Following on from my brief post yesterday, here’s a fuller account of the Award Ceremony for the 2011 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award, hosted at Seven Stories, who play a prominent role in administering the award – not least in coordinating the many volunteers who read through the entries and compile the shortlist.
This year’s award was won by Helen Limon for her story Om Shanti, Babe, “a story about growing up, family and friendship” described by the judges as “Fabulous . . . laugh-out-loud funny.” They were looking for a “strong story that an 8 to 12-year-old would want to read rather than a worthy book
that overtly explores social issues.” We were treated to an extract from the book and it certainly sounds like they found what they were looking for. Now we will have to be patient while we wait for the manuscript to go through its due process towards publication. To whet your appetite, here’s a brief synopsis:
Teenager Cassia joins her mother, who runs a fair trade craft shop, on a buying trip to India, a country that she mostly knows from her Bollywood dance routines. Troubled by a friendship gone sour at home, and feeling out of place in a new culture that challenges her assumptions, she reacts badly to her mother’s relationship with an Indian colleague. As Cassia sheds some of her preconceived ideas, she finds friends where she least expects to and starts to realise her dream to follow her mother into business. The story emcompasses fair trade and environmental issues alongside her spiky tussles with fashion-mad friend-to-be Priyanka, and her crushes on pop star Jonny Gold and Dev, a boy she meets on a train.
Helen had put together a display of pictures and objects she had brought back from a trip to Kerola, India in 2009, which was the inspiration for her book:
“Talking to the mothers about their lives and their ambitions for their families, and listening to
what the children said they wanted, inspired the story and made me conscious of the social and environmental themes that are woven into the book.
“My characters are not the sort of children that get written about much and I lived most of my life not in
England, so I do sort of know what it is like to be different inside your head even if you look like everyone
else on the outside.”
Runner-up in the competition was Karon Aldermon for her story For Keeps about Benedicta (Ben), her mother and younger sister who are asylum seekers from Cameroon. “While their uncertain future and
I will be posting properly about the Award tomorrow – just to let you know the news in the meantime that Helen Limon is the winner of this year’s 2011 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award for Om Shanti, Babe. Runner-up was Karon Alderman for For Keeps, and Michelle Richardson received a Special Mention for Tek.
The Award was announced at Seven Stories in Newcastle, and the occasion also marked the launch of Too Much Trouble, winner of the Award last year, by Tom Avery, and of The Filth Licker by Christy Burne, a sequel to her 2009 winner Takeshita Demons
This great official photo shows (l-r) Helen, Tom and Karon with the three published books. You can also see some of my photos from the Awards Ceremony here; and read more about the Francves Lincoln Divers Voices Award here.
We are delighted to welcome Karon Alderman to the PaperTigers blog: Karon received a Special Mention in this year’s Frances Lincoln Children’s Book Award for her title Story Thief, about asylum seekers in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the Ouseburn Valley, which is also the location of the Award’s co-founder and principle administrator, the wonderful Seven Stories.
Story Thief is about an 11-year-old failed asylum seeker called Arlie. She narrates her story of the days following the arrest and detention of her family as she tries to hide from the authorities. She is supported by her friend Louise and two boys who have their own reasons for staying in hiding. At the announcements of this year’s award, Mary Briggs, one of this year’s judges and the co-founder of Seven Stories, hinted at the twists in the plot that give Story Thief its name. She also described it as “not a happy story” and “distinctly depressing”, and perhaps the lack of hope is what would make this more suitable for older readers than the middle-reader audience the award is aimed at. However, apart from its local setting being close to Seven Stories’ heart, it was felt that it needed a special mention because it explores the horrors of asylum seekers’ situations and presents the reality of the sense of helplessness when dealing with the beaurocratic system.
Here, Karon tells us about her passion for the issues she highlights and why she wrote the story.
Story Thief is about Arlie, an eleven-year-old failed asylum seeker. When her mother and sister are taken in the night, to a detention centre, she is on a sleepover with her friend next door. She tries to run away, helped by her friend, Louise.
I was thrilled that Story Thief was a runner up in the Diverse Voices competition, especially as I’d written it very quickly. However, the ideas had been simmering for some time as I support Common Ground, the East Area Asylum Seekers Support Group, a voluntary organisation that gives friendship and practical help to asylum seekers.
The asylum seekers I’ve met – the woman who’d lost her nine-year-old daughter, the girl who’d been trafficked, the stateless woman – are real people, in desperate situations, yet living in hope. But at the same time, I saw endless press coverage about asylum seekers committing crimes or receiving generous benefits. Actually, asylum seekers in Britain get a £35-a-week card. If their application to be official refugees is rejected, they can be left destitute. They are not allowed to work. They can be moved with little notice, detained, deported.
The story grew from two incidents: reading in the Observer (18 October 2009) about children imprisoned in detention centres, without a fixed timescale or any public outcry; and when a friend was unexpectedly detained for an interview at the immigration office. As I was looking after her baby at the time, I tried to find out what had happened and discovered a secretive system with unhelpful staff.
I felt that I could hear Arlie’s voice in my head. She is bright and bra
