Aidan Chambers (born 27 December 1934) is a British author of children's and young-adult novels. He won both the British Carnegie Medal [1] and the American Printz Award [2] for Postcards from No Man's Land (1999). For his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002. [3] [4]
Born near Chester-le-Street, County Durham in 1934, Chambers was an only child, and a poor scholar; considered "slow" by his teachers, he did not learn to read fluently until the age of nine. [5] After two years in the Royal Navy as part of his National Service, Chambers trained as a teacher and taught for three years at Westcliff High School in Southend on Sea before joining an Anglican monastery in Stroud, Gloucestershire in 1960. His young-adult novel Now I Know (1987) is based partly on his experiences as a monk.
His first plays, including Johnny Salter (1966), The Car and The Chicken Run (1968), were published while he was a teacher at Archway School in Stroud.
Chambers left the monastery in 1967 and a year later became a freelance writer. His works include the "Dance sequence" of six novels (1978 to 2005): Breaktime , Dance on My Grave , Now I Know , The Toll Bridge , Postcards from No Man's Land and This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn . He and his wife, Nancy, founded Thimble Press and the magazine Signal to promote literature for children and young adults. They were awarded the Eleanor Farjeon Award for outstanding services to children's books in 1982. From 2003 to 2006 he was President of the School Library Association.
Chambers won two major annual book awards for Postcards from No Man's Land, published by Bodley Head in 1999, one being the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. [1] The other was the Michael L. Printz Award for specifically young-adult literature, recognising the first US edition published three years later. [2] [lower-alpha 1]
He has also received several general awards and honours.
Chambers has also compiled and edited many other children's books, several concerning ghosts. Ghosts Four was edited as Malcolm Blacklin.
Susan Mary Cooper is an English author of children's books. She is best known for The Dark Is Rising, a contemporary fantasy series set in England and Wales, which incorporates British mythology such as the Arthurian legends and Welsh folk heroes. For that work, in 2012 she won the lifetime Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, recognizing her contribution to writing for teens. In the 1970s two of the five novels were named the year's best English-language book with an "authentic Welsh background" by the Welsh Books Council.
Lois Ann Lowry is an American writer. She is the author of several books for children and young adults, including The Giver Quartet,Number the Stars, and Rabble Starkey. She is known for writing about difficult subject matters, dystopias, and complex themes in works for young audiences.
Eleanor Farjeon was an English author of children's stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire. Several of her works had illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. Some of her correspondence has also been published. She won many literary awards and the Eleanor Farjeon Award for children's literature is presented annually in her memory by the Children's Book Circle, a society of publishers. She was the sister of thriller writer Joseph Jefferson Farjeon.
Margaret Mahy was a New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. Many of her story plots have strong supernatural elements but her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up. She wrote more than 100 picture books, 40 novels and 20 collections of short stories. At her death she was one of thirty writers to win the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her "lasting contribution to children's literature".
The Hans Christian Andersen Awards are two literary awards given by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), recognising one living author and one living illustrator for their "lasting contribution to children's literature". The writing award was first given in 1956, the illustration award in 1966. The former is sometimes called the "Nobel Prize for children's literature".
Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL was an English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.
Geraldine McCaughrean is a British children's novelist. She has written more than 170 books, including Peter Pan in Scarlet (2004), the official sequel to Peter Pan commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the holder of Peter Pan's copyright. Her work has been translated into 44 languages worldwide. She has received the Carnegie Medal twice and the Michael L. Printz Award among others.
The Michael L. Printz Award is an American Library Association literary award that annually recognizes the "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit". It is sponsored by Booklist magazine; administered by the ALA's young-adult division, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA); and named for the Topeka, Kansas, school librarian Mike Printz, a long-time active member of YALSA.
David Almond is a British author who has written many novels for children and young adults from 1998, each one receiving critical acclaim.
Markus Zusak is an Australian writer with Austrian and German roots. He is best known for The Book Thief and The Messenger, two novels which became international bestsellers. He won the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 2014.
Cecil Bødker was a Danish writer and poet, most known for young adult fiction books about the character "Silas". For her "lasting contribution to children's literature" she received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Writing in 1976.
Jennifer Donnelly is an American writer of young adult fiction best known for the historical novel A Northern Light.
Marcus Sedgwick is a British writer, illustrator and musician. He has published novels such as Floodland and The Dark Horse. He authored several picture books, and has illustrated a collection of myths and a book of folk tales for adults.
Postcards from No Man's Land is a young-adult novel by Aidan Chambers, published by Bodley Head in 1999. Two stories are set in Amsterdam during 1994 and 1944. One features 17-year-old visitor Jacob Todd during the 50-year commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem, in which his grandfather fought; the other features 19-year-old Geertrui late in the German occupation of the Netherlands. It was the fifth of six novels in the series Chambers calls "The Dance Sequence", which he inaugurated in 1978 with Breaktime.
The Eleanor Farjeon Award is made for distinguished service to the world of British children's books and is given to someone whose commitment and contribution is deemed to be outstanding. Founded in 1966, it is presented annually in memory of the celebrated author Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965). The spirit of the award is to recognise the unsung heroes who contribute so much to every aspect of children's books. The award is administered by the Children's Book Circle and sponsored by the Eleanor Farjeon Trust.
The Little Bookroom is a collection of twenty-seven stories for children by Eleanor Farjeon, published by Oxford University Press in 1955 with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. They were selected by the author from stories published earlier in her career. Most were in the fairy tale style.
This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn is a young adult novel by Aidan Chambers, published in 2005.
Breaktime is a young adult novel by Aidan Chambers. The book follows Ditto who debates with his friend Morgan about the value of literature, but has to retreat for a week to sort things out.
Amy Sarig King is an American writer of short fiction and young adult fiction.
Cao Wenxuan is a Chinese novelist, best known for his works of children's literature. Cao is the vice president of Beijing Writers Association. He is also a professor and doctoral tutor at Peking University. His novels have been translated into English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Serbian.
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