BfK News: January 1993

A ROUND-UP OF PRIZES

The 10th Anniversary of EMIL

The Kurt Maschler, or Emil, Award was established in 1982 to celebrate the way in which text and illustration work together.

Past winners have included titles with authors and illustrators as distinguished as Ted Hughes, Martin Waddell, John Burningham, Michael Foreman and Barbara Firth.

This year’s judges were Quentin Blake, Margaret Meek, Elaine Moss and Chris Powling, who shortlisted six books from over 100 entries:

Incredible Cross-Sections by Stephen Biesty and Richard Platt (Dorling Kindersley, 0 86318 807 9, £12.00)

A Thousand Yards of Sea by Laura Cecil and Emma Chichester Clark (Methuen, 0 416 18872 9, £9.99)

Jocasta Carr, Movie Star by Roy Gerrard (Gollancz, 0 575 05118 3, £7.99)

The Mink War by Gene Kemp and Andrew Davidson (Faber, 0 571 16312 2, £4.99)

Stanley Bagshaw and the Ice-Cream Ghost by Bob Wilson (Hamish Hamilton, 0 241 12760 2, £8.50)

The winner, who receives a bronze figure of Emil, Erich Kastner’s famous character from Emil and the Detectives, sculpted by Diana Welch, as well as £1,000 in prize money, was:

Raymond Briggs for THE MAN published by Julia MacRae (185681 1913, £9.99)

Readers of BfK may recall our haunting front cover last September (No. 76) and our interview with Raymond Briggs on the back page.

Congratulations to THE MAN!

The Smarties Book Prize

Chaired by Stephanie Nettell, no stranger to the pages of BfK, the judging panel this year consisted of Angela Beeching, BBC TV’s executive producer of fiction; Elizabeth Hammill, children’s manager at Waterstone’s in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Michael Morpurgo, children’s author; and Bob Wilson, children’s author and illustrator. From over 300 entries, producing a shortlist of 14 titles, came the following winners:

0-5 Years Category Winner (£2,000)

Nice Work, Little Wolf, by Hilda Offen (Hamish Hamilton, 0 241 13128 6, £8.50)

6-8 Years Category Winner (£2,000)

The Story of The Creation, by Jane Ray (Orchard, 185213 281 7, £8.99)

Smarties Book Prize and 9-11 Years Category Winner (£8,000)

The Great Elephant Chase, by Gillian Cross (Oxford, 019 271672 7, £8.95)

A list full of child-appeal? Let’s hope so. A parallel panel of judges, ten members of Class 7C from Edwinstree School in Buntingford, Hertfordshire, who earned their title of Smarties Young Judges by entering the Smarties Schools Competition last summer with an anthology of their own book reviews, thought rather differently …

0-5 Category

Cockatoos, by Quentin Blake (Cape, 0 224 02885 5, £7.99)

6-8 Category

Fantastic Stories, by Terry Jones and Michael Foreman (Pavilion, 185145 957 X, £12.99)

9-11 Category

The House of Rats, by Stephen Elboz (Oxford, 019 271664 6, £7.95)

From the kids’ list, of course, kudos rather than money.

TES Information Book Awards

Winners for 1992 were as follows:

Junior Award

My First Book of Time, by Claire Llewellyn, (Dorling Kindersley, 0 86318 784 6, £6.99)

Senior Award

Black and British, by David Bygott, (Oxford, 019 913314 X, £9.95)

See page 31 of BfK No.77 (Nov 92) for a full review.

The Writers Guild/Macallan Award

…for 1992’s best children’s book was won by Roy Apps for his novel The Secret Summer of Daniel Lyons (Andersen Press, 0 86264 353 8, £6.99) which describes 13-year-old Tom Jupe’s involvement with a pioneering film company in Sussex in 1909. A self-discovery story with a difference, Margery Fisher wrote of it in Growing Point: ‘Period details are capably woven into a spanking tale of young curiosity and its uses in an adult world.’ Highly recommended.

PUBLICATION

That Elephant Again …

Still hotfooting it, Gillian Cross’s The Great Elephant Chase (see Smarties Prize above) also won the 1992 Whitbread Award for Children’s Fiction. At this rate, Gillian Cross soon won’t need any publisher’s advances or royalties – she’ll be living handsomely on her prize money! Good luck to her, says BfK. And so does Keith Barker of the School Library Association who’s just published his monograph Gillian Cross, following his own earlier study of Dick King-Smith and Anne Taylor’s of Joan Lingard.

It’s a warm, generous account of a writer whose stories span the full age-range of childhood, is briefly but accessibly written and takes full advantage of a rare critical luxury: the space to quote extensively from the work of its subject. This, and the previous monographs, are available from The School Library Association, Liden Library, Barrington Close, Liden, Swindon, SN3 6HF, price £5.50 each (£4.50 to SLA members).

CONFERENCES

The Federation of Children’s Book Groups

Silver Jubilee Conference: 5-7 March 1993

How about helping the Federation celebrate its first 25 years at The Moat House, Stratford-on-Avon? More than 20 children’s authors and illustrators will be there from Gollancz, HarperCollins, Hodder & Stoughton, Ladybird, Puffin, Random House, Reed International, Simon & Schuster, Transworld and Walker.

The celebrations include an exhibition of children’s artwork (winners of the CBA Competition 1980-1992) and a catalogued display of original drawings and paintings from many top children’s illustrators. These will be auctioned and sold to the highest bidders.

Other activities between Friday and Sunday include breakfasts, lunches, parties, receptions, after-dinner speeches, presentations, etc. – which delegates will share with a range of celebrities from the children’s book world.

For the full conference programme and booking details, write to Haydn Mudford, 156 Wensleydale Road, Great Barr, Birmingham, B42 1PJ.

The Way Forward

A day conference to look at pre-school literacy initiatives; to share ideas and to begin to look for a possible national direction.

Saturday, 27 February 1993

9.30 am registration, 10.00 am – 4.30 pm

School of Education, Birmingham University, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT

Conference Fee: £25

Dr Barrie Wade of Birmingham University’s School of Education and Maggie Moore, Senior Lecturer at Newman College, will present a report on the BOOKSTART project.

Small group presentations will be made by a range of speakers working in the area of emergent literacy.

Trevor Dickinson, retired HMI, will end the day with a talk entitled ‘Life of Language’.

For further details, please contact Wendy Cooling or Jean Egbunike at The Children’s Book Foundation, Book Trust, Book House, 45 East Hill, London SW18 2QZ (tel: 081 870 9055/8).

Applications as soon as possible, please!