Booktrust Teenage Prize 2009
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
The Graveyard Book
BloomsburyBod sometimes goes beyond the graveyard into the world of the living – and here his life is under threat from the man Jack, who has sought him since he was a baby.
The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman
Winner, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Bod sometimes goes beyond the graveyard into the world of the living – and here his life is under threat from the man Jack, who has sought him since he was a baby.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Neil GaimanNeil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.
Gaiman's writing has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker, as well as the 2009 Newbery Medal and 2010 CILIP Carnegie Medal for The Graveyard Book. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work.
http://www.neilgaiman.co.uk/index.php
Chris RiddellChris Riddell
Chris Riddell is familiar to both children and adults for his distinctive line drawings with their clever caricature, fascinating detail and often enchanting fantasy elements.
He studied illustration at Brighton Polytechnic and has illustrated several picture books including Something Else by Kathryn Cave which was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize and which won the Unesco Award. The Swan's Stories by Brian Alderson was shortlisted for the 1997 Kurt Maschler Award and Castle Diary was shortlisted for the 1999 Kate Greenaway Medal. Pirate Diary won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2002 and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver won the 2004 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal.
Chris' popularity extends to the young teenage market with his collaboration with Paul Stewart on the best selling Edge Chronicles series, the ninth of which will be published later this year. For slightly younger children his Fergus Crane adventure series, again written by Paul Stewart, has achieved critical success with Fergus Crane winning the Smarties Gold Award and Corby Flood winning the Smarties Silver Award. An extraordinary achievement which cements Chris Riddell's position as one of the top illustrators working today.
In addition to his children's book work, Chris is a renowned political cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Observer, The Literary Review and The New Statesman. One of his claims to fame is that he was the first cartoonist to depict William Hague in shorts; an illustration that William Hague subsequently bought!
http://chrisriddell.panmacmillan.com/
Neil Gaiman, commonly known as the 'rock star' of the literary world, is revealed as the winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2009.
His book The Graveyard Book saw off competition from five other authors including Patrick Ness who was nominated for a second year. Ness won the prize last year with The Knife of Never Letting Go.
The Graveyard Book tells the story of Nobody 'Bod' Owens, a child abandoned in a graveyard after the vicious murder of his parents and sister by The Man Jack. Raised and educated by the ghosts that live there, Bod encounters terrible and unexpected menaces in the horror of the pit of the Sleer and the city of Ghouls. It is in the land of the living that the real danger lies as The Man Jack is determined to find Bod and finish him off.
Neil Gaiman is listed as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and is a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama. He is the creator of the iconic DC comic series Sandman, the only comic to ever make the New York Times Bestseller list.
His books have been adapted for a number of successful films, most recently the animated adventure Coraline. His screenplay Beowulf starred Angelina Jolie and Ray Winstone, and his book Stardust was adapted for a film starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.
In his acceptance speech, Neil paid credit to the authors that had inspired him:
Sometimes when we look big, and seem to see further, it's because we are standing on the shoulders of giants. The field of children’s literature has seen many giants, and those of us who toil in the field make our contributions using what we've learned from those who came first.
'I'm proud of The Graveyard Book. But I know I got to stand on the shoulders of giants in order to write it. There were two writers of children's fiction who influenced The Graveyard Book. Foremost, obviously, Rudyard Kipling, and his short story collection The Jungle Book; less obviously Pamela P.L Travers, and her Mary Poppins stories. And everyone else: the writers I learned from as a young reader, and the writers I've learned from as a writer: a host of other craftsmen and women I learned, or borrowed, or stole from, to build The Graveyard Book.
Shortlist
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Ausländer
Bloomsbury
Ausländer
Paul Dowswell
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Ausländer gives a fascinating insight into life in Berlin during WorldWar II – a perspective not frequently portrayed in young adult fiction.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Photo: Usborne PublishingPaul Dowswell
After doing a History degree at Goldsmith’s College in London, Paul began working as a researcher for museums and publishers. Paul started writing at Time-Life in London then moved to Usborne to work as an editor and writer of children’s non-fiction. After eight years he went freelance, writing information books for everyone from the National Trust and Hodder & Stoughton, to Scholastic’s Literacy Time classroom material and Microsoft’s DVD Encarta encyclopedia. Paul started to write more narrative non-fiction with Usborne’s True Stories series which gave him the confidence to try his hand at fiction. This led directly to the Powder Monkey series with Bloomsbury.
Paul divides his life between Wolverhampton, Chester and London. He lives in Wolverhampton with his wife and daughter. Outside of work Paul teaches a course in writing children’s books at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham.
http://www.pauldowswell.co.uk -
The Graveyard Book
Bloomsbury
The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Bod sometimes goes beyond the graveyard into the world of the living – and here his life is under threat from the man Jack, who has sought him since he was a baby.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Neil GaimanNeil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.
Gaiman's writing has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker, as well as the 2009 Newbery Medal and 2010 CILIP Carnegie Medal for The Graveyard Book. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work.
http://www.neilgaiman.co.uk/index.php
Chris RiddellChris Riddell
Chris Riddell is familiar to both children and adults for his distinctive line drawings with their clever caricature, fascinating detail and often enchanting fantasy elements.
He studied illustration at Brighton Polytechnic and has illustrated several picture books including Something Else by Kathryn Cave which was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize and which won the Unesco Award. The Swan's Stories by Brian Alderson was shortlisted for the 1997 Kurt Maschler Award and Castle Diary was shortlisted for the 1999 Kate Greenaway Medal. Pirate Diary won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2002 and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver won the 2004 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal.
Chris' popularity extends to the young teenage market with his collaboration with Paul Stewart on the best selling Edge Chronicles series, the ninth of which will be published later this year. For slightly younger children his Fergus Crane adventure series, again written by Paul Stewart, has achieved critical success with Fergus Crane winning the Smarties Gold Award and Corby Flood winning the Smarties Silver Award. An extraordinary achievement which cements Chris Riddell's position as one of the top illustrators working today.
In addition to his children's book work, Chris is a renowned political cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Observer, The Literary Review and The New Statesman. One of his claims to fame is that he was the first cartoonist to depict William Hague in shorts; an illustration that William Hague subsequently bought!
http://chrisriddell.panmacmillan.com/ -
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden
Helen Grant
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
This unusual crime novel is both gripping and haunting, and builds to an unforgettable ending.
Publisher: Puffin
Helen GrantHelen Grant
Helen Grant was born in London. She read Classics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and then worked in marketing for ten years in order to fund her love of travelling. In 2001 she and her family moved to Bad Münstereifel in Germany, and it was exploring the legends of this beautiful town that inspired her to write her first novel, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden. She wrote the self-help book Escape Domestic Violence which was published in 2007 by Hodder Headline in association with British daytime TV programme This Morning. She now lives in Brussels with her husband, her two children and a small German cat.
http://www.helengrantbooks.com/ -
Ostrich Boys
Definitions
Ostrich Boys
Keith Gray
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
When teenager Ross Fell is killed, his closest friends are horrified by the sham and hypocrisy of his funeral.
Publisher: Definitions
Keith GrayKeith Gray
Keith was born and brought up in Grimsby.
His first book, Creepers, was published in 1996 when he was only 24. The novel was highly acclaimed and shortlisted for the Guardian Award. It was translated into several languages and was a big hit in America. His short novel, The Runner, won the Smarties Silver Award and was given a special mention in the Japanese Sankei Prize for Children’s Publishing.
Keith has now published several teen novels as well as his younger fiction titles. His aim is to write strong, accessible fiction for the sceptical and hard-to-please reader he once was.
Warehouse, the story of a community of runaways told from three different perspectives was shortlisted for the Guardian Award, and won the Angus Book Award, as chosen by teenage readers themselves. Happy, his gritty story of friendship, love and betrayal as two friends try to realise a dream of making it big in a rock band was shortlisted for the Lancashire Book Award.
Malarkey followed in June 2003 to fantastic critical acclaim. Described by the Sunday Times as ‘clever, cool and suspenseful’, it is an off-beat spin on film noir detective stories, set in a modern high school where the eponymous hero is framed for a crime he didn’t commit and has only 24 hours to prove his innocence. The novel won the South Lanarkshire Book Award as well as being shortlisted for the Book Trust Teenage Prize, the Angus Book Award, Calderdale Book Award, Lancashire Book Award, Leicester Book Award and Wirral Paperback of the Year.
The Fearful, challenges readers to question blind faith but condemn intolerance towards others’ beliefs. The Fearful was long listed for the Carnegie Medal.
Keith’s latest novel Ostrich Boys, published in July 2008, follows three friends Kenny, Sim and Blake who embark on a remarkable journey of friendship. Stealing the urn containing the ashes of their best friend Ross, they set out from Cleethorpes on the east coast to travel the 261 miles to the tiny hamlet of Ross in Dumfries and Galloway. After a depressing and dispriting funeral they feel taking Ross to Ross will be a fitting memorial for a 15 year-old boy who changed all their lives through his friendship. Little do they realise just how much Ross can still affect life for them even though he's now dead.
This is Keith Gray's first new novel in three years and is a wonderful rites-of-passage story combing elements from Stand By Me, An Inspector Calls and Grand Theft Parsons. Ostrich Boys was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Children’s Book of the Year Award.
Keith lectured for two years in Creative Writing at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, where he really enjoyed working with people who shared the same interests and ambitions as him. He now lives in Edinburgh and spends much of his time visiting schools passing on his love of books. -
The Ant Colony
HarperCollins Children's Books
The Ant Colony
Jenny Valentine
Shortlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Sam and Bo reveal their pasts in alternate chapters, each gradually facing the dysfunctional relationships and traumatic incidents which have triggered their current unlikely friendship.
Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books
Jenny ValentineJenny Valentine
Jenny Valentine worked in a wholefood shop in Primrose Hill for 15 years where she met many extraordinary people – including the inspiration for character Violet Park – and sold more organic loaves than there are words in her first novel. She studied English Literature at Goldsmith’s College, which almost put her off reading but not quite.
Jenny is married to a singer/songwriter and has two children. She lives in Hay-on-Wye, where she runs another wholefood shop, hoping to find the inspiration for many more novels.
Finding Violet Park, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, was published in January 2007, followed by Broken Soup in January 2008. The Ant Colony, published in March 2009, is her third teen novel.
Longlist
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Solitaire
Usborne
Solitaire
Bernard Ashley
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Danger, despair and drama permeate this adventure story which presents its hero with a major moral dilemma
Publisher: Usborne
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Bloodchild
Oxford University Press
Bloodchild
Tim Bowler
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
All he knows is that the raven-haired, blue-eyed girl in his dreams holds the key to a dark secret about his home town. The locals nickname Will 'mad boy' because of his nightmarish trances. Only his friend Beth and the laid-back vicar really believe in him and agree that there is evil at the heart of Havensmouth. Ultimately it is Will who has to risk everything to save a small boy and uncover a web of vice and immorality.
Love and hate, right and wrong, belonging and being different are important themes in this spellbinding teenage thriller which will transfix its readers.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
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Ausländer
Bloomsbury
Ausländer
Paul Dowswell
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Ausländer gives a fascinating insight into life in Berlin during WorldWar II – a perspective not frequently portrayed in young adult fiction.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Photo: Usborne PublishingPaul Dowswell
After doing a History degree at Goldsmith’s College in London, Paul began working as a researcher for museums and publishers. Paul started writing at Time-Life in London then moved to Usborne to work as an editor and writer of children’s non-fiction. After eight years he went freelance, writing information books for everyone from the National Trust and Hodder & Stoughton, to Scholastic’s Literacy Time classroom material and Microsoft’s DVD Encarta encyclopedia. Paul started to write more narrative non-fiction with Usborne’s True Stories series which gave him the confidence to try his hand at fiction. This led directly to the Powder Monkey series with Bloomsbury.
Paul divides his life between Wolverhampton, Chester and London. He lives in Wolverhampton with his wife and daughter. Outside of work Paul teaches a course in writing children’s books at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham.
http://www.pauldowswell.co.uk -
The Graveyard Book
Bloomsbury
The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Bod sometimes goes beyond the graveyard into the world of the living – and here his life is under threat from the man Jack, who has sought him since he was a baby.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Neil GaimanNeil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.
Gaiman's writing has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker, as well as the 2009 Newbery Medal and 2010 CILIP Carnegie Medal for The Graveyard Book. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work.
http://www.neilgaiman.co.uk/index.php
Chris RiddellChris Riddell
Chris Riddell is familiar to both children and adults for his distinctive line drawings with their clever caricature, fascinating detail and often enchanting fantasy elements.
He studied illustration at Brighton Polytechnic and has illustrated several picture books including Something Else by Kathryn Cave which was shortlisted for the Smarties Prize and which won the Unesco Award. The Swan's Stories by Brian Alderson was shortlisted for the 1997 Kurt Maschler Award and Castle Diary was shortlisted for the 1999 Kate Greenaway Medal. Pirate Diary won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2002 and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver won the 2004 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal.
Chris' popularity extends to the young teenage market with his collaboration with Paul Stewart on the best selling Edge Chronicles series, the ninth of which will be published later this year. For slightly younger children his Fergus Crane adventure series, again written by Paul Stewart, has achieved critical success with Fergus Crane winning the Smarties Gold Award and Corby Flood winning the Smarties Silver Award. An extraordinary achievement which cements Chris Riddell's position as one of the top illustrators working today.
In addition to his children's book work, Chris is a renowned political cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Observer, The Literary Review and The New Statesman. One of his claims to fame is that he was the first cartoonist to depict William Hague in shorts; an illustration that William Hague subsequently bought!
http://chrisriddell.panmacmillan.com/ -
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden
Helen Grant
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
This unusual crime novel is both gripping and haunting, and builds to an unforgettable ending.
Publisher: Puffin
Helen GrantHelen Grant
Helen Grant was born in London. She read Classics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and then worked in marketing for ten years in order to fund her love of travelling. In 2001 she and her family moved to Bad Münstereifel in Germany, and it was exploring the legends of this beautiful town that inspired her to write her first novel, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden. She wrote the self-help book Escape Domestic Violence which was published in 2007 by Hodder Headline in association with British daytime TV programme This Morning. She now lives in Brussels with her husband, her two children and a small German cat.
http://www.helengrantbooks.com/ -
Ostrich Boys
Definitions
Ostrich Boys
Keith Gray
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
When teenager Ross Fell is killed, his closest friends are horrified by the sham and hypocrisy of his funeral.
Publisher: Definitions
Keith GrayKeith Gray
Keith was born and brought up in Grimsby.
His first book, Creepers, was published in 1996 when he was only 24. The novel was highly acclaimed and shortlisted for the Guardian Award. It was translated into several languages and was a big hit in America. His short novel, The Runner, won the Smarties Silver Award and was given a special mention in the Japanese Sankei Prize for Children’s Publishing.
Keith has now published several teen novels as well as his younger fiction titles. His aim is to write strong, accessible fiction for the sceptical and hard-to-please reader he once was.
Warehouse, the story of a community of runaways told from three different perspectives was shortlisted for the Guardian Award, and won the Angus Book Award, as chosen by teenage readers themselves. Happy, his gritty story of friendship, love and betrayal as two friends try to realise a dream of making it big in a rock band was shortlisted for the Lancashire Book Award.
Malarkey followed in June 2003 to fantastic critical acclaim. Described by the Sunday Times as ‘clever, cool and suspenseful’, it is an off-beat spin on film noir detective stories, set in a modern high school where the eponymous hero is framed for a crime he didn’t commit and has only 24 hours to prove his innocence. The novel won the South Lanarkshire Book Award as well as being shortlisted for the Book Trust Teenage Prize, the Angus Book Award, Calderdale Book Award, Lancashire Book Award, Leicester Book Award and Wirral Paperback of the Year.
The Fearful, challenges readers to question blind faith but condemn intolerance towards others’ beliefs. The Fearful was long listed for the Carnegie Medal.
Keith’s latest novel Ostrich Boys, published in July 2008, follows three friends Kenny, Sim and Blake who embark on a remarkable journey of friendship. Stealing the urn containing the ashes of their best friend Ross, they set out from Cleethorpes on the east coast to travel the 261 miles to the tiny hamlet of Ross in Dumfries and Galloway. After a depressing and dispriting funeral they feel taking Ross to Ross will be a fitting memorial for a 15 year-old boy who changed all their lives through his friendship. Little do they realise just how much Ross can still affect life for them even though he's now dead.
This is Keith Gray's first new novel in three years and is a wonderful rites-of-passage story combing elements from Stand By Me, An Inspector Calls and Grand Theft Parsons. Ostrich Boys was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Children’s Book of the Year Award.
Keith lectured for two years in Creative Writing at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, where he really enjoyed working with people who shared the same interests and ambitions as him. He now lives in Edinburgh and spends much of his time visiting schools passing on his love of books. -
Three Ways to Snog an Alien
Faber Children's Books
Three Ways to Snog an Alien
Graham Joyce
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
This light-hearted look at teenage relationships is full of comedic moments and typically teenage observations
Publisher: Faber Children's Books
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The Ask and the Answer
Walker Books
The Ask and the Answer
Patrick Ness
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Themes of dictatorship, terrorism and privacy reign in Ness’s darker science fiction sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go.
Publisher: Walker Books
Patrick NessPatrick Ness
Patrick grew up in the US and studied English Literature at the University of Southern California. He moved to London in 1999. Since then he has published four novels. The Knife of Never Letting Go won numerous awards, including the Booktrust Teenage Prize, the Guardian Award, and the 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. In January 2010 he won the 2009 Costa Book Award for the category children's book for The Ask and the Answer. He has also written a novel and a collection of short stories for adults, although he prefers not to categorise his writing in this way.
He taught creative writing at Oxford University and has written and reviewed for The Daily Telegraph, The TLS, The Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian.Patrick Ness was Booktrust's first-ever online writer in residence.
Read an interview with Patrick
http://www.patrickness.com/ -
Exposure
Walker Books
Exposure
Mal Peet
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
The third of Peet's thrillers involving South American football journalist Paul Faustino. The novel superimposes Posh and Becks-type characters on the plot of Othello, involving corruption, deceit and apparent infidelity.
There’s not a great deal of football, especially as Otello’s mind is poisoned by his manager, and his game suffers. Interlinked is the story of three street children, teenagers whose lives cross Faustino’s, and one of whom becomes the pawn in a plot to implicate Otello in a porn-related murder.
In previous novels Peet has revealed the corruption, violence and poverty endemic to his fictitious society. In this one he exposes considerable additional evil, including racism and child abuse.
Publisher: Walker Books
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Tales of Terror from the Black Ship
Bloomsbury
Tales of Terror from the Black Ship
Chris Priestley
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
‘I do so love to be frightened,’ says Cathy – as she and her brother, with increasing discomfort, listen to his plentiful store of macabre and supernatural stories from the high seas.
Priestly draws on all the gruesome and outlandish conventions of the Gothic to offer these deliciously chilling tales of demons, horrors, curses and hauntings.The story telling and the illustrations, with their fine (as if etched) lines are brilliantly unsettling, and we savour the thrill of dread – knowing that something fearful waits in the wings.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Chris Priestley photo: Judith WeikChris Priestley
Chris Priestley has been a cartoonist and illustrator for many years, working mainly for magazines and newspapers. He currently has a weekly strip cartoon called Payne’s Grey in the New Statesman. Chris has been a published author since 2000. He has written several books for children, both fiction and non-fiction. Death and the Arrow was shortlisted for a Mystery Writer’s of America Edgar award in the US in 2004, and Redwulf’s Curse won the Lancashire Fantastic Book Award in 2006. Ever since he was a teenager Chris has loved unsettling and creepy stories, with fond memories of buying comics like 'Strange Tales' and 'House of Mystery', watching classic BBC TV adaptations of M R James ghost stories every Christmas and reading assorted weirdness by everyone from Edgar Allen Poe to Ray Bradbury. He hopes his ghostly tales will haunt his readers in the way those writers have haunted him.
http://www.talesofterror.co.uk/ -
Furnace Lockdown
Faber Children's Books
Furnace Lockdown
Alexander Gordon Smith
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Cleverly constructed and well characterised, it will leave readers eagerly anticipating the second installment
Publisher: Faber Children's Books
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The Ant Colony
HarperCollins Children's Books
The Ant Colony
Jenny Valentine
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Sam and Bo reveal their pasts in alternate chapters, each gradually facing the dysfunctional relationships and traumatic incidents which have triggered their current unlikely friendship.
Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books
Jenny ValentineJenny Valentine
Jenny Valentine worked in a wholefood shop in Primrose Hill for 15 years where she met many extraordinary people – including the inspiration for character Violet Park – and sold more organic loaves than there are words in her first novel. She studied English Literature at Goldsmith’s College, which almost put her off reading but not quite.
Jenny is married to a singer/songwriter and has two children. She lives in Hay-on-Wye, where she runs another wholefood shop, hoping to find the inspiration for many more novels.
Finding Violet Park, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, was published in January 2007, followed by Broken Soup in January 2008. The Ant Colony, published in March 2009, is her third teen novel. -
Numbers
Chicken House
Numbers
Rachel Ward
Longlisted, Booktrust Teenage Prize
Jem avoids relationships, until she meets Spider, another outsider, and her life takes a happier turn. But on their first day out together, Jem realises something terrible - everyone in the queue has the same number – and her world is about to explode.
As we follow Jem and Spider we become increasingly drawn into their experience, and we can imagine the impact of Jem’s dreadful discovery in the book’s final sentence.
This is the first in the Numbers trilogy from Rachel Ward, a tautly plotted teenage thriller which poses disturbing questions of ethics, free will, predestination, and societal expectation.
Publisher: Chicken House
For the second year running, we released a longlist to celebrate the thrilling best of the year's books for teenagers.
Judges
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Daniel HahnDaniel Hahn is a writer and translator. With Leonie Flynn and Susan Reuben he is also the editor of the Ultimate Book Guides series of reading guides for children and teenagers.
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Judi JamesJudi James has 30 years experience in education. She trained as a Primary School Teacher and has taught Infants, Middle School and Secondary school pupils. She has been a Class Teacher, Middle Infants Coordinator, Head of Art, Special Educational Needs Coordinator (Y5 -Y13) and a Director of Literacy. The importance of reading for pleasure and its positive effect on all aspects of learning has been central to her role.
She is currently encouraging reading for pleasure as Teacher/Library Manager, having recently designed and stocked the brand new Secondary School Library. She was a member of the Booked Up panel for 2008. -
Aniketa Khushu
Aniketa Khushu was a teenage judge for the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize. She is 15 years old and attends The Crossley Heath Grammar School in Halifax. She has always enjoyed writing, especially short stories and poems. She is also interested in music and plays the piano, guitar and clarinet.
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Alyson RuddAlyson was educated at the London School of Economics and was a financial reporter before becoming a sports writer. She has published two books; a biography of Matthew Harding, the Chelsea director killed in a helicopter crash, and Astroturf Blonde, an account of her playing career in men's and women's football teams. She ran The Times Books group and writes for The Times sports pages reporting, in particular, on football. Alyson is a qualified football coach and referee. She is a judge for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. Alyson is married, has two sons and lives in South West London.
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Marcus SedgwickMarcus Sedgwick is the author of a dozen books for children and teenagers, and his books have been shortlisted for, or won, over twenty prizes. My Swordhand is Singing won the Booktrust Teenage Prize in 2007.
About the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2009
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