The winners of the Nero Book Awards have been announced. The awards celebrate the best writing of the year in the UK and Ireland in four categories: children’s fiction, fiction, debut fiction and nonfiction. The winners of the categories then compete to win the Gold Prize Book of the Year. Below is the winner and other finalists for the Children’s Fiction category:
At school, she is bullied, called names. Luckily, in the summer she can journey to her grandmother’s home. She brings empty mason jars collected through the year and flip-flops though she will be barefoot all summer. When they arrive, she announces to her grandmother that they have to fix her mojo bag. Her grandmother is thrilled. As they have lunch, her grandmother tells her about magick and how hoodoo came from Africa through the enslaved people. The two work together all summer, doing rootwork together, making mojo bags stuffed with herbs, working in the garden, going for long walks. At the end of the summer, the mason jars are full and her mojo bag is replenished stronger than before.
This is award-winning McBride’s first picture book and it’s lovely. Working within the restraint required for picture books, she manages to create an entire world of hoodoo and magick that celebrates ancestral knowledge and connection with nature. Her text is inviting and powerful and at the end of the book she offers small ways that readers can connect with nature themselves. The illustrations are dynamic and beautiful, celebrating connection just as much as the text does with closeness, pages filled with plants, and familial love.
Eleanor loves wild things, all sorts of animals and plants. One night when she goes to bed, she awakens to discover that the wildness has entered her house. Amid the animals, she continues to live her regular life. She has breakfast from her favorite bowl has squirrels and rabbits fill the kitchen. She eats at the couch, which is actually a slumbering bear. She draws on the walls and floor, filling the blankness with butterflies, flowers and more. With her new friends, they play together until Eleanor sees herself as a wild thing too.
There is such a gentleness to this picture book with its fine-lined illustrations that show a small girl letting herself be as wild as she wants to be. The connection with nature is palpable as Eleanor spends time outside. When that is brought into the house it is merry and often silly, giving space to that sort of wildness in indoor life too. In what might be a dream of wildness, the book embraces nature and animals and how being with them can be inspiring too.
A dreamy look at letting loose and connecting with nature. Appropriate for ages 3-6.
Waking Brain Cells 