What is black and white but full of colour?

Answer: The Historical Association’s The Young Quills selection

The Young Quills are awards for the best new historical fiction for children and young people.

The emphasis is on new – each year lots of books are published for children, many of them covering historical themes. However, are they any good - will they excite, engage and inform their readers?

Rather than us decide we ask the readers themselves. Publishers send the HA their books from the previous 12 months (January to December) so this year any historical fiction published in 2016. The books are divided into two categories – primary and secondary; they are then sent to schools and given to the children to read who will then create a short list of the books they liked best from the selection.

The short lists are amalgamated and then a small adult panel from the HA, academia and the world of Children’s literature will select the winners. The winners are announced in the summer term. The real purpose of the adult judges is to check for historical accuracy, they can’t break from the reader’s shortlist and they do take into account the comments that the children send in with their book responses.

In this year’s selection there are some books by previous Quills winners, others who have made the short list in the past and are hoping this will be their year and famous TV historians who are trying their hand at fiction – Lucy Worsley. It’s going to be interesting to see what the readers think!

Incidentally the schools get to keep their books – children and young people get to have their thoughts and comments on the books published on the HA website – and the HA is part of the process of inspiring young readers.

Recently the HA took part in World Book Day on social media asking what books followers would recommend to excite young readers about history – the answers kept appearing all day – some were classics but rather excitingly some were books that had only recently won the Young Quills – just proving that the historical fiction being read to today and assessed by young people are the classics of the future.

The shortlist will be announced after Easter and the winners announced in the Summer at the HA awards event.

This year’s selection:

Young Quills Primary Entries - 2017

Title	Author	Publisher
Julius Zebra – Bundle with the Britons	Gary Northfield	Walker Books
Wave	Paul Dowdswell	Barrington Stoke
Land of the Gods	Sally Prue	Bloomsbury
Shield Maiden	Stuart Hill	Bloomsbury
Rose in the Blitz	Rebecca Stevens	Chicken House
The Secret of Nightingale Wood	Lucy Strange	Chicken House
Black Powder	Ally Sherrick	Chicken House
The Great Fire Dogs	Megan Rix	Puffin
The Case of the Girl in Grey	Jordan Stratford	Corgi Yearling

 

Young Quills Secondary Entries 2017

 

Title	Author	Publisher
V for Violet	Alison Rattle	Hot Key Books
The Hypnotist	Laurence Anholt	Corgi
The Girl in the Blue Coat	Monica Hesse	Macmillan Children’s Books
Beck	Mal Peet – with Meg Rosoff	Walker Books
A Most Magical Girl	Karen Foxlee	Piccadilly Press
The Girl From Everywhere	Heidi Heilig	Hot Key Books
Blade and Bone	Catherine Johnson	Walker Books
The Last Beginning	Lauren James	Walker Books
Why I went Back	James Clammer	Anderson Press
Eliza Rose	Lucy Worsley	Bloomsbury
The Haunting of Jessop Rise	Danny Weston	Anderson Press
Clover Moon	Jacqueline Wilson	Doubleday, Penguin Random House
Anna and the Swallow Man	Gavriel Savit	Bodley Head, Penguin Random House
Salt to the Sea	Ruta Sepetys	Penguin Books
The Demon Undertaker	Cameron McAllister	Corgi
Strike Lightening	Steve Cole	Red Fox, Penguin Random House
The House on Hummingbird Island	Sam Angus	Macmillan Children’s Books