| Whitbread Book Award - Winner Announced 4th January 2006 |
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Kate
Thompson has won the Whitbread Children's book award. The
awards recognise the most enjoyable books of last year by writers
based in the UK and Ireland.
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in Yorkshire in 1956, Kate Thompson has trained racehorses in the
UK and US and traveled extensively in India. She won the Bisto Book
of the Year award three times - for 2001's The Beguilers, The Alchemist's
Apprentice in 2002 and 2005's Annan Water. Thompson is now based in Kinvara, a small village on the west coast of Ireland which is also the setting for children's book The New Policeman. It follows JJ, who travels to a land of eternal youth, and is full of Thompson's passion for story and music. She recently completed an MA in Irish traditional music performance at the University of Limerick. |
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This year's judges included children's tv presenter Lizo Mzimba,
young fiction author Linda Newbery and Gervase Phinn. This year
two additional 'young judges' have been selected through a CBBC
Newsround Press Packer competition. |
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| THE
WINNER
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The
New Policeman by Kate Thompson |
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other four successful authors who will now contest for the Whitbread
Book of the Year are: Ali Smith with her first full-length novel,
The Accidental, in the Novel Award category, Tash Aw for The Harmony
Silk Factory, who wins the First Novel Award, Hilary Spurling claims
the Biography Award with Matisse, Matisse the Master and Christopher
Logue with the fifth and penultimate instalment of his celebrated
account of the Iliad, Cold Calls, in the Poetry category. The five Whitbread Book Award winners, each of whom will receive £5,000, were selected from 476 entries, the highest total ever received in one year. The five books are now eligible for the ultimate prize - the 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year. The
winner will be announced at The Brewery in central London on Tuesday
24th January 2006 by a panel of judges chaired by the author and
former Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo MBE.
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