From The Times
March 20, 2010
Janet Foxley’s Muncle Trogg wins the Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Prize
A midget giant, a dragon and a cracking tale



 Photo left - Janet Foxley

Story by Amanda Craig


Janet Foxley’s Muncle Trogg, about a fairytale community living in a volcano, hidden from human beings, is the winner of the 2010 Times/Chicken House prize for an unpublished children’s author. It’s a classic story about a giant who is thought to be a freak for being human-sized, but who saves his family fortunes and his community after many misadventures involving a solarpowered dragon, a disgraced brother and a kidnapped child, all told with a humour and directness that children of 6-9 will love.

The annual Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Prize has uncovered some amazing new authors since its inception in 2008. The first year, we struck gold right away with Emily Diamond’s Reavers’ Ransom (now published as Flood Child), a futuristic adventure about a girl trying to rescue her best friend in a Britain rendered unrecognisable by global warming and floods. It had brutal pirates, a strange object that turned into an irritable talking head that everyone believed to be a war weapon, a sea-cat and a captivating heroine. It became an international success. In 2008 one of the shortlisted titles was so good that Chicken House decided to take it on too. After collaboration with Chicken House publisher Barry Cunningham, Pat Walsh’s Crowfield Feather, an outstanding magical medieval mystery set in a monastery, was published to wide acclaim this year.

This is what is special about Cunningham, who, famously, is the one editor who spotted J. K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel, when he worked at Bloomsbury. Cunningham, unlike far too many modern editors, works with every author he takes on to make their book better. His talent for spotting winners is legendary.
“One of my children used to call it ‘getting the feeling’ when he was especially excited about a book, film or cartoon,” he says. “He ‘got it’ with Roald Dahl’s The Magic Finger, with the stunning and scary animation Spirited Away and, I’m so glad to say, he ‘got it’ when I asked him to read Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, by the then unknown author J. K. Rowling. We both did.”
Read the rest at The Times.