I think we’ve all written letters like this one. Responding to the announcement that David Almond’s A Song for Ella Grey had won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, author Lynne Reid Banks wrote to that publication:

“Buoyed up by David Almond’s beautiful description (21 November) of his inspiration for writing A Song for Ella Grey, which  has just won the Guardian children’s book prize, I went out and bought two copies for my 12-year-old grandchildren. I trusted him, and I trusted the Guardian – I would never buy a Carnegie medal winner without reading it first.

In the first five pages there is lesbian love, swearing, drinking, and enough other indications that, once again, this is not a book for children. Children are people up to the age of 12. They are not grownups of 17. The books are going straight back to Waterstones.

Woe to us who really do write for children! No prizes for us. Publishing is not a children’s world any more.”

So we all, as we do, jumped down her throat. She was stuffy, out of touch, censorious. I chimed in with a gotcha tweet linking to my review of her own sexy Melusine, published by Charlotte Zolotow at Harper twenty five years ago for ages 12 and up. But I don’t think Banks is so much bothered by Almond’s book (which she admitted she had not read) as she is by an award with “children” in its title going to a book for teens. Her statement that the winner is “once again” not for children as she defines them seems to indicate some simmering resentment on this point, albeit obliquely directed at the Carnegie medal rather than the Guardian award. But even here, her argument seems in bad faith. Almond’s “beautiful description” that impelled Banks to buy the book makes clear that it is for teenagers, and the Guardian award, as well as the Carnegie medal, has gone to YA books before. It is perhaps unkind but on point to say that Banks has never won either.

While Banks’ argument seems to be at heart self-serving, I think there are some valuable discussions yet to be had about the advisability of people as well as prizes lumping children’s and YA books together. And her calling seventeen-year-olds “grownups” has potentially revolutionary implications for our industry. If it is indeed true that most YA fiction is now bought by adults for their own reading pleasure, why not accede the publishing of those books to the adult trade divisions, and why not take them out of the running for children’s book awards?

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