The success of J K Rowling and Philip Pullman in popularising children's fiction is reflected in a record number of entries for the children's category of the Whitbread Book Awards, whose shortlists are announced today.
Four titles have been shortlisted for each of the five categories - novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book. Category winners are revealed on 7 January, followed by a face-off between them for the
Two years after Pullman became the first children's author to take the overall prize, publishers nominated 111 children's books for the awards.
Making the shortlist are two previous winners of the Whitbread children's book award: Michael Morpurgo, the present children's laureate, for his novel Private Peaceful - charting the childhood of young Thomas Peaceful in the early years of the 20th century, and his eventual underage enlistment in the British Army to help fight the First World War - and David Almond for The Fire-Eaters, a novel about young Bobby Burns in a new school, with the Third World War imminent and a strange fire-eater to contend with.
The other contenders are Catherine Fisher for The Oracle and Jeanne Willis for Naked Without a Hat.
The four shortlisted children's authors can breathe a sigh of relief that they are not competing with JK Rowling. The fifth instalment of her Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was eligible but was not submitted by Rowling's publishers, Bloomsbury.
Whoever wins the children's book award will face stiff competition from the other category winners for the overall prize.
The Man Booker Prize winner DBC Pierre will be a strong contender in the first novel category with his black comedy about an American high school shooting, Vernon God Little.
The other debut novelists on the Booker shortlist, Zoe Heller and Monica Ali, have been shunned by the Whitbread judges in favour of Buddha Da by Anne Donovan, An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray, and An Empty Room by Talitha Stevenson.
Mark Haddon, the author whose absence from the Booker shortlist was most lamented by John Carey, the chairman of the Booker's judges, gets a chance of glory in the novel category with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Shena Mackay and Barbara Trapido, both of whom made the Booker longlist, get on to the shortlist this time, as does Rachel Cusk for The Lucky Ones. Martin Amis, whose Yellow Dog was longlisted by the Booker but slammed by the critics, fails to make the grade.
The poetry prize will be fought out between the multi-award winning Lavinia Greenlaw, Don Paterson, Jamie McKendrick and Jean Sprackland. And it will be a battle of heavyweights in the biography section, in which three books about writers - Patricia Highsmith, Martha Gellhorn and George Orwell - will battle for honours with a tome on Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister.
Gillian Cross, an author and one of the children's prize judges, said the number of entries this year demonstrated how much good quality writing was published for children.
"We certainly didn't feel we were scrapping around looking for a prize winner," she said. "There is a terrific sense of excitement about the variety and inventiveness of what is being produced."
But the entries showed there was a false divide between adults' and children's fiction with a vast amount accessible to all readers. The Mark Haddon book was originally entered for the children's book and the novel awards before the publishers realised that books were only eligible for one category. George Grey, children's editor at Waterstone's bookstores, said: "People like JK Rowling and Philip Pullman have certainly raised awareness of children's books, and that you can get good quality fiction which can be judged on the same level as adults' books."
To be eligible for the awards, books must have been published in the UK or Ireland in the year to 31 October, and authors must have been living in the UK or Ireland since 2000.
The category winners each receive
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