The winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2015 is David Almond for A Song for Ella Grey (Hodder). The prize was announced at a ceremony in the Guardian offices in London on Thursday evening, November 19. Almond was presented with a check for a £1,500 and a trophy by last year’s winner, Piers Torday. He joins a distinguished list of winners stretching back to the 1960s that include Mark Haddon, Meg Rosoff, Jenny Valentine, Patrick Ness, and Rebecca Stead. Almond, who has been shortlisted in the past, expressed his particular pleasure in winning a prize judged by fellow writers and his gratitude to the Guardian for its long-term support for children’s books.
The longlist for the prize was:
A Song for Ella Grey by David Almond (Hodder)
El Deafo by Cece Bell (Amulet Books)
Apple and Raid by Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury)
The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan)
An Island of Our Own by Sally Nicholls (Scholastic)
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (Penguin)
Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders (Faber)
My Name’s Not Friday by Jon Walter (David Fickling Books)
The judges of the prize were writers Jenny Valentine, Piers Torday, and Natasha Farrant, chaired by Julia Eccleshare, children’s books editor of the Guardian.
