The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Award 2010

Tom Avery, a teacher working in a culturally diverse inner city school, has won the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Award 2010 for Too Much Trouble, a story the judges described as 'an Oliver Twist of our times'. The contemporary adventure story is a dramatic page-turner about Emmanuel and Prince, two brothers who fall in with a gang of pickpockets when their family abandons them. Fast paced and full of tension, it explores big issues such as illegal immigration, what makes a family and the ethical dilemmas surrounding crimes committed for survival.

Receiving the Award, Tom said "I wrote Too Much Trouble when I heard the story of a boy and his sisters who had been sent to live in England without their parents. I couldn't stop thinking about what that responsibility must be like. In the end I had to put the story down on paper."

Frances Lincoln Limited, the award--winning publisher, and Seven Stories, the Centre for Children's Books jointly set up the Diverse Voices Award in memory of Frances Lincoln (1945 -- 2001) to encourage and promote diversity in children's fiction. The prize of £1,500 plus the option for Janetta Otter-Barry at Frances Lincoln Children's Books to publish the novel is awarded to the best manuscript for 8-to-12-year-olds that celebrates diversity in the widest possible sense. The closing date for the current award is
Friday 25th February 2011. For full information and to download an entry form go to www.sevenstories.org.uk

By the time the winner is announced in June 2011, Janetta Otter Barry will have commissioned or published six books by writers who entered the award all previously unpublished. Cristy Burne's Takeshita Demons, winner of the inaugural award in 2009, is on this year's Booked Up list.

Category:

Education

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