The Bookseller.com

8th October 2008

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Waterstone's hails children's shortlist

30.11.07 Caroline Horn

Waterstone's has hailed the shortlist for its 2008 Children's Book Prize--but expressed disappointment at the paucity of entries in the five-to-eight-years range.

The Waterstone's Children's Book Prize focuses on emergent authors who have had up to three books published. Random House has a strong presence this year with three of the nine titles nominated: Shadow Forest by Matt Haig, Ancient Appetites by Oisín McGann and TIM, Defender of the Earth by Sam Enthoven.

Children's category manager Wayne Winstone said the list was "very strong" this year. "We had a great deal of deliberation and each book went through five different filters. There has been a lot of debate," he said. But Winstone also called for more entries in the five-to-eight-years category. "The submissions were very teen-heavy," he said, "but we still managed to get a good spread of books onto the shortlist."

Waterstone's will promote all the shortlisted books from 17th January until after the winner is announced on 13th February. Last year's winner, Darkside by Tom Becker (Scholastic), has sold over 12,000 copies to date through Nielsen BookScan, with sales almost doubling to around 1,000 copies in the week following the announcement.

"Last year the prize definitely gave our books the kind of publicity boost and exposure from instore promotion in Waterstone's that emerging authors don't always enjoy," said Random House Children's Books sales director Helen Randles. "It has a knock-on effect on sales, and also on the individual booksellers' awareness of the shortlisted titles."

Tumtum and Nutmeg by Emily Bearn (Egmont)
Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine (HarperCollins)
Stone Goblins by David Melling (Hodder Children's Books)
Blue Sky Freedom by Gabrielle Halberstam (Macmillan)
Between Two Seas by Marie-Louise Jensen (OUP)
Shadow Forest by Matt Haig (RHCB)
Ancient Appetites by Oisín McGann (RHCB)
TIM, Defender of the Earth by Sam Enthoven (RHCB)
Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls (Scholastic)

Caroline Horn waterstone's children's Prize