“Much-loved book” award announced

The Wednesday Wizard, a 1991 book by Tauranga-based fantasy writer Sherryl Jordan, has won the 2010 Storylines Children’s Literature Trust’s annual Gaelyn Gordon Award for a “much-loved” book.

The Gaelyn Gordon Award is given by Storylines to honour a work of fiction that did not win an award at the time of publication but, by remaining in print for more than five years, has won acceptance by young readers as a successful book of enduring appeal.

“While Sherryl Jordan has gone on since 1991 to win praise as an author of young adult novels, particularly in America, this early book for younger readers, a time-slip story set in medieval England, has proved itself a true classic,” says Trust chair Dr Libby Limbrick. “It also led to three sequels, also admired.”

Sherryl Jordan was the 1988 winner of the Choysa Bursary for promising writers, and has subsequently won children’s literature awards in New Zealand and overseas, mostly for her young adult fantasies Rocco, The Juniper Game, The Raging Quiet and her most recent works (both published in America) Secret Sacrament and its sequel, Time of the Eagle.

She won the 1993 Iowa Writing Fellowship and in 2001, the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal for her contribution to children's literature in New Zealand.

The Gaelyn Gordon Award was established in memory of New Zealand fiction writer Gaelyn Gordon, who died in 1997. Previous winners have included novels and picture books by Maurice Gee, David Hill, Elsie Locke, Pamela Allen, Fleur Beale and Lynley Dodd.

Footnote:
The Bookman is delighted for Sherryl Jordan and takes special pleasure from her honour because it was back in 1988 when he was establishing a NZ book publishing programme at Scholastic that he signed a publishing agreement with Sherryl Jordan, in conjunction with Richard Literary Agency, after she won the Choysa Bursary. In subseqquent years The Bookman sold various foreign rights to Rocco, The Juniper Game, and The Wednesday Wizard at the Bologna Book Fair.
He regards Jordan as one of NZ's finest writers for young people and rates Rocco as her finest work and one of the best fantasy works ever published in NZ. He is especially proud to have been the book's publisher.
In the US it was published as A Time of Darkness, a title he recalls that annoyed the author at the time.