The Bath Children’s Novel Award is a £3,000 international prize for emerging children’s novelists. Submissions are invited from June to November.
BATH CHILDREN’S NOVEL AWARD RECIPIENTS
2021 A.E. Daly for Dreamdogs & Rachel Darwin for The Dolls House Mouse
2020 Ruth Moore for The Enemy Inside (Curtis Brown)
2019 Matthew Fox for The Sky Over Rebecca (Hodder, 2022)
2018 Cassie Powney for Loops (The Agency)
2017 Struan Murray for Orphans of the Tide (Puffin, 2020)
2016 Gareth Osborne for Cogs of Castille (AM Heath)
2015 Lucy Van Smit for The Hurting (Chicken House Books, 2017)
The Bath Children’s Novel Award 2021 | Joint Winners | £3,000
A.E. DALY for DREAMDOGS
Speculative Adventure | Older Middle Grade
RACHEL DARWIN for THE DOLL’S HOUSE MOUSE
Family fairy tale | Younger Middle Grade
“I was utterly divided on this brilliant shortlist. Every one was exceptional in some way. I managed to whittle it down to two but found I could go no further! Two deserved to win, so two have won. The Doll’s House Mouse feels like a classic; sweet, funny, tender, moving and brilliantly written – I really fell for this gorgeous story. Dreamdogs was very different to Doll’s House Mouse but equally well written. It’s scary and exciting and moving and highly original. Both books were a joy to read and both books should have publishers all over them..”
– Sam Copeland, 2021 Judge, Director RCW Literary Agency
A. E. DALY lives and works in Edinburgh. She has a background in art history and computer science and loves comic books, ghost stories, vintage cameras and abandoned buildings. She received a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2018. Her previous novel, unpublished YA time travel mystery Devil-Glass, was longlisted for the 2020 Mslexia Children’s & YA Novel Competition and she has also been shortlisted for the 2020 Kelpies Prize for Writing.
Of Dreamdogs, she writes: “The earliest seed for the book came years ago when my eldest son, then quite small, had a dream about brightly-coloured dogs. I’d wanted to write a middle-grade adventure story for a while, and the mental image of these ‘dream dogs’ set me thinking. The story also became a fictional love letter to the North York Moors of my childhood – I liked the apparent contradiction of setting a technological thriller in a remote and beautiful rural landscape.”
The Junior Judges said: Dreamdogs is about five kids and their dogs who have 24 hours to save everyone in their villages from a sleeping sickness. It’s a pageturner with a sinister atmosphere, real sense of mystery and was thrilling to read.
RACHEL DARWIN grew up in the Wiltshire and Somerset countryside. At eighteen, she moved to London, where she became a professional singer, performing for ten years. Nowadays, as well as being a writer, Rachel is a singing teacher. She has a master’s degree in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmith’s University and writes a column for Rock n Roll Bride Magazine. Rachel lives with her husband in southwest London.
The Doll’s House Mouse was written in 2021, after Rachel lost her beloved grandma and grandpa during the pandemic. The year before they both passed away, Rachel renovated the doll’s house her grandpa had built for her fifth birthday, to help him remember this wonderful thing he had done for her. The last time Rachel saw her grandpa— before COVID restricted any possible visits to care homes— she showed him pictures of the renovated doll’s house. He twinkled at her, more present in the room than she had seen him in years, and asked if she wanted him to build some new furniture. It was a magical moment.
This book is Rachel’s way of keeping her grandparents alive through their stories, as versions of many of their own anecdotes have been weaved into the book (as well as some of Rachel’s parents’ stories). It is an acknowledgement of the importance of allowing yourself to grieve, to take time to heal and put yourself back together again piece by piece, however you might need to, after losing someone you love. It is a reminder to all those who read it that we have the power to keep our loved ones with us, even after they’re gone. All we have to do is remember them, to talk about them, to keep on telling their stories.
The Junior Judges said: The Doll’s House Mouse is about a girl called Lottie and a little mouse her grandpa made before he died. Lottie is going through a very sad time but it is also a story of hope, repairing things and made me feel cosy and Christmassy.
Read the opening of The Doll’s House Mouse
Bath Children’s Novel Award 2021 Shortlisted
Katja Kaine for EVOLANDIA
Fantasy | Older Middle Grade
KATJA KAINE is half Singaporean and half German and lives in a decrepit mansion in Yorkshire with her partner, “two microhumans, two small fluffballs of yowling and one large bark machine.” She does yoga at ungodly hours and walks through ancient forest every day.
Evolandia was born from her fascination with the natural world and the absurdness of reality when you start to think about it too hard. It is inspired and informed by the legendary David Attenborough, and her microscope, where she gets an adrenaline rush from spying on water fleas and teeny weeny whizzing worms.
The Junior Judges said: Evolandia is the exciting eco story of Luca who is living her life in the shadows of her sister Zoe. Until one night an argument begins to stir then everything comes to a halt when Luca shouts “I WISH YOU’D NEVER BEEN BORN!” and a swarm of butterflies drags her sister away, into what seems to be another universe…
Read the opening of Evolandia
Bath Children’s Novel Award 2021 Shortlisted
Sophie Stewart for SECRETS OF THE VOLTERRE
Magic Realism | Older Middle Grade
Bath Children’s Novel Award 2021 Shortlisted
Annabel Robertson for THE BIRD SEA
Fantasy | YA
ANNABEL ROBERTSON is a 22-year-old Australian university student. Having recently graduated with a BA, she is now studying a Masters degree exploring the world of digital storytelling.
The idea for The Bird Sea came to her while she was standing in a paddock watching the twilight — what if something extraordinary flew over the crest of the shadowed trees beyond? The seed planted, Annabel decided to write a story deeply rooted in nature that spoke to her love for wild creatures, thrilling adventures, and the transformative power of music. The result was The Bird Sea — an early version of which was listed as a Kid Readers’ Favourite in the 2021 WriteMentor Children’s Novel Award. Several drafts later, Annabel is delighted to have now been shortlisted in this year’s Bath Children’s Novel Award.
When she’s not studying or writing, Annabel provides English tutoring to school students and enjoys trekking through the Australian bush.
The Junior Judges said: The Bird Sea is thrilling, seamless and original. With a war looming, nowhere is safe from The Magnificence and Clover’s mountain village is closing off from the outside world a little more each day. Meanwhile Arkyn must escape the World City on a voyage across the ocean, never to return. The two are inextricably tied through magical visions and a powerful inheritance.
Read the opening of The Bird Sea
2021 Recipient: JASON BUTTON for THE JIGSAW OF LIGHT
Adventure | Upper Middle Grade
Prize: the online course Edit Your Novel the Professional Way
BATH CHILDRENS NOVEL AWARD 2021 LONGLISTED
| Aldwych and the Winston Wallace Zoo for Extraordinary Animals |
B.G. Gorsky |
| Bea Bellerose and the Case of the Missing Picasso | Jo Beckett-King |
| Broken Beads of Glass | Kathy Hurst |
| Dreamdogs | A. E. Daly |
| Evolandia | Katja Kaine |
| Hope | Melanie Fordham |
| Nevern Cove | Josie O’Reilly |
| Secrets of the Volterre | Sophie Stewart |
| Southern Belles | Emily Charlotte Ould |
| Stargran: Attack of the Alien Grandmas | Mario Ambrosi |
| The Bird Sea | Annabel Robertson |
| The Doll’s House Mouse | Rachel Darwin |
| The Jigsaw of Light | Jason Button |
| The Lost Crown | Jasmine Brady |
| The Lost Song | Bean Sawyer |
| The Time Heist | Fiona Spence-Arnold |
| The Winter at the End of the World | Amanda Davenport |
| Tommy Tootington & The World Trumping Championships
|
Graham Bridgewood |
| Warnings of Gales | Maddy Woosnam |
Bath Children’s Novel Award 2021 Shortlist Announcement
Bath Children’s Novel Award 2021 Longlist Announcement
Bath Children’s Novel Award 2021 Judge
