BOG’s Standard Raised Again

The late, lamented Siobhan Dowd’s BOG CHILD won the Bisto Book of the Year in the Children’s Book Awards, the second year running one of her books has found itself aboard the gravy train. Quoth the Irish Times:

IT IS “disturbing and disappointing” that the Department of Education has cut the school book grant to schools and libraries in a move that will “limit young people’s access to books”, the chairwoman of Children’s Books Ireland has said.
  Jane O’Hanlon was speaking at the announcement yesterday of the winners of the Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Awards.
  She described the department’s move as “retrogressive”, said it would “impact heavily on already overstretched schools and libraries”, and called for the decision to be reconsidered.
  Yesterday’s ceremony in Dublin marked the 19th year of the Children’s Book Awards.
  The top award for 2009 – the Bisto Book of the Year – went to the late Siobhan Dowd for BOG CHILD. The award was accepted by her sister Oona Emerson.
  Dowd died in August 2007 at the age of 47 after a long illness.
  The €10,000 prize money will be donated to the Siobhan Dowd Trust, which she established to help disadvantaged children improve their reading skills.
  BOG CHILD is about a boy, Fergus, who while digging turf finds the body of a child in the bog.

  In other news, while we’re on the topic of YA crime fiction, Rafe McGregor and Adrian McKinty (right) had a fascinating exchange over at Rafe’s blog. To wit:

  Rafe: “What project are you currently working on?”
  Adrian: “I’m working on a Young Adult novel provisionally called DARK ENERGY about a skateboard punk kid who moves to Colorado Springs.”
  Rafe: “Your crime fiction is clearly aimed at an adult audience, so I was surprised to see that you also write YA. Can you tell me about your work in this genre and how you came to it?”
  Adrian: “I had an idea for an initial novel about an emotionally damaged child who comes to Islandmagee (an area in Ireland very close to my heart) that I knew wasn’t appropriate as a crime novel so I wrote it as a YA and the one book eventually became three. The new YA however is a crime novel. It’s about a serial killer in a small town in Colorado, I’m calling it a YA noir. God alone knows if there’s a market for something like that, but that’s the story and I’m just telling it.”

  YA Noir? From Adrian McKinty? Colour me intrigued, squire …

Rather More Than A Quantum Of SOLACE

Can it really be 18 months since Siobhan Dowd (right) died? The much-lamented Siobhan, author of A SWIFT PURE CRY, THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY and BOG CHILD, has her last novel published by David Fickling Books, SOLACE OF THE ROAD, with the blurb elves twittering thusly:

Memories of Mum are the only thing that make Holly Hogan happy. She hates her foster family with their too-nice ways and their false sympathy. And she hates her life, her stupid school and the way everyone is always on at her. Then she finds the wig, and everything changes. Wearing the long, flowing blonde locks she feels transformed. She’s not Holly any more, she’s Solace: the girl with the slinkster walk and the super-sharp talk. She’s older, more confident - the kind of girl who can walk right out of her humdrum life, hitch to Ireland and find her mum. The kind of girl who can face the world head on. So begins a bittersweet, and sometimes hilarious journey as Solace swaggers and Holly tiptoes across England and through memory, discovering her true self, and unlocking the secrets of her past. SOLACE OF THE ROAD is a wonderful novel from one of the UK’s most talented new writers for teenagers. Holly’s story will leave a lasting impression on all who travel with her.

  Given that Siobhan was born in London to Irish parents, and spent quite a bit of her childhood flitting back and forth across the Irish Sea, it’s hard not to expect SOLACE OF THE ROAD to be the teensiest bit autobiographical, and all the more poignant for that. Go n-eírí an bóthar leat, Holly and Siobhan …

And Another Thing: Hurrah, It’s AND ANOTHER THING …!

One or two snippets you might have missed about the Irish YA brigade who have been known to dabble in the dark arts of crime fic, the first courtesy of the BBC:

Children’s author Eoin Colfer [right] has been commissioned to write a sixth instalment of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series.
  MOSTLY HARMLESS, the last Hitchhiker book, was written by its creator, the late Douglas Adams, 16 years ago.
  Now Adams’s widow, Jane Belson, has given her approval to bring back the hapless Arthur Dent in a new book entitled AND ANOTHER THING ...
  Eoin Colfer, 43, is best known for the best-selling Artemis Fowl novels.
  He said he was “terrified” by the prospect of creating a new Hitchhiker book almost a quarter of a century after being introduced to what he described as a “slice of satirical genius” in his late teens.

  Crumbs! Eoin Colfer writing Hitchhiker material? Truly our cup runneth over … Meanwhile, Love Reading 4 Kids brings us the news that Siobhan Dowd has been posthumously nominated for the Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize shortlist, with the Guardian’s big-up for BOG CHILD running thusly:

“One of the joys of this book is its willingness to confront big themes . . . BOG CHILD explores political conflict, personal heroism, human frailty, love and death. As a writer, Dowd appears to be incapable of a jarring phrase or a lazy metaphor. Her sentences sing - each note resonates with an urgent humanity of the sort that cannot be faked. BOG CHILD sparkles with optimism and a deep passion for living.” – Meg Rosoff

  The winner will be announced next Wednesday, September 24, and we’re all rooting for BOG CHILD. Finally, news wings our way that Derek Landy’s sequel to SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT, the eagerly anticipated PLAYING WITH FIRE, will get all kinds of jazzy, interwebby marketing strategies, in particular a virally marketed game called The Munchkin Army. Does that make Sir Landy the Munchking? Erm, no. Quoth Tom Conway, marketing boffin at HarperCollins Children’s Books:

“With the Munchkin Army we wanted to create an experience that would enrich the world of Skulduggery for our 20,000 registered users, whilst encouraging them to share their passion with potential new readers. We worked closely with Hyperlaunch to create a unique game that continues even after you’ve turned off your computer. The Munchkin Army rewards existing fans with a rich, fun and exciting adventure whilst introducing newcomers to a strange and intriguing new world.”

  Folks? Get Munchkining …

BOG Standard

The Grand Vizier being slavishly devoted to the works of the Durrell brothers, Lawrence and Gerald, and still rather peeved that the wonderful Siobhan Dowd (right) was called away too early to the great scriptorium in the sky, he was very pleased indeed to belatedly stumble across a fine piece in The Independent, in which Peter Stanford spoke with some of Siobhan’s peers about her talent and potential. To wit:

In an age when publishers talk endlessly of “cross-over” titles, for both adult and child readers, [Meg] Rosoff sees A SWIFT PURE CRY as part of a much more exclusive field of classics that are genuinely suitable for all ages. “It is one of the very, very few books, ostensibly written for children, that are equally readable and enjoyable for adults. With lots of so-called ‘cross-over’ books, adults can, of course, read them, but not get so much out of them as children will. I would place A SWIFT PURE CRY in the same category as Gerald Durrell’s MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS or TH White’s THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING. It is luminous, life-affirming and passionate.” […]
  Reading BOG CHILD now, however, Rosoff feels that it contains – for anyone who knew what Dowd was going through as she wrote it – a reflection of the author’s own struggle for life. “I don’t think you would notice it massively if you weren’t aware of Siobhan’s own story, but it is, for me, clearly a book written by a dying woman. At its most obvious it is about the discovery of a ‘bog child’, the body of a dead girl in a peat bog, and how her voice comes back from beyond the grave. The narrative, as it progresses, is more and more about questions of life and death.”
  There is, in the book, the hope of resurrection and of coming back from the brink, but that was not to be for Dowd. The tragedy of her premature death, all are agreed, is that she still had so many more books in her. “Some writers end up writing the book that has always been inside them and then they are done,” says Rosoff. “With Siobhan, I know she had an inexhaustible supply of story ideas. It is impossible not to feel cheated by her death.”

Those of a mind to support The Siobhan Dowd Trust, which carries on Siobhan’s life’s work, ‘to help disadvantaged children in the UK and Ireland discover and experience the joy of reading’, should click on this very link here …

In Siobhan We Trust

The news arrived last week, via Notes From The Slushpile, that Siobhan Dowd’s legacy is to be commemorated with the Siobhan Dowd Trust. Siobhan (right), tipped as a future ‘literary lion’ by the Sunday Times last year, passed away in August. Details of the trust can be found here, with the gist running thusly:

A trust has been set up to manage all the proceeds from [Siobhan’s] literary work. The aim of the trust will be to help disadvantaged children improve their reading skills and experience the joy of reading. It will offer financial support to: public libraries; state school libraries (especially in economically challenged areas); children in care; asylum seekers; young offenders and children with special needs. Cheques to be made payable to The Siobhan Dowd Trust and addressed to The Siobhan Dowd Trust, c/o Polly Nolan, Flat 10 Hendred House, Hendred Street, Oxford OX4 2ED, United Kingdom.

To give you some idea of the potential talent that was lost, Siobhan has in the last week or so been picked by The Independent as one of the authors of their ‘Ten Best Books for Teenagers’, for BOG CHILD, while she’s also been nominated, for THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY, in the Red House Children’s Books Awards. It’d break your heart, wouldn’t it?

An All-Too-Swift Pure Cry

We mentioned in passing yesterday that there was a memorial service being held in Oxford for the late Siobhan Dowd (right), a wonderful person and a marvellous writer, and when it comes to Siobhan it really doesn’t matter in which order you put those attributes. Ann Giles is a long-time friend of Crime Always Pays, and she’s posted her thoughts on the service over at Bookwitch, some of which runneth thusly:

“I felt compelled to go. So I went, and I’m glad I did. There was a memorial service for Siobhan Dowd in Oxford yesterday. The Holywell Music Rooms was a beautiful place to have it. The weather was beautiful. And the celebration of Siobhan’s life and work was beautifully put together. Siobhan’s husband Geoff and friends started it off by singing Gypsy Rover. Then David Fickling (“the Lancashire Comedian”) and Fiona Dunbar did their Oscars-style presentation. Siobhan’s sisters Denise and Oona talked about their childhood, and read from a favourite book. Bella Pearson read from A SWIFT PURE CRY and Phil Earle from THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY, which just showed us again how good these books are. Geoff read a poem by Siobhan, and Meg Rosoff read an extract from Siobhan’s next book, BOG CHILD. There was a lot of music and singing. Nick Gill played Scott Joplin. Daryl Wells sang Nina Simone. And we had real Bulgarian Gypsy music from Mike Limmer and Morski. There were readings from James Joyce, Irina Ratushinskaya, Henrietta Branford, Ezra Pound and Dylan Thomas …”

It’s all very sad, especially given Siobhan’s talent – she was feted as a future ‘literary lion’ by the Sunday Times earlier this year. Still, they need storytellers in heaven too, don’t they?

Dispatch From A Perch On London’s Eye

Not a bad week for Siobhan Dowd (right), people – her latest, The London Eye Mystery, launched last Thursday and made Children’s Book of the Week in The Sunday Times three days later, to wit: “Dowd’s story grips the reader from the opening chapter … Dowds’s first book, A Swift Pure Cry, was a deservedly acclaimed young adult novel. This second book, which is aimed at a young audience, demonstrates her versatility.” Which may or may not have prompted a sudden change in publishing schedule. Quoth Siobhan:

“David (Fickling) is insisting on publishing my just-finished fourth book ahead of Solace of the Road, so we’ve done a sudden switch in schedule. Number four is called Bog Child and it’s set on the north-south Irish border in 1981 ... and yes, it is eeerieee (I hope). Now it’s off to New York City to research follow-up to London Eye. My publishers are keen to have my young sleuths Ted and Kat back on another case ... and I can’t wait. I have an art heist in mind this time.”

You go, gal. Just don’t forget to come back to us, eh?