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Matt Haig wins Blue Peter Award for Shadow Forest
A dark and grisly fantasy tale about two orphans and a forest full of one-eyed trolls, inspired by a near death experience in Norway, has won the Blue Peter Book of the Year award. Shadow Forest [link to book review] by Matt Haig [link to biography] also picked up the Book I Couldn’t Put Down prize at this year’s awards, which are judged by Blue Peter viewers under the age of 12.
Shadow Forest – which also won Haig a Nestlé award in 2007 – is the author’s first attempt at writing fiction for children, although the 33-year-old has published four adult novels, including The Dead Father’s Club, and The Possession of Mr Cave. Shadow Forest is set in Norway and follows the story of Samuel Blink and his sister Martha. The pair are forced to move to the country and live with their Aunt Eda after a giant log falls from the sky and kills their parents. When Martha goes missing in the forbidden forest, Samuel must venture in to try to save her – and face the witches, trolls, pixies and “huldrefolk” who live within. It’s a story that draws on Norwegian legends and Haig’s own memories of family holidays in the country.
“I’ve got a lot of relatives in Norway and it’s a great place for folklore but the one single autobiographical event that inspired the story was my father nearly drowning in a Norwegian fjord a few years ago,” explained Haig. “He blacked out after trying to swim in the freezing water and was saved by my Norwegian uncle, because everyone in Norway is taught how to save lives. My sister and I were at university in the UK but flew out to Norway to be with him. For 24 hours it was touch and go but it turned out OK, luckily.”
Despite the traumatic inspiration behind Shadow Forest, the novel was singled out for praise from the judges for its humour.
“I was always allergic to the dry, Tolkien-style fantasy stories so I wanted to have as much fun as possible,” said Haig. “About half the creatures in the book are ‘real’ folkloric creatures in the sense that others have written about them but the others, like the Truth Pixie, I made up myself, just having fun with it. I wanted the story to have dollops of humour rather than religiously following Norwegian folklore.”
This is the ninth year of the Blue Peter awards, administered by BookTrust. Previous winners include Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve, Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo [link to biography] and The Outlaw Varjak Paw by SF Said.
Source: The Guardian
Posted: March 7th, 2009
Author: Floresiensis
Categories: Michael Morpurgo
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