mentioned amongst such company that I think I'm going to crack on with my next book so that I've got a chance of getting on it next year as well...

The Booktrust Teenage Prize

Once a year, in November, at the top of the Penguin building on the Strand, Booktrust award their Teenage Prize for fiction. It's where Churchill used to go, apparently, to view the damage done to London after a bomb attack; although the only damage that might possibly be done these days is by champagne glasses or cocktail sticks falling down to the street below. I've been going to the prize for several years now: it's one of my favourite events in the literary calendar. Always, it seems, it's a beautiful day. You can see the Embankment down below, lined with flaming trees; inside is champagne, merriment - and, of course, lots of people in children's publishing. There was a very strong shortlist this year, including Charlie Higson (for The Enemy) and Zizou Corder (for Halo); but the winner was Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes. I haven't read it yet, but I shall certainly look out for it.

I chatted to Mr Higson, although this time we did not cross swords about the role of celebrities in writing; I spoke to the charming Mary Hoffman, who has written over ninety children's books and still looks to be going strong; and I met the organiser of the Bath Children's Literary Festival. I left at two, quite happily filled with champagne and canapes, to snooze - I mean, of course, work very hard - in an armchair in the London Library until my duties took me elsewhere - to Kensington, in fact, where I wandered into the Waterstones just before Malorie Blackman arrived to do a book signing. Rather sweetly, they asked me to sign a few books too. So all in all, a brilliantly bookish start to what will be a brilliantly bookish week.

Literary Review Children's Round Up

That most wonderful of all literary magazines, Literary Review, contains this month (that is, June 2010), my twice-yearly children's round up. In it I review the following ten books:

A Web of Air by Philip Reeve
The Boy Who Climbed into the Moon by David Almond
Quicksilver by Sam Osman
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore
Halo by Zizou Corder
Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper
Beswitched by Kate Saunders
Frightfully Friendly Ghosties by Daren King
Sylvia and Bird by Catherine Rayner

They are a sweetly varied bunch, ranging widely in style and content, and mostly containing a great deal of wit and charm (surely the two things that any children's book should have, at least in part). My particular favourites were Daren King's zippingly zany little book about massively over-polite spectres, and the beautifully rendered Sylvia and Bird by Catherine Rayner. I challenge you to read it and not be totally gripped. The review is unavailable online, so I suggest that, if you wish, you beetle on down to your local newsagents and demand a copy.