Biography
McNicoll's debut novel, A Kind of Spark (2020), follows the efforts of an autistic [2] eleven-year-old girl, Addie, to establish a memorial to the witch trials in her Scottish hometown. McNicoll is autistic herself. [3] The book was children's book of the week in The Times and The Sunday Times , [4] [5] and won both the Overall and Younger Fiction prizes at the 2021 Waterstones Children's Book Prize. [6] It also won the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, voted for by children. [7] McNicoll was nominated for the Branford Boase Award [8] and the Carnegie Medal. Her debut was named Overall Book of the Year by Blackwell's, beating titles in the Adult Market. [9] McNicoll was awarded an honour by the Schneider Family Book Award in 2022 for the US edition of A Kind of Spark. It was listed as number 75 in The 100 Greatest Children's Books of All Time by the BBC. [10]
Her second novel, Show Us Who You Are, was published in March, 2021, and was Children's Book of the Week in The Times . [11] It was also the Children's Book of the Month, as chosen by Blackwell's . [12] It was nominated for Best Children's Fiction in the 2021 Books Are My Bag Awards, and McNicoll was also nominated for Best Breakthrough Author. [13]
Her third novel, Like a Charm, was published in February 2022 by Knights Of and was also Children's Book of the Week in The Times , [14] as well as being reviewed as "another fiercely gripping, superbly original story" by The Guardian . [15] In 2022 McNicoll also wrote a story as part of the crime anthology The Very Merry Murder Club [16] edited by Serena Patel and Robin Stevens.
A Kind of Spark was optioned for a television series from CBBC, with McNicoll acting as co-head writer on the programme. [17] It premiered on BBC iPlayer in the UK on 31 March 2023. [18] In 2023, Macmillan won a five-publisher auction for the rights to two of McNicoll's young adult novels, Some Like it Cold (2024) and a novel to published in 2025. [19] [20]
McNicoll also wrote and recorded an essay for BBC Radio 3's The Essay. [21] The subject was Nora Ephron, a heroine of McNicoll's.
Keedie, the prequel to A Kind of Spark, was published in 2024. In an episode of In the Reading Corner, McNicoll talked about her nuanced exploration of teenage bullying and the stereotyping of neurodivergent characters. [22]
Advocacy
McNicoll has been an outspoken advocate for better representations of neurodiversity in publishing. [25] She has been credited with kickstarting a revolution in publishers' attitudes to neurodiverse characters. [26] In 2022, McNicoll established The Adrien Prize, a prize for traditionally published children's books with a disabled lead character. [27] The longlist for The Adrien Prize 2022 was announced on Twitter and included The Night the Moon Went Out by Samantha Baines, The Secret of Haven Point by Lisette Auton, A Flash of Fireflies by Aisha Bushby, Wilder Than Midnight by Cerrie Burnell, The Great Fox Illusion by Justyn Edwards and The Extraordinary Adventures of Alice Tonks by Emily Kenny. [28]
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