#YA Book Prize

[bookishbloomsbury]

Each week @yabookprize are championing one of their shortlisted authors. This week we're firing up to champion #TeamCrossan and @SarahCrossan 's phenomenal shortlisted book Moonrise! Follow the #TeamCrossan hashtag to join the conversation across social media and keep your eyes peeled for Sarah’s twitter chat with @yabookprize on Twitter this Thursday at 8pm BST!

[atombooks]

Did you hear Straight Outta Crongton has been shortlisted for #YA10!   

#TeamWheatle @YABookPrize

[yaliteraturebookshelf]

@bookpigs is announced as a @yabookprize judge for 2018!

[yabookprize]

Publisher, submissions for the YA Book Prize are open now. You can see the full terms and conditions here. We’re excited to see your entries!

[bookishmagpie]

The winner of the #YABookPrize 2016 is... @One by @SarahCrossan pic.twitter.com/b688qDGv5n

— The YA Book Prize (@yabookprize) 2 June 2016

[mollylooby]

I'm sorry but how can you pick from the YA Book Prize shortlist? I've heard incredible things about all the shortlisted books.

[downtherabbitholeradio]

Read Charlotte Eyre’s piece on setting up the YA Book Prize.

[usborneyashelfies]

“A book that turns the idea of perfection on its head is Holly Bourne’s Am I Normal Yet?, whose heroine learns the value of female friendship as she struggles with severe OCD...”

[yabookprize]

Watch our YA Book Prize shortlisted authors at our Hay Festival event and Patrice Lawrence’s winning speech.

[bookishmagpie]

YA Book Prize: Shortlist

Here is the shortlist for the #YABookPrize 2016. We hope you like it! pic.twitter.com/JiGrOehQoV

— The YA Book Prize (@yabookprize) March 10, 2016

[bookswithbiteuk]

Being young is like being mad. Maybe just being human, at any age, is a bit like being mad. But maybe the best thing that we do, and the best thing that we are, come from madness.

David Almond, A Song for Ella Grey

[every-page]

The real difference is the blackness of my eyes. I've never met my father, never even seen my father. But I know that my eyes are his eyes.

Half Bad, Sally Green

[waterstonesuxbridge-blog]

A Song for Ella Grey, by David Almond

“Maybe it was all because we were young, and because being young is like being mad. Maybe just being human, at any age, is a bit like being mad. But maybe the best things that we do, and the best things that we are, come from madness.”

One of the conversations that has gained much traction in the last year or two amongst children’s/YA book aficionados is the desire to see more success and love for UK writers. The juggernauts that are The Fault In Our Stars and The Hunger Games can sometimes make it seem like American writers dominate the field.  Look further back, however, and it’s clear that this is a more recent phenomenon. Harry Potter and His Dark Materials were arguably the first books to really kickstart the huge appeal of YA, following in the honourable wake of many British writers who tended to work with the strange and fantastical. (More on them to come soon…)

One of those writers, the uncategorisable giant that is David Almond, has been writing stupendous books for so long it seems impossible to imagine the young literature field without him. Perhaps best known for Skellig, his books touch on big themes, have at least a touch of the magical in them, and sing about the wildernesses within Britain. His latest is a modern adaptation of the classic Greek myth ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’, set in the north of England. A nominee in this year’s inaugural YA Book Prize, it might seem at first, aside from Marcus Sedgwick’s The Ghosts of Heaven, possibly the most unusual entry.

Vague spoilers beneath the cut

Claire and Ella have been best friends since they were little. When their friends plan a camping trip to Bamburgh beach, Ella is made to stay at home by her parents. Claire and everyone else sing, get drunk, make music, swim in the icy North Sea – it seems like a typical but unremarkable teenage adventure. And then Orpheus comes, with his lyre and music, and he sings to Ella through Claire’s phone…

If you know the original myth, you know what happens next.

Myths have always resonated with us, being the stories we told each other to make sense of the world. Retold, reinterpreted, added to, they’re both ancient and contemporary, their timelessness making them resurface in innumerable stories and artworks. It isn’t that outlandish, really, to set a new ‘Orpheus/Eurydice’ story in today’s world, and in Northumbria at that. Teenagers feel things keenly, there is, as David said himself, a semi-wildness to them that taps into the power of mythic emotions. The themes of freedom and love, music and escape, wildness and madness, have never seemed more appropriate, more right than in this novel. The beach parties might be less Bacchic than Skins, but then Skins was more than a little nihilistic in its outlook. These northern teens hope for freedom and escape, they imagine Italy and Greece instead of Bamburgh beach.

Ancient stories can be set anywhere though; the north is revealed in all its amazing beauty and the wild landscape suits the almost elemental passions of Claire, Ella and Orpheus incredibly well. Almond’s prose style is lyrical without being ornate, giving us a sense of the beauty and sadness of the original myth without overwhelming his interpretation. The helplessness of Claire’s love, the strange suddenness of Ella and Orpheus’s relationship, the impossible-to-describe music: this is where myth and regular teen life mesh so brilliantly. Who hasn’t fallen in love or seen someone fall inexplicably quickly? Who hasn’t experienced life-changing music at 15 or 16, and tried and failed to tell others about why it affected you so much?

It is to Almond’s credit that the characters aren’t flat copies of previous stories. Maybe it’s too much to expect in-depth, fleshed out motivations and inner lives. Mythical characters are symbols and carriers of our deepest fears and emotions, and what we get here are teens at their most rawest and most vulnerable. Perhaps I should say, humans at their rawest and most vulnerable. An honourable mention HAS to go to Bianca and Crystal, unbearable, dramatic, sex-mad and funny teenagers at their best. I won’t be able to hear someone saying DING DONG without laughing from now on.

Reading A Song for Ella Grey is a richer experience if you know the original myth and something about ancient Greek storytelling/theatrical traditions, but if you don’t, that doesn’t hinder you from enjoying this story in the slightest.

Almond says he has other plans for modern interpretations of myths – I can’t wait! This novel is dreamy, moving, and the most beautifully designed I’ve seen in a while. Kudos must go to the editor and designer too, it really is gorgeous. If you haven’t read any of his other books, start with the incomparable Skellig.

Ming

Original review posted here

[welovethisbookextra-blog]

Read the full interview here.

[yabookprize]

Patrice Lawrence talks to us about winning the YA Book Prize 2017 and why representation in YA is important here.

[walkerbooksya]

Have we mentioned how incredibly excited we are that Trouble is on the yabookprize shortlist? Well, we're saying it again. 

Well done nonthepratt. You are awesome.