Literary prize judges do sometimes get it right. They certainly did in Dublin yesterday with the announcement of the annual Bisto Books Awards for children's authors and illustrators.
This year's panel not only got it right - it made an immense contribution to children's literature by selecting a truly magical novel, Kate Thompson's The Beguilers (Bodley Head) as the winner of Ireland's major children's literary prize, the €3,000 Bisto Book of the Year. A short-list of 10 books competed for the prize and the finest won.
In the classic tradition of great books for children, The Beguilers is a serious, exciting book for everyone. Most importantly, it possesses imagination, mystery, truth and courage. Author of the Switchers trilogy, English-born Thompson lives in Ireland.
In this ambitious novel she explores abstract concepts and follows a heroic if stubborn outsider on a dangerous, ambiguous journey towards truth and knowledge.
It is a miracle of a book, as beguiling and as strange as its title suggests. Thompson's multi-layered allegorical novel is richly challenging, rewarding and, true of very special books, it does not quite reveal all its secrets. Her prose is evocative, mysterious and formal.
It tells the story of a rather rebellious girl's quest for the elusive in a society in which emotions have no place and questions are no longer asked.
Also awarded was the €1,000 Éilis Dillon award for a first book, which went to an Irish writer, Gillian Purdue, for Adam's Starling. Published by the O'Brien Press, it is contemporary Irish suburban realism with bullying as its theme. A boy is kind and sensitive and the only member of his family capable of dealing sensitively with his grandfather's failing grasp on reality.
Adam is also a target for the cowardly bullies in his class. His friendship with a little bird helps him assert himself. This is an intelligent, instructive book heavy with intent.
Three Merit awards, worth €800, were also presented. One went to Eoin Colfer's best-selling adventure of wayward- boy-genius meets modern-day, high-tech leprechaun in Artemis Fowl (Viking).
Another was won by established novelist Carlo Gebler for Caught on a Train (Mammoth), an atmospheric rendition of three traditional Irish stories, all previously retold many times but no less engaging for that. An old man remembers the day when, as a boy working as a steward on the Dublin to Achill train, he was coerced into judging a story-telling competition devised by a menacing character determined to win at all costs.
The third Merit award was cleverly shared between Colmán Ó Raghallaigh, author of An Sclábhaí (The Slave), and its illustrators, The Cartoon Saloon. Published by Cló Mhaigh Eo, it is a spirited retelling of the early trials of a young slave later better known as St Patrick.