Hilary Mantel outshines past winners to take home the 2009 Man Booker Prize
The time has come for all of the Booker talk to come to an end, with the winner announced last night. There’s also plenty of children’s book news for the youngsters that couldn’t care less about adult literary awards. Enjoy!
- Last night, Hilary Mantel was announced as the winner of this year’s Man Booker prize for her novel Wolf Hall. Mantel was the overwhelming favorite going into the awards ceremony, to which J.M. Coetzee didn’t bother coming for his nominated Summertime (perhaps when you’ve won so many awards, the ceremonies become tedious and begin to blur together in your mind). This year’s short list was lauded as one of the strongest in recent history, which speaks even more to the merit of Mantel’s work. The Guardian has more details about the ceremony and nominees.
- Fans of The Phantom Tollbooth rejoice – author Norton Juster and illustrator Jules Feiffer have teamed up again (after 49 years!) to create The Odious Ogre, a children’s book releasing in fall 2010. It will be interesting to see if the duo still has the magic touch they did half a century ago. Luckily for readers, they don’t plan on waiting another 50 years to start the next project. Shelf Life has more information, including quotes from both Juster and Feiffer.
- Omnivoracious has more exciting children’s book news, including rumors of the 8th Diary of a Wimpy Kid title in production and video from the “Guys with Books” tour led by Jon Scieszka. On the less goofy side, Nelson Mandela’s picture-book autobiography Long Walk to Freedom has launched in 13 languages. Among these 13 are the 11 official languages of South Africa, included so that every South African child might be able to read it. Printing in isiXhosa is likely not the most profitable decision, which makes Macmillan’s choice to do so all the more admirable.
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