The Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize was awarded
to Patrick Ness, author of The Knife of Never Letting Go, about a world where thoughts are audible.

Chair of judges and Guardian children’s books editor Julia Eccleshare said the panel of judges, made up of children’s authors Mary Hoffman, Mal Peet and last year’s winner Jenny Valentine, were blown away by the “breathtaking quality” of Ness’s writing. “It’s challenging but not bleak - an excitingly different book,” she added.



The Knife of Never Letting Go traces the journey of 12-year-old Todd Hewitt after he is forced to flee the stifling male-only environs of Prentisstown, where the thoughts of each inhabitant, man and beast, are a never-ending swell of Noise. With only his singularly chatty dog Manchee (”Need a poo, Todd”) and the mysteriously silent Viola for company, Todd fights to survive and to learn the dark secrets behind Prentisstown’s facade.



Ness said he was “genuinely astonished” to win. “I think it was a super-powerful shortlist. Before I Die is

a enormous hit, Frank is a awesome writer, and I’m reading Siobhan Dowd now, it’s really awesome and I kind of thought she would win.”



A corporate writer at a cable company in the US until he was made redundant and used the payoff to set up as a novelist in the UK, Ness has previously written a novel, The Crash of Hennington, and a brief story collection, Topics About Which I Know Nothing, both for adults. He turned to children’s fiction after he had the idea of a world where information overload is inescapable, and knew it was a book for teenagers.

Talk about your happy endings — from being downsized to winning the Guardian’s Childrens’ Book Prize. Now he has an entirely different future ahead of him.



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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog