We received forty-one entries from members across the British Isles and Europe for this competition. Rachel read all of the submissions. This is what Rachel told us when announcing the results:
“It was a tough one,
but I chose The Good Child Serum by Harriet
Worrell for totally nailing the brief – James’s cheeky voice leapt off the
page from the opening lines, and it’s clearly a really funny and well plotted
story, too. There’s an immediate sense of place, a well-drawn cast of
characters, and a wonderfully jaunty sense of mystery – I think there’d be a
clear place for this in the children’s book market and I’d love to read more!
Special mentions to:
Atlas of the Darkside by Katherine
Latham
Snowballs from Hell by Sally Poyton
Shadow Child by Cate Holness
Through the Gap by Lizzie Strong
"… for all having both strong voices and great concepts, too.”
Congratulations to Harriet Worrell from all of us at Words & Pictures. We hope you are well on
your way towards getting your story published.
Well done to Katherine Latham, Sally Poyton, Cate Holness and Lizzie
Strong for gaining a special mention.
Thanks to everyone who entered. Keep writing and we hope you will be
encouraged to try your hand at appropriate competitions.
Rachel Mann spent nine years commissioning and editing books for young people at major publishing houses and was most recently global publishing director for the Roald Dahl Story Company. At Jo Unwin Literary Agency, Rachel is now actively growing a list of writers in fiction and non-fiction, with a particular focus on children’s and YA.
She has a tendency towards the darkly funny – Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter are great examples of the kind of adult writing she loves. Tove Jansson, Benjamin Zephaniah, and David Almond are just some of her heroes in children’s.
In all cases, Rachel wants compelling voices, unpatronising writing, and complex characters. International settings and traditions, unconventional narratives and social commentary will always get her attention, and she is particularly interested in writers from underrepresented backgrounds.
At the moment, Rachel is very much on the look-out for funny chapter books and middle-grade. She's also looking for bold and emotionally engaging non-fiction across both adults’ and children’s, as well as poetry.
Please note that Rachel doesn’t currently represent picture books.
Elaine Cline has been a SCBWI member for over five years and loves to write picture books, junior fiction and middle-grade. She loves writing about food. She lives by the sea and has one soft and silly cat. Elaine is a member of the Words & Pictures' editorial team, managing The Slush Pile Challenge for writers.
|
|
No comments:
We love comments and really appreciate the time it takes to leave one.
Interesting and pithy reactions to a post are brilliant but we also LOVE it when people just say they've read and enjoyed.
We've made it easy to comment by losing the 'are you human?' test, which means we get a lot of spam. Fortunately, Blogger recognises these, so most, if not all, anonymous comments are deleted without reading.