Guardian children's fiction prize shortlist unveiled -
First-time author Gregory Hughes vies with veteran authors for award

 Michelle Pauli guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 September 2010
 

 
Details from the covers of the Guardian children's fiction prize shortlist. (Clockwise from top left: Ghost Hunter, The Ogre of Oglefort, Unhooking the Moon, Now)

A debut novelist who wrote a road-trip tale while holed up in a room the size of a cupboard in Iceland has been shortlisted for the Guardian children's fiction prize, alongside veteran children's writers with scores of books under their belts.

Gregory Hughes is up for the prize with Unhooking the Moon, which has also been shortlisted for the Booktrust teenage prize. It's an extraordinary story of two orphaned siblings, the precocious, fascinating and infuriating 10-year-old Rat and her older brother Bob, who hitch a ride from Winnipeg to New York to look for their uncle on the strength of knowing his name and that he is a "drug-dealer".

Their compelling adventure is almost matched by the author's own back story. It involves teenage years spent in a home for wayward boys in Liverpool and a nomadic life in Canada and America, including a spell sleeping rough in New York, on which he drew for some of his young protaganists' adventures.

Judge Mal Peet, winner of last year's prize with Exposure, described the book as "sparky and anarchic" and the shortlist as a whole as "superb – variously poignant, suspenseful, complex, wry and rich – and utterly unalike. And there's nary a vampire, junior spy nor thong to be found in any of them. And that's a result."

The absence of vampires and thongs may have something to do with the age group that dominates this year's shortlist. Unusually, the contenders are overwhelmingly for the 9-12 age range, rather than the teen or 'crossover' books that often dominate children's books prizes.

According to Julia Eccleshare, the Guardian's children's books editor and chair of judges: "The prize shortlist reflects the impressive range of this year's output. While the headlines are dominated by the apparently all-consuming attraction of vampires and the importance of keeping teenagers reading, under the surface children's authors are writing books about myriad subjects, particularly for the nine-pluses, which is where attracting readers' attention and reeling them in is so vital."

However, the younger age bracket does not preclude books that tackle gritty or difficult subjects. Unhooking the Moon, while frequently funny, does not shy from the harsher edges of Bob and Rat's adventures, while Morris Gleitzman is in the running with the third book in his trilogy about friendship and the Holocaust, Now. The book concludes the tale of childhood friends Felix and Zelda with a story set in the present day. Felix is now an old man battling with his memories while his granddaughter, also called Zelda, has to live up to the bravery of her namesake against a backdrop of school bullying and terrifying forest fires.
Full report at The Guardian.