Hilary McKay (born 12 June 1959) [1] is a British writer of children's books. For her first novel, The Exiles, she won the 1992 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers. [2]
McKay was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, the eldest of four daughters. She studied English, Zoology and Botany at St Andrews University before becoming a public protection scientist. She currently resides in Derbyshire with her husband, Kevin. [3] [4]
McKay says of herself as a child "I anaesthetised myself against the big bad world with large doses of literature. The local library was as familiar to me as my own home." [5]
The Casson Family series comprises the Whitbread Award-winning Saffy's Angel (2001) and four sequels: Indigo's Star (2004), Permanent Rose (2005), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread awards, Caddy Ever After (2006), Forever Rose (2007), and prequel Caddy's World (2011). The series focuses on an English family of artists, the Cassons. The first three books are written in the third person but focus on the point of view of the character in the title, whilst Caddy Ever After is written in the first person and is narrated by each of the children in turn, and Forever Rose is written in the first person.
The Porridge Hall series (1994-1998) features Robin Brogan and his mother, who live in Porridge Hall on the Yorkshire coast. Once Porridge Hall was Mrs Brogan's family home, now it has been split into two houses, and she and Robin live in one half, from which Mrs Brogan also runs a bed and breakfast. The Robinson family live in the other half, and the two families are firm friends.
The books have been published as audiobooks, with the first two read by Nigel Lambert, The Amber Cat also by Ron Keith, and Dolphin Luck by Judy Bennett. Dog Friday has been adapted into a German film, Ein Hund namens Freitag. [6] [7] Besides German, the trilogy has been translated into Dutch and Estonian, and Dog Friday has also been translated into Czech, Danish, Greek, Polish, Spanish, and Thai, and The Amber Cat into French.
Binny
Casson Family
Exiles
Paradise House
| Porridge Hall
Pudding Bag School
For younger readers
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The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then a brewery and owner of restaurant chains, it was renamed when Costa Coffee, then a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship. The companion Costa Short Story Award was established in 2012. Costa Coffee was purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 2018. The awards were abruptly terminated in 2022.
How I Live Now is a novel by Meg Rosoff, first published in 2004. It received generally positive reviews and won the British Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the American Printz Award for young-adult literature.
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Meg Rosoff is an American writer based in London, United Kingdom. She is best known for the novel How I Live Now, which won the Guardian Prize, Printz Award, and Branford Boase Award and made the Whitbread Awards shortlist. Her second novel, Just in Case, won the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians recognising the year's best children's book published in the UK.
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Jane Mary Gardam is an English writer of children's and adult fiction. She also writes reviews for The Spectator and The Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon, and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards, including the Whitbread Award twice. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.
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Saffy's Angel is the first novel in the Casson Family series written by Hilary McKay. The book is written about a family and their respective lives. It has been translated into Catalan, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese (twice), Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish. It has also been published as an audiobook narrated by Julia Sawalha, which has won the AudioFile Earphones Award. An audiobook abridged by Peter Mackie has been read by Debra Gillett.
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