Geraldine McCaughrean

Geraldine McCaughrean (/məˈkɔːkrən/ mə-KAWK-rən;[1] born 6 June 1951) is a British children's novelist. She has written more than 170 books, including Peter Pan in Scarlet (2004), the official sequel to Peter Pan commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the holder of Peter Pan's copyright. Her work has been translated into 44 languages worldwide.[2] She has received the Carnegie Medal twice and the Michael L. Printz Award among others.

Geraldine McCaughrean

Career

McCaughrean was born in London and grew up in North London. She was the youngest of three children. She studied teaching but found her true vocation in writing. She claims that what makes her love writing is the desire to escape from an unsatisfactory world. Her motto is: do not write about what you know, write about what you want to know.

Her work includes many retellings of classic stories for children: The Odyssey, El Cid, The Canterbury Tales, The Pilgrim's Progress, Moby Dick, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and Gilgamesh.

J. M. Barrie gave all rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929, and in 2004, to coincide with Peter Pan's centenary, the hospital launched a competition to find the author of a sequel. McCaughrean won the competition, after submitting a synopsis and a sample chapter. Peter Pan in Scarlet was released internationally on 5 October 2006, published in the UK by Oxford University Press and in the US by Simon & Schuster.

McCaughrean has written many other children's fiction books including The Kite Rider, The Stones Are Hatching, and Plundering Paradise. She has also written six historical novels for adults including: The Maypole (1990), Fire's Astonishment (1991), Lovesong (1996) and The Ideal Wife (1997).

As of 2013, she has launched an online novel based on the Hylas and Hercules myth, A Thousand Kinds of Ugly.

Awards

For her lifetime contribution as a children's writer McCaughrean was the British nominee in 2004 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition available to creators of children's books.[3] She was elected an Honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University in 2006 and a Fellow of the English Association in 2010. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 2010.[4]

McCaughrean has won several annual book awards. For A Pack of Lies, a collection of historical stories in a frame narrative, she won the two most prestigious British children's book awards. The Carnegie Medal, conferred by the Library Association (now CILIP), recognises the year's best children's or young adult's book. The Guardian Prize is a once-in-a-lifetime award judged by a panel of British children's writers and limited to fiction books.[lower-alpha 1]

Stop the Train (Oxford, 2001) was "Highly Commended" for the Carnegie Medal.[10][lower-alpha 2] From 1988 to 2018, McCaughrean has eight times made the Carnegie shortlist and is one of only eight authors to have won it twice since its creation in 1936.

Selected bibliography
  • A Little Lower Than the Angels (1987)
  • A Pack of Lies (1988)
  • Gold Dust (1993)
  • Plundering Paradise (1996) (US title: The Pirate's Son)
  • Forever X (1997)
  • The Stones Are Hatching (1999)
  • The Great Chase (2000)
  • Stop the Train! (2001)
  • The Kite Rider (2001)
  • Showstopper! (2003)
  • Smile! (2004)
  • Not the End of the World (2004)
  • The White Darkness (2005)
  • Cyrano (2006)
  • Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006)
  • Tamburlaine's Elephants (2007)
  • The Death-Defying Pepper Roux (2009)
  • Pull Out All The Stops! (2010) (US title: The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen)
  • The Positively Last Performance (2013)
  • The Middle of Nowhere (2013)
  • Where the World Ends (2017)

Notes
  1. In 45 years to 2011, six authors won the Carnegie Medal for their Guardian Prize-winning books. Professional librarians confer the Carnegie and select the winner from all British children's books (although it was established in 1936 as a once-in-a-lifetime award). The Guardian newspaper's prize winner is selected by British children's writers, "peers" of the author who has not yet won it, for one children's (age 7+) or young-adult fiction book. Details regarding author and publisher nationality have varied.
  2. Today there are usually eight books on the Carnegie shortlist. CCSU lists 32 "Highly Commended" runners up for the Carnegie Medal from 1966 to 2002 but only three before 1979 when the distinction became approximately annual. There were 29 "HC" books in 24 years including McCaughrean alone in 2001.

References
  1. "Geraldine McCaughrean" in Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, entry updated 30 september 2001.
  2. "geraldinemccaughrean". geraldinemccaughrean. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
  3. "2004". Hans Christian Andersen Awards. International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).
      "Hans Christian Andersen Awards". IBBY. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  4. "RSL Fellows". The Royal Society of Literature. Archived from the original on 17 July 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
  5. (Carnegie Winner 1988) Archived 8 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine. Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners. CILIP. Retrieved 13 July 2012.
  6. "Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners". theguardian 12 March 2001. Retrieved 2 August 2012.
  7. "Michael L. Printz Winners and Honor Books". YALSA. American Library Association. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
  8. "Geraldine McCaughrean, Sydney Smith Win 2018 Carnegie, Greenaway Medals". Publishers Weekly. 18 June 2018. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  9. "Independent Bookshop Week Book Award 2019".
  10. "Carnegie Medal Award". 2007(?). Curriculum Lab. Elihu Burritt Library. Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). Retrieved 13 July 2012.
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