And the Winner is...

On Thursday evening, the winners of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2013 were announced... Drum roll, please...

Picture book category winner: Lunchtime by Rebecca Cobb

Children's fiction category winner: Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Teenage fiction category winner: Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher

And the overall winner for 2013 is: Ketchup Clouds. Awesome. Annabel Pitcher has written a lovely blog post about the awards evening - wouldn't it have been brilliant to be a fly on the wall of that party? A room full of some of the best children's authors around and the people that support them and children's reading. I also recommend watching this fabulous video that Waterstones commissioned to show off the shortlist...

Ketchup Clouds, by Annabel Pitcher

Ketchup Clouds is absolutely compulsive reading. An epistolary novel, this is Zoe’s story told through a series of letters that she writes to a prisoner on death row. Why him? Well, she figures they’ve got a bit in common: they have both committed murder. Except Zoe has gotten away with it while Stuart Harris hasn’t. Zoe needs to confide in someone and this stranger is the only person she feels she can talk to, and quietly, bit by bit, she reveals the details of her secret.

A love story and a story of secrets, Annabel Pitcher has worked into her book many different layers, family tensions, and miscommunications, culminating in both the tragedy that Zoe cannot escape from and the beginnings of release from secrets held too close. It takes a real quality of writing to so successfully create the perfect balance between emotional catharsis and the story’s revelations that Pitcher achieves here. Her place on the shortlist of the Waterstones 2013 Children’s Book Prize is well deserved. In fact, personally, I’d say she’s in with a strong chance of winning.

At the beginning of her story, Zoe meets two boys: Max and Aaron. She begins two different kinds of relationships with them, which gradually descends into confusion as the lies and secrets begin to take hold - she knows what, or who, she really wants, but trying to get it right is a lot harder than perhaps it should be. As the different deceptions build up into the leaning tower of Pisa, Zoe very efficiently keeps us guessing as to which of the two boys is ultimately going to be the victim of her ‘crime’. Meanwhile, there are troubles at home. Zoe has two little sisters - Dot, the apple of their mother’s eye, and Sophie who is increasingly left out of the fold. Add to this the fact that their father has just been made redundant, and that there is some mysterious rift between the family and their grandfather. Why does Zoe’s mum refuse to get a job? Why does she refuse to let the children visit their sick grandfather? And why is she so obsessed about finding a ‘cure’ for Dot’s disability? Everyone in this family has something to hide.

Pitcher’s characters are lifelike, rounded and realistic. Zoe is a student of average capability and average popularity but is as equally unable to resist as I would be when the popular boy in school seeks her out, and she dabbles in teenage experimentation without taking it beyond the realm of no return, making this a well-balanced story for the average teenager (15+?).

The lead-in, “I know what it’s like... Mine was a boy. And I killed him. Three months ago exactly... No one has a clue and I’m walking around like that boy, Scot Free, saying all the right things and doing all the right stuff, but inside I’m sort of screaming,” is highly compelling and Zoe’s writing style is simple and easy to read, drawing you deeper and deeper into her story. My only slight irritation was the way in which, although neither parents were working, they seemed to have zero monetary concerns - if I remember correctly, the father drives a BMW for goodness' sake - in the real world in this situation, belts would be being tightened and arguing over who gets to look for a job wouldn't really be a consideration.

Ketchup Clouds subtly reminds us that one lie easily leads to another, and secrets can be dark and dreadful things, eating away inside you. An excellently woven story, and one that I can see myself reading a second time.

Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman

Isn’t it great when a book completely surprises you? I was sent Seraphina in a pile of review copies and wound up leaving it until almost last before picking it up. This turns out to have been a good thing because, whoa, what a dark horse. Out now in a much cooler paperback, the cover design and blurb on the hardback copy I had didn’t really do the story inside justice, hence the part where I had left it to the end. In short: Seraphina is fab, and how awesome to see some really interesting and different fantasy emerging into the teen market. Goodbye lovelorn vampires and werewolves: this is the real deal and treats the teenage reading audience with so much more respect.

Seraphina is set in Goredd, a world where humans and dragons coexist. For centuries they have been two peoples at war with each other, but finally, within the last human generation, they have reached a tentative peace and are learning to coexist in a more true sense: in a fascinating twist of world-building, the dragons in Rachel Hartman’s world have the ability to take human form. Thus they can walk in the city and learn human ways; for the humans’ sanity though, dragons must identify themselves as such by wearing a small bell, for the dragons’ sanity, they must undergo regular checks to ensure they are not developing emotions: for dragons, logic is everything.

Into this world steps Seraphina, a young woman who has taken on the role of music mistress in the royal palace. Little does she know how big her role in framing the future of Goredd is about to become. The peace between dragons and humans is as tenuous as a spider’s web, and there are some who would gladly break it. For starters, the prince has been murdered and all fingers point to the dragons. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? With her impressive knowledge of dragons, Seraphina is drawn into the investigation and drawn into the life of the palace. But this puts her own safety at greater and greater risk, for she holds a powerful secret - can she keep it hidden? Will it be her downfall, or will she be the key to saving the kingdom?

Seraphina starts off strong, and then simply moves from strength to strength. The plotting is careful and intriguing, quietly introducing more threads and ideas as it builds and builds. Who is the traitor? Who can she trust? Medieval and modern all in one, there is murder and darkness, humour, a touch of romance, secrets and mysteries and political masterminding, and some really fabulous world-building to boot. The dragons are fully characterised, Hartman giving us a taster of both their natural form and their human, telling us the story through both up-to-the-minute action and flashbacks, all whilst encouraging us to consider certain moral and ethical questions. This is where fantasy works at its absolute best.

Seraphina is a book that absolutely deserves to have made it onto the 2013 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize shortlist, but I would be at pains to point out that the quality and the storytelling is of such a standard that it is just as equally deserving of a place in the adult fantasy section. Dragon author Christopher Paolini made his name with Eragon and the Inheritance series; personally, I think Seraphina is better. Original and with a strong female lead who knows how to stand up for herself, there is little more I would ask of Hartman, except this: deliver an equally awesome part two please. Ten out of ten.