Booktrust Teenage Prize 2010
Established in 2003, the Booktrust Teenage Prize recognised the best in contemporary writing for teenagers. Unique in its involvement of teenagers in the judging process, giving four winners of a short story competition the opportunity to debate and vote on the shortlisted books with the adult judging panel, the Prize garnered a reputation for earmarking very special writers often early in their career, including Mark Haddon, Patrick Ness, Marcus Sedgwick and Anthony Macgowan. The Booktrust Teenage Prize was last awarded in 2010 and is no longer running.
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Winner
Unhooking the Moon
QuercusBob has a stubborn younger sister with disturbing fits and upsetting premonitions. She foretells her best friend's murder, their dog's disappearance and her father's death. Bob calls her the Rat.
Unhooking the Moon
Gregory Hughes
Winner, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Bob has a stubborn younger sister with disturbing fits and upsetting premonitions. She foretells her best friend's murder, their dog's disappearance and her father's death. Bob calls her the Rat.
Publisher: Quercus
Gregory Hughes
Gregory had a colourful childhood. He was expelled from his Catholic School in Liverpool and sent to a wayward home for boys near Southport before being sent to a detention centre. He then lived in the US working as a removal man and cleaning the windows of New York skyscrapers and had to sleep rough on numerous occasions.
When he returned to England he took his GCSEs and began writing, which he continued in New York where he attended creative writing classes. His debut novel, Unhooking the Moon, was written in eight months whilst living in Iceland. Gregory lives in Norway and is currently in Vancouver working on a series of scripts.
Gregory Hughes is a first-time writer who had an eventful childhood himself. Expelled from a Liverpool Jesuit school as a young teenager, he found himself in a home for boys and then in a detention centre. He has continued to lead a colourful life, working as a removal man, sleeping rough in Times Square, taking his GCSEs in his 20s and now working as a deep-sea diver, which he says inspires his creativity. The novel was written whilst Gregory was living in Iceland and sleeping on the floor of a room so small that he could touch both ends of the room while standing in the middle.
About the shortlist
Global adventures abounded in the 2010 shortlist, which took in ancient Greece, a disease-ridden London, Malaga, New York, the Arctic Circle and post- independence Zimbabwe as teenage protagonists struggle in search of their identity, and sometimes for their very survival.
A mother and daughter-writing partnership, Young James Bond author, previous Booktrust Teenage Prize winner, deep-sea diver, descendant of an international cricketer, and former editor of Ellegirl UK were all shortlisted.
Shortlist
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Halo
Puffin
Halo
Zizou Corder
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
As an adolescent, Halo is dragged from the love and security of her unconventional upbringing and sold as a slave.
Publisher: Puffin
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The Enemy
Puffin
The Enemy
Charlie Higson
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
When the sickness came, the adults became ill. The lucky ones died but many mutated into brainless, deformed monsters with a seemingly insatiable appetite - for children.
Publisher: Puffin
Charlie HigsonCharlie Higson
Charlie Higson is the author of the phenomenally successful Young Bond and The Enemy series.
Charlie is a man of many talents. He is a successful actor, comedian and writer for television and radio, but has been writing books for children since 2005.
After studying at the University of East Anglia, Charlie formed a band, The Higsons. He then became a decorator before turning to the world of television and going into partnership with his friend Paul Whitehouse. His successes include Saturday Live, the Harry Enfield Television Programme, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Shooting Stars, Randall and Hopkirk Deceased, the film Suite 16, Swiss Toni and of course, the Fast Show. He lives in London with his wife and three sons.
http://www.charliehigson.co.uk/ -
Unhooking the Moon
Quercus
Unhooking the Moon
Gregory Hughes
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Bob has a stubborn younger sister with disturbing fits and upsetting premonitions. She foretells her best friend's murder, their dog's disappearance and her father's death. Bob calls her the Rat.
Publisher: Quercus
Gregory Hughes
Gregory had a colourful childhood. He was expelled from his Catholic School in Liverpool and sent to a wayward home for boys near Southport before being sent to a detention centre. He then lived in the US working as a removal man and cleaning the windows of New York skyscrapers and had to sleep rough on numerous occasions.
When he returned to England he took his GCSEs and began writing, which he continued in New York where he attended creative writing classes. His debut novel, Unhooking the Moon, was written in eight months whilst living in Iceland. Gregory lives in Norway and is currently in Vancouver working on a series of scripts.
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Nobody's Girl
Hodder Children's Books
Nobody's Girl
Sarra Manning
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Bea's journey through the sundrenched boulevards of Paris will transport teenagers to another world in this astute and imaginative tale about identity and truth.
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
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Revolver
Orion Children's Books
Revolver
Marcus Sedgwick
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
When Sig Andersson is held hostage in his family's cabin in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness, he realises his dead father had an untold story that he must piece together.
Publisher: Orion Children's Books
Marcus SedgwickMarcus Sedgwick
Marcus Sedgwick began to write seriously in 1994, and his first book, Floodland, was published by Orion in 2000, and won the Branford-Boase award for best debut children's novel. Witch Hill followed in 2001, and was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Independent Reading Association award and the Portsmouth Book Award. In 2002 The Dark Horse was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, The Carnegie Medal and the Blue Peter Book Award.
The Book of Dead Days was nominated for the Guardian Award, and was shortlisted for the Sheffield Book Award and the Edgar Allan Poe Award.
In his spare time, Marcus is a drummer and at the moment play’s the part of Basil Exposition from behind the kit in The International Band of Mystery, an Austin Powers tribute band.
Marcus Sedgwick used to work in children's publishing and before that he was a bookseller. He now happily writes full-time. Marcus lives in Cambridge and has a young daughter, Alice.
http://www.marcussedgwick.com/Marcus_Sedgwick/Home.html -
Out of Shadows
Andersen Press
Out of Shadows
Jason Wallace
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Back in the early 1980s, Robert Jacklin doesn't want to move to the newly independent Zimbabwe with his parents, nor does he want to be shipped off to boarding school.
Publisher: Andersen Press
Judges
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Barbara BandBarbara Band is a Chartered librarian who has worked in a wide variety of secondary schools for over 20 years. Prior to this, she worked as a project management consultant for both the defence and telecommunications industries. Barbara runs several individual reading groups for all ages and abilities that focus on both National and local awards.
Barbara is an active member of both the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals (Cilip) and the School Library Association (SLA). She has given talks and workshops on a range of library-related topics from creating development plans through to reading schemes. She recently reached the School Librarian of the Year 2009 Honour’s List. -
Tony BradmanTony Bradman has been involved in the world of children’s books as a writer, reviewer and editor for 30 years. He has published many children’s books for all ages, and edited many anthologies of short stories and poetry. Tony has been active in writers’ organisations, having been chair of the Childrens’ Writers and Illustrators Group at The Society of Authors, and currently sits on the board of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society as vice-chair. He is also chair of Trustees for The Siobhan Dowd Trust – Tony published the first short story by award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd in one of his anthologies (Skin Deep), and the Trust was set up after Siobhan’s untimely death to give children from underprivileged backgrounds the chance to enjoy reading. Tony has three children and two grandchildren, and lives in London with his wife.
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Barbara EllenBefore joining The Observer in1996 Barbara worked as a music journalist for Loaded and at The Mail on Sunday. She is a regular columnist for The Guardian and The Observer.
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Claudia FreemantleClaudia is 16-year-old and goes to Hanley Castle High School in Worcestershire. Obviously, she loves to read but she is also a keen clarinettist, and sings in the Worcester Girls’ Cathedral Choir. She gets involved with drama and performances as often as she can within school and also in local amateur productions. She thoroughly enjoyed the experience last year, and is delighted to have been offered another chance to participate in the judging process for the Booktrust Teenage Prize again.
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Mary HoffmanMary Hoffman is the bestselling author of over 90 books, mainly for children and teenagers. Her titles cater for a wide range of readers, through picture books like Amazing Grace and its sequels to the successful teenage fantasy sequence, Stravaganza, and prize winning historical novels like The Falconer's Knot and Troubadour.
Mary is also a journalist, reviewing for The Guardian and on her Book Maven blog. She lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and has three grown-up daughters, all working in the Arts.
About the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2010
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