Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize 2010 Shortlist Announced

The Book Trust has just announced the shortlist for its 2010 Teenage Prize - the winner (who'll take home £2,500) to be announced on November 1st.

The shortlisted authors are:

- THE ENEMY by Charlie Higson

- HALO by Zizou Corder

- NOBODY'S GIRL by Sarra Manning

- OUT OF SHADOWS by Jason Wallace

- REVOLVER by Marcus Sedgewick

- UNHOOKING THE MOON by Gregory Hughes.

In addition to the shortlist, the judges also mentioned the following books as deserving to be highly commended for their quality:

Daughter of Fire and Ice by Marie-Louise Jensen
Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper
Two Good Thieves by Daniel Finn
My So-called Afterlife by Tamsyn Murray
WE by John Dickinson
When I was Joe by Keren David

I'm a bit surprised that WHEN I WAS JOE didn't make the shortlist actually as it got really good reviews and is something I'd heard good things about.

Of the shortlisted books, I've read and enjoyed THE ENEMY and REVOLVER, but given that Sedgewick won the award back in 2007, I'd be surprised if he won it again.

My money is on HALO or OUT OF THE SHADOWS to win.

MM

Charlie Higson's THE ENEMY was one of the big YA books at the London Book Fair back in 2009 because he did a book video for other publishers that slowly shows him turning into a zombie. Sarwat Chadda blogged about how intimidating it was to have to go straight after him. I thought that THE ENEMY was a lot of fun - dark and quite scary - but I'd be surprised if it won because it's about zombies and that might not be high brow enough.

MM