Children's Literature Prize/The Bisto Shortlist: The winner of the 14th Bisto Book of the Year will be announced on Thursday. Orna Mulcahy assesses the 10 contenders
Summer is here, the school year is running out and come June there are going to be those long lazy weeks stretching ahead for children to fill. Teachers will almost certainly be telling them to catch up on their reading over the holidays, and parents will be doing their best to find "good" books for them to read. And without a new instalment of Harry Potter this year, where can they turn?
It's an ideal time to stage the Bisto Book Awards. Now in its 14th year the Bisto Book of the Year is the most prestigious award for children's books in Ireland though the prize fund is modest - €6,400, of which €3,000 goes to the overall winner. Ten books are in the running, with the competition open to authors and illustrators who are either Irish or resident in Ireland. The winner is due to be announced next week and the shortlist will be scrutinized by booksellers and parents alike.
As in previous years, the 2004 selection is terrifically wide-ranging, almost bewilderingly so. Six of the entries are illustrated books, at least three of which are aimed at the under-fives. Two of these are by author and illustrator Mary Murphy, and while both are stylishly presented, it's hard to imagine that a cutesy book like I Kissed the Baby, the briefest of bedtime reads concerning a newborn chick, can be any match for fully blown novels like Kate Thompson's remarkable Origins, the last in her Missing Link trilogy, or Carlo Gebler's superb August '44, a heart-stopping story about the plight of a Jewish family in occupied France.
More about the novels later The five picture books are gorgeous productions, but there is one outstanding entry. It's The Bee-Man of Orn, illustrated by PJ Lynch, who is probably best known for his distinctive and beautiful pictures accompanying When Jessie Came Across the Sea by Amy Hest, and Ignis by Gina Wilson, a Bisto contender in 2002. The Bee Man of Orn is the story of an old man's journey through a magical Medieval landscape to discover where he really came from and it's utterly enchanting. You can almost smell the honey in the comb-encrusted interior of his ancient cottage, where he lives with a vast colony of bees, and taste the honey that comes from inside his pockets. While the book is nominated for its illustrations only, I also loved the alternately dreamy and dry prose by 19th-century American author Frank R. Stockton.
Niamh Sharkey's The Ravenous Beast is the story of a very hungry animal - a deranged looking, upright crocodile who imagines himself eating "a bucket, a spade and some red lemonade" and much else besides. A roller skate, a birthday cake, a rubber duck and a ticking clock would be equally delicious, and when he says "Slurp 'em, burp 'em, Woof 'em down . . ." it does raise a laugh from three year olds.
Meanwhile, You Can Do It, Sam (by Amy Hest), nominated for its illustrations by Anita Jeram, is a warm, cuddly sort of book about a bear and his mother who, one snowy morning, get up extra early to bake cakes, then deliver them to all their neighbours before anyone is up. It's encouraging to see such quality aimed at young and very young readers, though the market they are being pitched into is a rich and crowded one. With classic picture books constantly being reprinted and repackaged, each new title has to compete with books that were written 30, 40, even 100 years ago but still have huge appeal. Over many years of buying books for children, I've hovered over the new and unusual before finally buying the classic. Not necessarily Peter Rabbit or Winnie the Pooh but books like Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (1963), Judith Kerr's The Tiger Who Came to Tea (1968) or The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl (1978). Interestingly, the best selling adult novel from each of those years, Morris West's The Shoes of the Fishermen, Airport, by Arthur Hailey, and Chesapeake, by James Michener, have all but disappeared from the bookshelves, though you might still find them in an old cardboard box at the parish sale of work. Good picture books endure, which is a tantalizing prospect for authors and illustrators. Get it right, and they could still be selling books, toys and t-shirts for decades to come.
Of the five picture book contenders, one can easily imagine The Bee Man of Orn still being marvelled at in 50 years time. The Ravenous Beast, with its zany creatures, maybe, but it has shades of the Enormous Crocodile to it; You Can Do It, Sam has some classic qualities, extolling simple pleasures like curling your toes inside warm socks, and drinking cocoa in front of a glowing stove. Mary Murphy's Christmas story, Little Owl and the Star, is a new take on the traditional story of the birth of Jesus, told from the perspective of an owl who follows a star to the stable. A wildly colourful book that ends with an exuberant golden starburst, it certainly looks good. Murphy's second book on the shortlist, I Kissed the Baby, is all black and white with touches of pink and yellow, and one wonders if it's aimed at brand new parents who want to introduce their babies to books at a really early age, when they can't yet read colours.The narrative is hectic and the relentlessly spiky black and white creatures make it an uncomfortable read. Too hard on the eyes.
While The Bee Man of Orn deserves a prize, the real meat of this Bisto competition is in the novels, all but one of which explore different times and ages. The present hardly gets a look-in, except in the Irish language book, Amach, written by Alan Titley and illustrated by Aidan Harte, both of whom are shortlisted, which deals with the woes of being a teenager and is assessed below by my colleague Pól Ó Muirí. Instead, there are marvellously different landscapes and lives to explore. A plain young girl is transformed into a beauty as she is painted by a Master in 1650s Delft; in 1930s Dublin, Kathleen has a gift for dancing, and prays for a new dress to wear to the Feis; Saul is hiding with his family in a cave in a forest in the south of France waiting for the second World War to end; in another forest, Nessa and Farral are outcasts from their tribes in a curious, futuristic world where animals and humans have merged. Themes of love, fear, loss and separation are woven with strands of history, art and science in what is a fairly heavyweight selection. These are serious, sometimes harrowing books that are most likely to appeal to the over-10s or early teens, and could just as easily be enjoyed by adults.
It's hard to imagine a younger child grappling with Kate Thompson's Origins, the last in her trilogy of stories based on the notion of a missing gene which enables animals to talk and think like humans.
Thompson, the Bisto overall winner for the last two years, has to be a strong contender again with this complex book , which cuts between two very strange worlds, one dominated by cat people and dog people, and the other by a group of humans who have inadvertently brought the future to life in the form of the Yoke, a bizarre creature who springs from a stone and sets about infecting the world with a virus that has a very strange effect on humans. It's a very tense book, not frightening but full of foreboding, though it ends with discovery and hope. Hope is what is keeping Saul and his family alive in a cave in Carlo Gebler's superb August '44, the story of a Jewish family in the south of France, desperately waiting for the war to end so that they can try to retrieve their lives. "Let's not ruin things having got so far, shall we?" says Saul's father after Saul has broken all the rules and left the forest to get away from a blazing row. "Let's struggle on, let's get to the end of our story". The opening and closing chapters enfold a second, much longer story based on life in the Jewish ghetto in Prague in the 16th century, when a strange creation, a man of mud called Golem, protected the Jews from their enemies.
Ifound this book almost unbearably poignant, though there is nothing mawkish or sentimental here. Gebler is admirably restrained in his language, and in the way he deals with the actual end of the story for Saul's family. A clear overall winner in my book.
In Aubrey Flegg's Wings Over Delft, the Dutch city springs into life around its heroine, Louise Eeden, the daughter of a wealthy potter who is destined to marry the son of another great pottery house, until she goes to have her portrait painted and meets Pieter, the artist's apprentice, a big awkward lad who falls instantly in love with her. Yes, there's a definite resemblance to Girl With a Pearl Earring, Tracey Chevalier's hugely successful novel about the Vermeer household, since made into a movie starring Scarlett Johansson, but the surprise ending paves the way for two soon to be published books that will bring the action up to the 20th century when Louise's portrait falls into the hands of a Nazi collector. The dialogue is a little stilted, but there are some wonderful images - her shimmering green silk dress, the brilliant blue of the lapis lazuli that Pieter grinds to make paint for the Master.
Another green dress saves the day in the Siobhan Parkinson's Kathleen, The Celtic Knot, which, frankly, offers some welcome light relief from the rest. It's part of an international series about young girls, called Girls in Many Lands, but stands up perfectly well on its own too. Twelve-year-old Kathleen comes from a poor family in the Liberties, but once she discovers how to dance, there is no looking back. This is a story about Dublin in the rare auld times and it's choc full of detail, from the milky glass of the holy water bottle in the shape of Mary, with its spiky crowned lid, to the size of the holes you might get in your wool stocking, the dirt of the children playing in the streets, the colour of various biscuits, the taste of a Bewley's sticky bun, the obligatory snooty girls who'd look down on you, and the way that the terrible Sister Eucharia's mouth would bubble, "like a porridge saucepan on the range" when she gets angry. It all comes right in the end, when, with a cheeky nod to Gone With the Wind, a certain set of curtains are transformed into a dazzling green dance dress. Not a classic by any means, but a simple, good read.
Amach, by Alan Titley, illustrated by Aidan Harte is, adds Pól Ó Muirí, Irish Language Editor, a short novel in Irish about a young man who simply goes outside with his friends Gobdá and Grúng and the adventures he has on what turns out to be more than an average day in the life of a young thrill-seeker. Outside is full of surprises and not all of them pleasant - this reviewer is still reeling from a graphic explosion involving a frog and a straw. Titley - a columnist with this newspaper - is the author of novels and short stories of great imagination, academic works of important scholarship, critical essays, radio and stage plays. He is an all-rounder and it is a great pleasure to find that his foray into children's literature is every bit as enjoyable as his adult writings. A sense of devilment and exuberance are on every page of Amach and Titley's beautiful turns of phrase are a joy. On discovering a puppy our hero is taken by eyes "which were like prayers". All credit, too, to Aidan Harte's illustrations and typography which lends itself to easy reading.