LooseLeaves: Children's author Kate Thompson, who has lived in Ireland for more than 25 years, is refreshingly pleased about the hat-trick of triumphs she has had this year.
Some writers may feel the need to say awards and prize nominations are things they don't dwell on, but Thompson is different: "They matter to me," she says of her inclusion on the shortlist for the Whitbread Children's Book Award for The New Policeman (winner to be announced on January 4th), which already this year won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. All of this catapulted her into prominence in Britain. Here, she became the first writer to three times win the Bisto Book of the Year Award when in June she picked up the prize for Annan Water.
"Every single one of her 10 children's books shows a remarkable gift for the telling of a story which early gains, and maintains, the reader's attention," says children's books commentator Robert Dunbar, adding that the Guardian win and Whitbread nomination are indications that her work is now deservedly gaining critical approbation outside Ireland, which is also good for Irish children's literature generally. Thompson shows - as in The New Policeman - a particular gift for drawing skilfully and subtly on the world of myth and legend, and for weaving events and characters that show a humane concern for people's everyday lives, especially those of young people just about to cross from childhood to adolescence, says Dunbar. "Her work is driven by a sense of place - the west of Ireland in the case of The New Policeman - and by a prose style which frequently touches on the poetic and musical."
Thompson, who is at the revision stage of her next book, The Fourth Horseman, due out next June, was born in Yorkshire, but moved to Ireland in 1981 and was beguiled by the fairy tale work of James Stephens and Lady Gregory: "I adore her 'Kiltartanese'. For me as a non-Irish speaker it gave me an insight into the way of thinking and speaking that the country people would have had."
Also up for the Whitbread Children's award are Frank Cottrell Boyce for Framed; Geraldine McCaughrean for The White Darkness; and Hilary McKay for Permanent Rose. The winner gets £5,000 (€7,410) and goes forward, with the winners of the other categories, for the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, worth £25,000 (€37,000) to be announced on January 24th.