Guardian Award to Philip Reeve

Thanks to Achuka for the alert about the winner of the Guardian Children's book Award (with photos and everything). And major congratulations to Philip Reeve - one of my favorite authors writing for young people today.

The four books, starting with Mortal Engines, are highly original, creating a totally convincing futuristic world existing in pre-technologicalish times (I've heard the genre is called 'steam punk'). He's got great characters, including Tom who works with the historians on the movable city of London. And Hester, a disfigured and fiery teenage girl with anger issues. She's one of my favorite ambiguous heroines, with complicated emotions and motivations. Reeve won the award for the final book in the quartet: A Darkling Plain. All four books have wonderful covers, by the way. I love the retro, colorful look.

So, if you are going to be anywhere near London on Saturday, 11 November, there's an even more compelling reason to come to the 13th annual British IBBY/NCRCL MA conference. Reeve will be our last speaker of the day. The theme of the event is Time Everlasting: Representations of Past, Present and Future in Children's Literature, and Reeve was our first choice as an author. He'll be in conversation with NCRCL (National Centre for Research in Children's Literature) tutor Lisa Sainsbury. I'll have to contact his publisher and see if we can do anything to celebrate his win. I'm very excited (can you tell?)... Book your place early, because this event usually sells out, and I'm sure it will this year.

Here's the Guardian's original announcement, the article published the next day, and another the day after (in which Julia Eccleshare waxes lyrical about Reeve's books).