CANR
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WEBSITE: http://www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk/
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NATIONALITY: British
LAST VOLUME: SATA 353
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PERSONAL
Surname is pronounced “Mc-CORK-ran”; born June 6, 1951, in London, England; daughter of Leslie Arthur (a firefighter) and Ethel (a teacher) Jones; married John McCaughrean; children: Ailsa.
EDUCATION:Attended Southgate Technical College, Middlesex, England, 1969-70; Christ Church College, Canterbury, B.Ed. (with honors), 1977.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Thames Television, London, England, secretary, 1970-73; Marshall Cavendish Ltd., London, assistant editor, 1977-80, subeditor, 1978-79, staff writer, 1982-88; Carreras-Rothman Ltd., Aylesbury, England, editorial assistant, 1980-81; writer, 1981—.
AWARDS:Winner in short story category, All-London Literary Competition, Wandsworth Borough Council, 1979, for “The Pike”; Whitbread Award, 1987, for A Little Lower Than the Angels; Carnegie Medal, British Library Association, and London Guardian Award, both 1989, for A Pack of Lies; Catholischen Kinderbuchpreis (Germany), 1991, for Gabriel und der Meisterspieler (German translation of A Little Lower Than the Angels); Whitbread Award, 1994, for Gold Dust; Bronze Award, Nestle Smarties Book Prize, 1996, for Plundering Paradise; UK Reading Association Children’s Book Award, 1998, for Forever X; Newsweek Best Picture Book citation, 1999, for Grandma Chickenlegs; Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, 2000, for Pilgrim’s Progress; Independent Publisher Book Award, 2000, for Grandma Chickenlegs; Blue Peter Book Award for Best Book to Keep Forever, 2001, for The Kite Rider; Carnegie Medal, 2001, for Stop the Train!; Nestle Smarties Bronze Medal, 2001, for The Kite Rider, 2002, for Stop the Train!, and 2004, for Smile!; American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults Award, 2003, for The Kite Rider; American Library Association Notable Book for Children Award, 2004, for Stop the Train! Whitbread Award, 2004, for Not the End of the World; Whitbread Award, 2005, Carnegie Medal, 2006, American Library Association Booklist Editorapos;s Choice, 2007, Kirkus Reviews Editor’s Choice, 2007, New York Public Library Best Book for the Teenage, 2007, and Michael L. Printz Award for best young adult novel, 2008, all for The White Darkness; British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year, 2007, for Peter Pan in Scarlet; Norfolk ‘Shorts’ Award shortlist, 2008, for Mo; United Kingdom Literary Association Children’s Book Awards shortlist, 2008, for Tamburlaine’s Elephants; CILIP Carnegie Medal, 2018, and Printz Honor Book, 2020, both for Where the World Ends;
WRITINGS
Also author of elementary-grade readers for Oxford University Press. Author’s works have been translated into other languages, including Welsh.
Not the End of the World has been adapted for the stage. Film rights to Peter Pan in Scarlet have been sold to Headline Pictures, BBC Films, and the United Kingdom Film Council. Many of McCaughrean’s books have been adapted as audiobooks, among them The Kite Rider, Full Cast, 2004; A Pack of Lies, BBC Audio, 2005; and Stop the Train! Full Cast, 2005.
SIDELIGHTS
Geraldine McCaughrean has penned novels for young adults, as well as stories for young children. She has also adapted tales, myths, and legends from various cultures and written adult fiction and textbooks. Whatever her subject, McCaughrean brings a flair for intricate prose and exciting storytelling to her writing. “Reading McCaughrean,” Eileen Dunlop asserted in Twentieth-Century Children’s Writers, “reinforces the belief that a good book is for everyone capable of reading it, regardless of its intended primary audience.” Among her most popular works for young adults are the novels Stop the Train! Not the End of the World, and the award-winning The Kite Rider, while retellings include Shahrazad’s One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and classical myths about Theseus, Perseus, and Odysseus, as well as an anthology of fairy tales and works less-familiar to Western readers, such as Casting the Gods Adrift: A Tale of Ancient Egypt.
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and The Canterbury Tales
After working as a writer and an editor for various British publishers, McCaughrean started her career as a children’s author with her retelling of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, a series of tales told by the legendary Shahrazad to her royal husband as a way to postpone the woman’s execution. McCaughrean was immediately praised for her inspired storytelling and her ability to make the familiar stories of Sinbad, Aladdin, and Ali Baba seem exciting and original. Marcus Crouch commented in Junior Bookshelf that with One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, McCaughrean achieves a “brilliant tour de force in what is not so much a translation as a thorough reworking of the tales,” and that she uses “the original as the starting point of a piece of individual creative enterprise.”
In The Canterbury Tales, McCaughrean takes fourteenth-century writer Geoffrey Chaucer’s classic story collection and focuses on the pilgrimage to Canterbury itself. She tones down the content of some of the more ribald tales, and then, “in colorful style and language, … creatively reconstructs and adds conversation, event and detail, in keeping with the medieval times, to stitch the tales together,” as Ruth M. McConnell described it in School Library Journal. While he felt that some of the tales lose something in the retelling, Times Educational Supplement contributor Terry Jones noted that “McCaughrean’s real achievement is the way she has succeeded in turning the whole pilgrimage itself into a story, and has brought that far-off medieval expedition to life in a quite remarkable way.” In Junior Bookshelf, Crouch concluded that in The Canterbury Tales, McCaughrean “captures most beautifully the mood of the pilgrimage, the high spirits, the smell of the countryside and the muddy road.”
A Little Lower Than the Angels and A Pack of Lies
McCaughrean’s first novel, A Little Lower Than the Angels, won the coveted Whitbread Children’s Novel Award in 1987. It is a complex, multilevel drama set in medieval England during the time when traveling players performed Mystery plays in towns and villages throughout the British countryside. The story centers around Gabriel, a stonemason’s apprentice who runs away from his cruel master to join a troupe of players. The boy’s flowing blond curls make him a natural to play the part of the angel Gabriel. Then the superficially benevolent playmaster Garvey, seizing a chance to increase the troupe’s wealth and popularity, convinces the boy to play an off-stage role as a miracle healer. Gabriel soon starts to believe in his own power, but he questions the rightness of his actions when he is asked for help by townspeople dying of the plague and desperate for a miracle. McCaughrean “has triumphed in her first novel in presenting the lives of ordinary people of the past, in direct, present-day language, with just a few archaisms to set the scene, and relevant historical information,” Jessica Yates wrote in British Book News Children’s Books. As Crouch similarly concluded in Junior Bookshelf, A Little Lower Than the Angels “is a very good novel, rich in uncluttered historical detail, written with sensitive fluency, and with a gallery of memorable characters.”
McCaughrean’s Carnegie Medal-winning novel A Pack of Lies demonstrates several different approaches to storytelling. Ailsa Povey and her mother eke out a living selling antiques out of their dilapidated shop. One day, Ailsa meets a mysterious young man named MCC Berkshire, who offers to help in the shop in exchange for room and board. He is spectacularly successful, as he weaves elaborate stories about each item in the shop, enthralling customers into making purchases. Every tale displays his—and, according to several critics, McCaughrean’s—brilliance as a storyteller, as each one reflects a different literary style. “Each is an utterly convincing example of its kind, enthralling the reader in a web of make-believe,” Valerie Caless observed in the School Librarian. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly similarly hailed the author’s “leaps from genre to genre, in the writing equivalent of sleight of hand,” and added that McCaughrean “pulls off each meta- fictional complexity with finesse and humor.”
A Pack of Lies is more than just a collection of stories, however, as the ending reveals. MCC does not stay around the shop for long, and after his departure, the disconsolate Ailsa picks up a book and finds herself a character in a story about MCC, their meeting, and his time in the shop. As Caless asked: “Who, then, is the fiction and who the liar telling it? Is Ailsa a figment of MCC’s imagination or he of hers?” As Stephanie Nettell concluded in Books for Keeps: “More than anything, A Pack of Lies is an exuberant celebration of fiction’s spell, a smiling surrender to the grip of the unruly imagination, a playful introduction to the riches of style that lie waiting in books.”
Gold Dust and The Kite Rider
McCaughrean again shows the depth of her imagination in the historical novels Gold Dust, The Kite Rider, and Stop the Train! Gold Dust is set in a poor mining town in Brazil. The effects of uncontrolled greed caused by the discovery of gold are seen through the eyes of Inez de Souza and her brother Maro, who watch as their town is slowly destroyed and its inhabitants corrupted by a gold rush. “Sharp observations on a kaleidoscope of topics enliven every page, often underlined by ironic humour, whether understated … or sharper,” Brian Slough wrote in the Times Educational Supplement. As Crouch commented in his Junior Bookshelf review, with its “sparkling” language and “wonderfully inventive, consistent and hideously convincing” plot, Gold Dust is “an engrossing, funny, tragic blockbuster of a story.”
In her award-winning book The Kite Rider, McCaughrean takes readers back in time to the thirteenth century, as twelve-year-old Hanoyou agrees to work aboard the ship of his late father as a kite rider, one who tests the winds and the will of the gods by sailing above the masts tied to a large kite. While working to prevent his recently widowed mother’s marriage to an evil ship’s mate, Hanoyou travels with his older cousin, the wise and beautiful Mipeng, and amazes audiences with his skill at riding a kite up into the heavens, where he pretends to commune with the spirits of the dead. The cousins are then approached by the charismatic Miao Je, who asks the pair to join his traveling circus. The group soon journeys to the court of famed Mongol leader Kublai Khan, the conqueror of China. As her characters wrestle with love, revenge, racism, trust, duty, and honor, McCaughrean spins a story that Kliatt reviewer Claire Rosser praised as “truly marvelous” and “amazingly imaginative, exotic, and challenging.”
Not the End of the World and Stop the Train!
Moving even further back in time, Not the End of the World concerns those fortunate enough to be given a place on Noah’s famed ark and saved from the deadly flood that covered the earth. Narrated by animals as well as by Noah’s family members, the book “raises thought-provoking questions in its expansion and exploration of an ancient tale,” according to School Library Journal contributor Kathy Piehl. Portraying Noah as a zealot, McCaughrean brings life to this biblical character and the members of his family. In what Booklist reviewer Ilene Cooper called “a powerfully crafted, uneasy read,” the author describes a voyage that is trying due to the filthy conditions and the deprivations suffered by those afloat for the forty long days it took the waters to recede. As a Publishers Weekly reviewer noted, McCaughrean “masterfully transforms the famous biblical story” in what the critic dubbed a “provocative retelling.”
“The literary equivalent of a grand old western movie,” according to a Publishers Weekly critic, Stop the Train! takes place in the early twentieth century and focuses on a group of settlers making a new home in the wilds of Oklahoma. The settlers have such pride in their new town, which they name Florence, that they refuse to sell their land when a powerful railroad tycoon makes them an offer. Angered, the railroad owner refuses to build a station in Florence, thus threatening the life of the struggling community until residents can devise a way to get passing trains to stop. Grounded by a “strong sense of community spirit,” the story paints a “busy panorama that’s just exaggerated enough to ward off … picky questions of historical accuracy,” noted Horn Book contributor Peter D. Sieruta. In a School Library Journal review, Bruce Anne Shook deemed the story a “rollicking tale” featuring “eccentric but lovable characters and their unusual exploits.”
Saint George and the Dragon and Greek Myths
In addition to writing fiction, McCaughrean has produced numerous retellings and adaptations, among them Saint George and the Dragon, her version of the story of England’s patron saint. Traveling across the countryside, George of Lydda comes across Sabra, the king’s daughter, who has been tied to the stake as a sacrifice to the dragon—a slimy, lizard-like creature called Wickedness, whose father is Evil and whose mother is Darkness. In El Cid, McCaughrean retells the story of one of Spain’s most famous heroes, Rodrigo Diaz, who was exiled from Castile only to become a brilliant warrior who recaptured territory from the invading Moors. “McCaughrean shows herself a grand storyteller,” a Kirkus Reviews critic remarked of El Cid; “she presents this prototypical chivalric knight in a lively narrative sparked with humor, drama, and her hero’s daring trickery.”
In The Odyssey and The Orchard Book of Greek Myths (published in the United States as Greek Myths), McCaughrean uses humor to create interest and excitement for younger readers. Janet Tayler, reviewing The Odyssey for the School Librarian, noted that here the adventures of Odysseus are retold in a “lively, rather tongue-in- cheek manner,” while Hazel Rochman wrote in Booklist that the stories in Greek Myths are “direct, robust, and gleeful.” While Pauline Long noted that Greek Myths is not intended as a reference tool, she added in the School Librarian that “its real purpose is to delight and entertain—and this it does in flamboyant style.” Rochman commented that McCaughrean’s stories have the “dramatic immediacy” of familiar legends: “‘Long ago, when fortune-tellers told the truth, there lived a very frightened man.’ How can you not read on?”
McCaughrean profiles four of the most well-known ancient heroes in the books Theseus, Odysseus, Hercules, and Perseus. “Those who wonder why the ancient heroes are worth knowing will be richly answered,” a Kirkus Reviews writer noted of Theseus, which follows the story of the son whose coming was foretold to King Aegeus at the Oracle of Delphi. Ultimately banished from his family after bringing tragedy to his father’s home, Theseus goes on to encounter the Minotaur, Amazonian Queen Hippolyta, and Procrustes, among other characters. The hero of Perseus confronts Medusa, whose look turns the unwary into stone, and saves the beautiful Andromeda. Citing McCaughrean’s ability to blend “the colloquial and contemporary,” Rochman commented in Booklist that, with Perseus, the author’s “rhythmic storytelling of the gruesome and the heroic … will grab kids.” Other ancient heroes are brought to life by McCaughrean in books such as Gilgamesh the Hero, which retells the oldest recorded story in human history.
Greek Gods and Goddesses and God's Kingdom
In Greek Gods and Goddesses, McCaughrean recounts fifteen myths from ancient Greece and its pantheon of gods and goddesses. This 1998 title was followed in 2001 with Roman Myths, which also features illustrations by Emma Chichester Clark. Here McCaughrean explains that the Romans—rivals of Greece in ancient times—adapted the Greek gods and myths for their own use. In contrast to the Greek stories, which often impart a lesson about human folly, the Roman tales stress the role of fate in life. Myths recounted here include that of Aeneas and the founding of Rome, and the stories of Sibyl, Jupiter, and Diana. McCaughrean includes some lesser-known Roman legends as well, such as the tragedy of Erisychthon, who destroyed an ancient sacred forest, and that of Tarquin, a despotic ruler. A Horn Book reviewer found that a “mix of cynicism (on the part of Roman mythology’s perpetrators) and credulity (by the populace) makes McCaughrean’s ironic, light-hearted tone especially appropriate.” School Library Journal reviewer Nina Lindsay also weighed in with a positive assessment, noting that McCaughrean “has accomplished an appealing and approachable introduction to Roman mythology that will make readers want to seek out more.”
McCaughrean turns to the stories of the Bible with God’s Kingdom: Stories from the New Testament. The tales included here, most of which recount events from the life of Christ, bring figures such as Lazarus and John the Baptist into greater focus. “McCaughrean also does a good job with the more complicated parables, writing them in a way that makes them understandable,” remarked Booklist contributor Ilene Cooper. School Library Journal reviewer Patricia Pearl Dole noted that McCaughrean’s “text flows smoothly from incident to miracle to parable, often using explanatory bridging matter to clarify the meaning.”
The Pirate's Son and Grandma Chickenlegs
Drawing upon pirate lore, McCaughrean spins a fictional tale of a young boy who must find his own way in the world in The Pirate’s Son. The story, intended for younger readers, is set in the 1700s, and focuses on Tamo White, the son of a pirate and a woman from Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean. Tamo has been sent to England for schooling, but he returns to Madagascar with two friends, ferried there aboard a ship captained by the seemingly friendly Sheller. The seaman proves unreliable, however, when he tries to sell Tamo’s friend Maud into slavery. On Madagascar, Tamo finds that his mother has wed King Samson, another pirate, and he must extricate himself and his friends from danger. “The writing lacks only Technicolor, bringing both the exotic locale and its equally exotic pillagers to riotous life,” asserted a Kirkus Reviews contributor. School Library Journal reviewer Steven Engelfried also commended the book. “The conclusion is satisfying and convincing,” Engelfried noted, adding that the story “develops into a vivid picture of a time and a place new to most youngsters.”
A famous figure from Russian folklore is the inspiration for McCaughrean’s Grandma Chickenlegs, a picture book that features illustrations by Moira Kemp. The work revives the Baba Yaga figure, a terrifying witch, and Booklist contributor GraceAnne A. DeCandido asserted that “McCaughrean tells the classic tale with her signature wit, grace, and verve.” In it, a little girl named Tatia is treated cruelly by her evil stepmother. Having outgrown her clothes, Tatia is sent on a mission to the house of Grandma Chickenlegs to get a sewing needle to make a new outfit. The fearsome Grandma, who is actually Baba Yaga, tells Tatia that she must weave a cloth first in order to pay for the needle. The heroine escapes with the help of a doll that her late mother had given her, and in the end, her father banishes the stepmother for sending Tatia on the potentially deadly mission. “McCaughrean’s well-paced narrative is rich in imagery and humor,” remarked a Horn Book critic, who also liked the little touches in the story, like Grandma Chickenlegs’ dog and cat, “who sensibly switch their allegiance to Tatia” and are represented by McCaughrean and Kemp as “appealingly anxious to protect the little girl.” A Publishers Weekly contributor stated that “McCaughrean’s … language is refreshingly original” and termed Grandma Chickenlegs a “spirited retelling” that “fairly vibrates with vigorous images.”
How the Reindeer Got Their Antlers and The Stones Are Hatching
How the Reindeer Got Their Antlers is a compelling story about Santa’s famed sleigh-pullers. The legend opens with the creation of the animal kingdom by an angel who bestows on the reindeer a knobby crown. Ashamed, the primordial ancestor of all reindeer flees to a cold hideout for ten millennia. One day, a man in a red coat, his sleigh overladen, alights in the wintry land of the forgotten reindeer and asks for help. The descendants of that first reindeer agree to assist, hoping that the stranger will not be put off by their treelike antlers. In return for a mission completed, Santa offers to give them antlers of gold—until an accident sends the sleigh into an icy lake, and the reindeers’ strong horns rescue it. Grateful, Santa gives them the ability to fly for one night each year. “A pleasant holiday porquoi story by the indefatigable McCaughrean, this makes a nice addition to the solstice canon,” remarked Booklist reviewer DeCandido.
Among her other books for younger readers, McCaughrean won critical praise for The Stones Are Hatching. Based on an old Celtic tale, the story blends elements from other cultures in its tale of Phelim Green and his unusual adventures. The youngster lives in England in 1919, where he is belittled daily by his vicious sister. One day the shy and reclusive eleven year old wakes and finds the house wrecked. A spirit called the Domovoy—a house guardian borrowed from Slavic folklore—tells him to rescue the world from the Hatchlings of the Stoor Worm. Phelim thinks the Domovoy is mistaken and has inadvertently selected the wrong person for the hero’s job, but he sets out anyway. Along the way he meets animals and a witch who join him on his journey to the mouth of the Stoor Worm. They learn that the massive artillery of World War I has awakened this beast from centuries of sleep, and eggs of stone are now hatching horrendous creatures near its snout. There is much adventure along the way, including Phelim’s escape from a determined, ambulatory sack of digestive organs. “While it may be too violent for some, this evocative and sometimes profound fantasy distinguishes itself by way of vivid imagery, compelling action and often Siren-like lyricism,” noted a Publishers Weekly contributor. Other reviews of The Stones Are Hatching were similarly laudatory. “With lyrical language, pieces of old songs and poetry, and wondrous imagery, McCaughrean has created a story of amazing depth and breadth,” remarked Martha Walke in Horn Book. School Library Journal contributor Susan L. Rogers especially noted the way that McCaughrean interweaves lessons about loyalty and the human spirit into her tale, and wrote that this approach illustrates to readers “that the horrors of war and the loss of a friend are worse than all of the monsters Phelim encounters.”
Peter Pan in Scarlet
As a testament to her writing talent and wide-ranging popularity, McCaughrean was selected from among hundreds of writers who entered a competition sponsored by the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children to write a sequel to Peter Pan, the children’s classic penned by Scottish novelist J.M. Barrie. First published as a stage play in 1904, the book’s rights were bequeathed to the London hospital in 1929, six years before Barrie’s death. McCaughrean’s sequel, titled Peter Pan in Scarlet, was translated into over thirty languages and published in 2006. “Only the most stony-hearted, dyed-in-the-wool Peter Pan fan could fail to be charmed by Geraldine McCaughrean’s lightness of touch, sureness of writing and sparkling imagination,” wrote Philip Ardagh of the novel in his review for the London Guardian. McCaughrean’s sequel follows Barrie’s original text, allowing Wendy and the Lost Boys to age, transforming some characters in surprising ways, and turning the whole into what Ardagh described as “an extraordinary achievement” that will appeal to both adults and children.
Commenting on the challenge of writing a sequel to such a classic and frequently adapted tale as Peter Pan, the author wrote in the Guardian that she strove to be faithful to Barrie’s original work, but added: “I also wanted to create something distinctly my own. So what I attempted was a literary counterpart—the matching bookend—same world, but somewhat reversed,” as she did not share all of Barrie’s dark views on adults and the inevitability of their happiness.
Father and Son and The White Darkness
The author retold another classic in terms accessible to young, modern audiences with Cyrano, her adaptation of Edmond Rostrand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac. McCaughrean’s version of the story of the witty, intelligent man with the huge, ugly nose, who writes love letters for a handsome, inarticulate friend, is “eloquent and spirited,” stated a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Praise also came from Sharon Morrison in School Library Journal; she called the author’s writing “entertaining and tender.” That same year also saw the publication of Father and Son: A Nativity Story, in which McCaughrean offers readers a “provocatively imagined tale” that evokes the feelings and doubts experienced by Joseph, the foster father of Jesus. Looking at the infant and knowing him to be the incarnation of God, Joseph wonders how he can ever teach him anything. According to Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, who reviewed the book in School Library Journal, the book is a good compliment to the traditional story, “especially for older children, who can appreciate some of the subtleties of the man’s concerns.”
The White Darkness, published in 2006, is another young adult novel by McCaughrean. This unusual tale focuses on Symone, a fourteen-year-old girl who has become obsessed with Antarctic explorers and exploration since the death of her father. Her favorite explorer is Titus Oates, a man who was one of many who lost their lives on the Scott expedition. In her mind, Titus is constantly with her, listening to her problems and thoughts in a way that her friends and family cannot. The only person in Symone’s real life who takes much interest in her is Uncle Victor, who eventually makes it possible for her to visit Antarctica. There, she encounters “White Darkness,” the polar summer in which the sun never sets. While other people see the continent as barren and desolate, Symone finds much to identify with in its silence and isolation. Antarctica represents purity to her, but she is really caught up in a web of secrets and manipulation. Reviewing the book for the Teenreads.com Web site, Sarah A. Wood commented: “The Arctic regions are ideal for asking the big questions about ethics and morality because one’s decisions, which might be regarded as opinions in ordinary life, hinge on life or death in such a harsh environment. … The White Darkness manages to ask some of these big questions without compromising plot or pace.”
Smile!
McCaughrean’s Smile! examines questions of identity and memory linked to the understanding of pictures and photography. The story begins when pilot and photographer Flash falls out of his destroyed plane and lands in the backcountry of an unspecified country with only four pictures in his Polaroid camera. He is rescued by local people and taken to their village, where he gradually recovers. “As Flash continues to experience confusion and head pain,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “he learns to think with his heart.”
“Geraldine McCaughrean’s Smile! is a small treasure of a book,” declared Norah Piehl, reviewing the volume for the KidsRead.com Web site, “… a sort of fable, about friendship, about cross-cultural understanding and about the value of looking at our lives through someone else’s eyes—or camera lens.”
The Death-defying Pepper Roux
In The Death-defying Pepper Roux, McCaughrean explores another aspect of the mortality she examined in Peter Pan in Scarlet. Unlike Peter, who has chosen to live in Neverland so he will never have to grow up, Pepper has been confronting his mortality for years—since the day he was born, in fact. “Pepper Roux’s aunt, devoutly Catholic and deeply fatalistic,” explained Jonathan Hunt in Horn Book, “has predicted that he will not live past his fourteenth birthday.” “Aunt Mireille takes it upon herself to pave Pepper’s path to heaven,” declared a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “with daily prayer [and] constant confession.” When the dreaded day arrives, however, Pepper discovers that he is still alive and well—and nobody seems to care. So Pepper takes his sea-captain father’s coat and hat, and begins a series of adventures designed to confuse and mislead the death that, he has been told, is constantly pursuing him. Pepper “becomes, among other things,” stated Ian Chipman in Booklist, “the captain of a ship, a deli-meat slicing would-be Cupid, a fact-shrugging journalist, and a reluctant legionnaire.” “The captain’s commission is an insurance scam, a leaky death ship. As a telegram boy he’s mostly delivering notifications of death from the war in Algeria. On the newspaper, it’s all destruction and murder,” wrote Frank Cottrell Boyce in the London Guardian. “But maybe it’s Pepper’s enhanced awareness of Death’s proximity that makes him more vividly alive than the people around him.”
Critics celebrated both McCaughrean’s command of language and her approach to literature in their reviews of The Death-defying Pepper Roux. “McCaughrean’s frequently over-the-top metaphors,” stated a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “mirror the delightfully implausible plot—a slapstick story salted with colorful characters.” “While the episodic plot may not be its strongest draw,” declared Connie Tyrrell Burns, writing for School Library Journal, “the memorable characters and lyrical prose make the novel hard to put down.” “The individual threads of the story are beautifully woven together,” declared a Fantasy Book Review contributor. “This is a charming book, often surreal, always humorous but with an underlying darkness that often shows man’s—and to a much lesser extent, woman’s—inherent cruelty, often casual but nevertheless evident.” “McCaughrean is a skilful writer, and she’s created a story for children who devour books, who like nothing better than to curl up in an armchair and read until their eyes hurt,” stated a Bookbag website reviewer. “The ones who’ll take their time over a passage of description, savouring McCaughrean’s choice of words.” “McCaughrean crafts an engaging and often humorous story about what happens when someone truly embraces life,” wrote Benjamin Boche in a review for the website KidsRead.com. “Complete with vivid descriptions and a journey along several small French coastal towns, The Death-defying Pepper Roux is an endearing tale that reminds the reader how unexpected—and fun—life can be.”
The Middle of Nowhere
(open new)In the novel The Middle of Nowhere, Comity Pinny lives in rural Australia in the mid-nineteenth century. Her widower father operates a telegraph station but struggles to cope with his wife’s sudden death from a snake bite. Comity tries to cover for her parents’ absence in life. She also finds comfort with the syncretic stories told by the Aboriginal yard boy. When a cruel assistant arrives, though, her life becomes unbearable.
In a review in School Librarian, Susan Elkin described it as being a “fast-paced, quirky, original and unpredictable novel.” Elkin additionally noted “Especially enjoyable is the astonishingly wise aboriginal yard boy.” Reviewing the novel in the London Guardian, Lottie Longshanks remarked that “this book grips you from the minute you start reading it. The very first line drags you in.” Longshanks concluded: “I think adults and children will love this.”
Where the World Ends
McCaughrean published the Carnegie-winning novel Where the World Ends in 2017. Set in St. Kilda’s Archipelago in 1727, the story centers on a fowling expedition and the ten-to-sixteen-year-old boys who make up the crew as they sail to the nearly empty island of Hirta. While they begin with high expectations, they fear the worst when their boat does not return for them for months.
Writing in School Librarian, Elizabeth McDonald commented that “it is a mesmerising story of survival full of unexpected twists.” In a review in BookPage, Deborah Hopkinson commented that “McCaughrean’s storytelling is as dramatic and harsh as the island landscape…. Where the World Ends is a stunning literary achievement.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews said the author takes the events from “a real event, wraps it in immersive, imaginative detail and thoroughly real emotion, and creates an unforgettable tale of human survival.” The same reviewer labeled a real event, wraps it in immersive, imaginative detail and thoroughly real emotion, and creates an unforgettable tale of human survival “a masterpiece.”(close new)
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Children’s Literature Review, Volume 38, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1996.
Twentieth-Century Children’s Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1995.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 1986, p. 1079; October 15, 1989, p. 461; December 15, 1989, p. 834; February 1, 1993, Hazel Rochman, review of Greek Myths, p. 982; July, 1995, Chris Sherman, review of The Odyssey, p. 1873; October 1, 1995, April Judge, review of The Random House Book of Stories from the Ballet, p. 310; May 1, 1996, Hazel Rochman, review of The Golden Hoard: Myths and Legends of the World, p. 1501; April 15, 1997, Karen Morgan, review of The Silver Treasure: Myths and Legends of the World, p. 1424; October, 1997, Kathy Piehl, review of Unicorns! Unicorns! p. 104; November 15, 1997, Carolyn Phelan, review of Unicorns! Unicorns! p. 566; March 1, 1998, Susan Dove Lempke, review of God’s People: Stories from the Old Testament, p. 1130; April 15, 1998, Wilma Longstreet, review of The Silver Treasure, p. 1460; May 15, 1998, John Peters, review of The Bronze Cauldron, p. 1624; August, 1998, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of The Pirate’s Son, p. 2000; October 1, 1998, Ilene Cooper, review of God’s People, p. 343; November 15, 1998, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Greek Gods and Goddesses, p. 584; May 15, 1999, John Peters, review of The Crystal Pool: Myths and Legends of the World, p. 1694; October 15, 1999, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Grandma Chickenlegs, p. 449; January 1, 2000, Ilene Cooper, review of God’s Kingdom: Stories from the New Testament, p. 914; July, 2000, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of My First Oxford Book of Stories, p. 2037; September 1, 2000, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of How the Reindeer Got Their Antlers, p. 134; February 15, 2001, Karen Hutt, review of Starry Tales, p. 1136; September 1, 2001, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Roman Myths, p. 101; December 1, 2001, Anna Rich, review of The Stones Are Hatching, p. 664; November 1, 2002, Connie Fletcher, review of One Bright Penny, p. 509; August, 2003, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Stop the Train! p. 1981; September 1, 2003, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Gilgamesh the Hero, p. 77; October 15, 2003, Linda Perkins, review of Casting the Gods Adrift: A Tale of Ancient Egypt, p. 412; December 15, 2004, Hazel Rochman, review of Odysseus, p. 739; April 15, 2005, Hazel Rochman, review of Perseus, p. 1452; August, 2005, Ilene Cooper, review of Not the End of the World, p. 2015; October 1, 2005, Jennifer Mattson, review of The Jesse Tree, p. 70; September 15, 2006, Hazel Rochman, review of Cyrano, p. 71; October 15, 2006, Carolyn Phelan, review of Father and Son: A Nativity Story, p. 54; December 1, 2006, Jennifer Hubert, review of The White Darkness, p. 45; October 1, 2005, Jennifer Mattson, review of The Jesse Tree, p. 70; March 15, 2007, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Blue Moon Mountain, p. 54; November 1, 2009, Ian Chipman, review of The Death-defying Pepper Roux, p. 34.
Bookpage, December 1, 2019, Deborah Hopkinson, review of Where the World Ends, p. 35.
Books for Keeps, May 1, 1989, Stephanie Nettell, review of A Pack of Lies, p. 25.
British Book News Children’s Books, June 1, 1987, Jessica Yates, review of A Little Lower Than the Angels, p. 30.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, April 1, 1988, pp. 161-62.
Children’s Bookwatch, February 1, 2007, review of Blue Moon Mountain.
Guardian (London, England), September 30, 2006, Geraldine McCaughrean, “Boy Wonder”; October 7, 2006, Philip Ardagh, review of Peter Pan in Scarlet; March 27, 2010, Frank Cottrell Boyce, review of The Death-defying Pepper Roux; October 22, 2013, “Quickfire Interview: Geraldine McCaughrean;” January 26, 2014, Lottie Longshanks, review of The Middle of Nowhere.
Horn Book, May 1, 1996, Maria B. Salvadore, review of The Golden Hoard, p. 342; November 1, 1998, Ann A. Flowers, review of The Pirate’s Son, p. 735, and Kristi Beavin, review of The Silver Treasure, p. 767; January 1, 2000, review of Grandma Chickenlegs, p. 88; July 1, 2000, Martha Walke, review of The Stones Are Hatching, p. 462; July 1, 2001, review of Roman Myths, p. 464; July 1, 2003, Peter D. Sieruta, review of Stop the Train! p. 462; September 1, 2003, Joanna Rudge Long, review of Gilgamesh the Hero, p. 622; July 1, 2005, Joanna Rudge Long, review of Not the End of the World, p. 473; September 1, 2006, Kristi Elle Jemtegaard, review of Smile! p. 610; November 1, 2006, Joanna Rudge Long, review of Cyrano, p. 720; March 1, 2007, Martha V. Parravano, review of The White Darkness;January 1, 2010, Jonathan Hunt, review of The Death-defying Pepper Roux.
Junior Bookshelf, February 1, 1983, Marcus Crouch, review of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, p. 44; February 1, 1985, Marcus Crouch, review of The Canterbury Tales, pp. 41-42; June 1, 1987, Marcus Crouch, review of A Little Lower Than the Angels, p. 135; August 1, 1989, pp. 159-160; February, 1990, p. 47; February 1, 1994, Marcus Crouch, review of Gold Dust, pp. 34-35.
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1987, p. 1577; September 15, 1989, p. 1406; October 15, 1989, review of El Cid, p. 1532; April 1, 1992, review of The Cherry Tree, p. 466; May 15, 1993, review of Over the Deep Blue Sea; August 1, 1998, review of The Pirate’s Son, p. 1121; May 1, 2001, review of Roman Myths, p. 664; June 1, 2003, review of Casting the Gods Adrift, p. 808; September 15, 2003, review of Gilgamesh the Hero, p. 1178; November 15, 2004, review of Odysseus, p. 1091; April 15, 2005, review of Perseus, p. 478; June 15, 2005, review of Not the End of the World, p. 687; October 1, 2005, review of Theseus, p. 1084; September 1, 2006, review of Smile! p. 908; September 15, 2006, review of Cyrano, p. 961; November 1, 2006, review of Father and Son, p. 1132; December 1, 2006, review of The White Darkness, p. 1223; December 15, 2009, review of The Death-defying Pepper Roux; August 15, 2019, review of Where the World Ends.
Kliatt, November 1, 2003, Claire Rosser, review of The Kite Rider, p. 17; July 1, 2005, Claire Rosser, review of Not the End of the World, p. 13, and Phyllis LaMontagne, review of Stop the Train! p. 23; January 1, 2007, Claire Rosser, review of The White Darkness, p. 16; March 1, 2007, Nola Theiss, review of The White Darkness, p. 52.
Magpies, March 1, 1997, review of The Silver Treasure, p. 18; March 1, 1998, review of God’s People, pp. 22-23; March 1, 2001, review of Gold Dust, p. 34.
Observer (London, England), October 8, 2006, Kate Kellaway, “The Ascent of Pan.”
Publishers Weekly, April 28, 1989, review of A Pack of Lies, p. 82; April 15, 1996, review of The Golden Hoard, p. 69; August 25, 1997, review of Unicorns! Unicorns! p. 71; May 11, 1998, review of The Bronze Cauldron, p. 68; September 7, 1998, review of The Pirate’s Son, p. 96; May 10, 1999, review of The Crystal Pool, p. 69; August 16, 1999, review of The Pirate’s Son, p. 87; October 25, 1999, review of Grandma Chickenlegs, p. 80; December 20, 1999, review of God’s Kingdom, p. 78; May 29, 2000, reviews of The Stones Are Hatching, p. 83; September 25, 2000, review of How the Reindeer Got Their Antlers, p. 72; March 19, 2001, review of Starry Tales, p. 101; August 20, 2001, review of Roman Myths, p. 82; May 26, 2003, review of Stop the Train! p. 71; July 7, 2003, review of Casting the Gods Adrift, p. 72; November 10, 2003, review of Stop the Train! p. 37; December 13, 2004, review of Odysseus, p. 69; July 25, 2005, review of Not the End of the World, p. 78; August 29, 2005, review of The Jesse Tree, p. 60; September 25, 2006, review of Father and Son, p. 70; October 9, 2006, review of Cyrano, p. 57; January 22, 2007, review of The White Darkness, p. 185; August 29, 2005, review of The Jesse Tree, p. 60; December 7, 2009, review of The Death-defying Pepper Roux, p. 49.
Resource Links, April 1, 2007, Tanya Boudreau, review of Blue Moon Mountain, p. 6.
School Librarian, December 1, 1982, pp. 339-340; September, 1985, p. 239; February 1, 1989, Valerie Caless, review of A Pack of Lies, p. 31; February 1, 1993, Pauline Long, review of The Orchard Book of Greek Myths, p. 22; May 1, 1994, Janet Tayler, review of The Odyssey, p. 62; February, 1996, p. 21; December 22, 1999, review of Beauty and the Beast, p. 213; March 22, 2014, Susan Elkin, review of The Middle of Nowhere, p. 41; September 22, 2017, Elizabeth McDonald, review of Where the World Ends, p. 169.
School Library Journal, February 1, 1986, Ruth M. McConnell, review of The Canterbury Tales, p. 82; December 1, 1995, Kay McPherson, review of The Random House Book of Stories from the Ballet, p. 120; March 1, 1996, Cheri Estes, review of The Golden Hoard, pp. 211-12; April 1, 1997, Patricia Lothrop-Green, review of The Silver Treasure, p. 153; March 1, 1998, Patricia Pearl Dole, review of God’s People, p. 198; July 1, 1998, Angela J. Reynolds, review of The Bronze Cauldron, p. 108; October 1, 1998, Angela J. Reynolds, review of Greek Gods and Goddesses, p. 157; November 1, 1998, Steven Engelfried, review of The Pirate’s Son, p. 124; August 1, 1999, Angela J. Reynolds, review of The Crystal Pool, p. 174; October 1, 1999, Lisa Falk, review of The Nutcracker, p. 68; April 1, 2000, Patricia Pearl Dole, review of God’s Kingdom, p. 122; June 1, 2000, Susan L. Rogers, review of The Stones Are Hatching, p. 150; September, 2000, M. Lang Budin, review of My First Oxford Book of Stories, p. 220; October 1, 2000, review of How the Reindeer Got Their Antlers, p. 61; December 1, 2000, Susan Scheps, review of Beauty and the Beast, p. 134; July 1, 2001, Nina Lindsay, review of Roman Myths, p. 96; December 1, 2001, Suzanne Libra, review of The Stones Are Hatching, p. 76; August 1, 2003, Angela J. Reynolds, review of Casting the Gods Adrift, p. 162, and Bruce Anne Shook, review of Stop the Train! p. 163; December 1, 2003, Patricia D. Lothrop, review of Gilgamesh the Hero, p. 171; December 1, 2004, Angela J. Reynolds, review of Odysseus, p. 163; August 1, 2005, Kathy Piehl, review of Not the End of the World, p. 130, and M. Lang Budin, review of Perseus, p. 146; October 1, 2005, review of Odysseus, p. 52; January 1, 2006, Linda L. Walkins, review of The Jesse Tree, p. 106, and M. Lang Budin, review of Hercules, p. 158; August 1, 2006, Casey Rondini, review of Smile! p. 56; October 1, 2006, Sharon Morrison, review of Cyrano, p. 161; October 1, 2006, Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, review of Father and Son: A Nativity Story, p. 98; December 1, 2006, Jayne Damron, review of Smile! p. 150; April 1, 2007, review of Cyrano, p. 71, and Christi Voth, review of The White Darkness, p. 142; January 1, 2006, Linda L. Walkins, review of The Jesse Tree, p. 106; December 1, 2006, Jayne Damron, review of Smile!, p. 150; April 1, 2007, Jayne Damron, review of Blue Moon Mountain, p. 112; January 1, 2010, Connie Tyrrell Burns, review of The Death-defying Pepper Roux, p. 108.
Teacher Librarian, June 1, 2000, Jessica Higgs, reviews of Greek Gods and Goddesses, Myths and Legends of the World, and The Crystal Pool, pp. 54-55; February 1, 2003, Liza Graybill, review of One Bright Penny, p. 115.
Time International, February 13, 2006, Michael Brunton, “Return to Neverland,” p. 53.
Times (London, England), September 23, 2007, Nicolette Jones, review of Tamburlaine’s Elephants.
Times Educational Supplement, February 1, 1985, Terry Jones, “Pilgrims’ Way,” p. 27; November 12, 1993, Brian Slough, “Gold Fever,” p. 3; April 23, 1999, Geraldine Brennan, review of Roman Myths, p. 11; December 24, 1999, review of A Pack of Lies, p. 27.
UPI NewsTrack, March 15, 2005, “Author Chosen to Write ‘Peter Pan’ Sequel,” December 18, 2006, “Film Rights Sold to New Peter Pan Tale.”
Voice of Youth Advocates, August 1, 1997, Roxy Ekstrom, review of The Silver Treasure, p. 204.
Washington Post Book World, July 10, 2005, Elizabeth Ward, review of Not the End of the World, p. 12.
World Entertainment News Network, October 5, 2006, “McCaughrean Nervous about Reaction to Peter Pan Book.”
ONLINE
Bookbag, http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/ (August 17, 2010), review of The Death-defying Pepper Roux.
British Council website, http://www.contemporarywriters.com/ (April 15, 2020), author profile.
Contemporary Writers, http://www.contemporarywriters.com/ (August 17, 2010), author profile.
Fantasy Book Review, http://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/ (August 17, 2010), review of The Death-defying Pepper Roux.
Geraldine McCaughrean website, http://www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk (April 15, 2020).
KidsReads.com, http://www.kidsreads.com/ (August 17, 2010), author profile; Benjamin Boche, review of The Death- defying Pepper Roux; Norah Piehl, review of Smile!.
Peter Pan in Scarlet website, http://www.peterpaninscarlet.com/ (August 17, 2010), author profile.
Teenreads.com, http://www.teenreads.com/ (August 17, 2010), author profile and review of The White Darkness.
Geraldine McCaughrean
UK flag (b.1951)
Geraldine McCaughrean was born in 1951 and brought up in North London. She studied at Christ Church College of Education, Canterbury and worked in a London publishing house for 10 years before becoming a full-time writer in 1988. She has written over 120 books, 50 short plays for schools, and a radio play. Geraldine McCaughrean lives in Berkshire. Her book, Not the End of the World, is currently being adapted for the stage.
Genres: Children's Fiction, Young Adult Fiction
Series
Brambledown Tales
Blackberry Bunny (1989)
Henry Hedgehog's Hat (1989)
Little Brown Mouse (1989)
Tiny Chick's Tail (1989)
Hoppity Hare's Adventures (1989)
Piggy Goes to Market (1989)
The Rabbits' New Home (1989)
Yellow Duckling's Story (1989)
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Geraldine McCaughrean's Adult Novels
The Maypole (1989)
Fires' Astonishment (1990)
Vainglory (1991)
Lovesong (1996)
The Ideal Wife (1997)
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Geraldine McCaughrean's Retellings
El Cid (1989)
The Odyssey (1993)
Moby Dick (1996)
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Greek Myths
1. Theseus and the Minotaur, Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Daphne (1997)
2. The Adventures of Odysseus (1997)
3. Jason and the Golden Fleece (1997)
4. Persephone and the Pomegranite Seeds (1997)
5. The Twelve Labours of Heracles (1997)
6. Perseus and the Gorgon Medusa (1997)
7. Daedalus and Icarus (King Midas) (1997)
8. The Wooden Horse (1997)
Greek Myths (1993)
Athena and the Olive Tree (2000)
Zeus Conquers the Titans (2000)
Hermes Tricks the Gods (2000)
Phaeton and the Sun Chariot (2000)
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Farmyard
Baabra Lamb (1994)
Blue Moo (1994)
Good Dog (1994)
Gregorie Peck (1994)
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Myths and Legends of the World
1. The Golden Hoard (1995)
2. The Silver Treasure (1996)
3. The Bronze Cauldron (1997)
4. The Crystal Pool (1998)
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Wizziwig
Wizziwig and the Crazy Cooker (1995)
Wizziwig and the Wacky Weather Machine (1995)
Wizziwig and the Singing Car (1995)
Wizziwig and the Sweet Machine (1995)
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Roman Myths
City of Dreams (2000)
Romulus and Remus (2000)
Burning the Books (2000)
A Shot in the Dark (2000)
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Cissy Sissney
1. Stop the Train (2001)
2. Pull Out All the Stops! (2010)
aka The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen
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Heroes
Hercules (2003)
Perseus (2003)
Theseus (2003)
Odysseus (2003)
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Monacello
1. The Little Monk (2011)
2. The Wish-Bringer (2012)
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Novels
A Little Lower Than the Angels (1987)
A Pack of Lies (1988)
Gold Dust (1993)
On the Day the World Began (1995)
Quest of Isis (1995)
Cowboy Jess (1996)
Plundering Paradise (1996)
aka The Pirate's Son
Cowboy Jess Saddles Up (1996)
King Arthur (1996)
aka King Arthur and the Round Table
Forever X (1997)
Casting the Gods Adrift (1998)
Too Big! (1999)
Brave Magic (1999)
The Stones Are Hatching (1999)
The Great Chase (2000)
The Kite Rider (2001)
Six Storey House (2002)
Gilgamesh the Hero (2002)
Doctor Quack (2003)
Showstopper (2003)
The Jesse Tree (2003)
Dog Days (2003)
Jalopy (2003)
Smile! (2004)
Not the End of the World (2004)
The White Darkness (2005)
Cyrano (2006)
Mo (2006)
Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006)
Tamburlaine's Elephants (2007)
The Death-defying Pepper Roux (2009)
The Longest Story in the World (2009)
The Positively Last Performance (2013)
The Middle of Nowhere (2013)
Where the World Ends (2017)
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Omnibus
Peter Pan / Peter Pan in Scarlet (2007) (with J M Barrie)
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Collections
One Thousand And One Arabian Nights (1982)
The Canterbury Tales (1984)
The Orchard Book of Stories from the Ballet (1994)
aka The Random House Book of Stories from the Ballet
Stories from Shakespeare (1994)
The New Windmill Book of Greek Myths (1997)
The Orchard Book of Greek Gods and Goddesses (1997)
The Doubleday Book of Princess Stories (1997)
God's People (1997)
The Orchard Book of Ballet Stories (1998)
Orchard Book of Starry Tales (1998)
Greek Gods and Goddesses (1998)
God's Kingdom (1998)
Golden Myths and Legends of the World (1999)
The Orchard Book of Roman Myths (1999)
Britannia: 100 Great Stories from British History (1999)
My First Oxford Book of Stories (2000)
The Orchard Book of Love and Friendship (2000)
Starry Tales (2001)
100 World Myths and Legends (2001)
Knights, Kings and Conquerors (2001)
Roman Myths (2001)
John Bunyan's a Pilgrim's Progress (2001)
Rebels and Royals (2001)
Daredevils and Desperadoes (2002)
Ghosts, Rogues and Highwaymen (2002)
Movers, Shakers and Record Breakers (2002)
The Oxford Treasury of Fairy Tales (2003)
Sky Ship: and Other Stories (2004)
The Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen (2004)
Greek Heroes (2007)
Princes and Princesses (2007) (with Angela Barrett, Rose Impey, Margaret Mayo and Saviour Pirotta)
Magical Princess Stories (2009) (with Rose Impey, Andrew Matthews and Margaret Mayo)
Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow (2011)
King Arthur And a World of Other Stories (2011)
George and the Dragon (2011)
The Orchard Book of Greek Myths (2013)
Britannia (2014)
A Wisp of Wisdom (2016) (with Abi Elphinstone, Adèle Geras, Elizabeth Laird, Sarah Lean, Gill Lewis, Tom Moorhouse, Beverley Naidoo, Ifeoma Onyefulu and Piers Torday)
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Plays
Britannia on Stage (2000)
The Greeks On Stage (2002)
Doctor Faustus (2006)
Fetch (2013)
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Picture Books
The Story of Noah and the Ark (1989)
Saint George and the Dragon (1989)
The Story of Christmas (1989)
The Cherry Tree (1992)
Blue Moon Mountain (1994)
The Little Angel (1995)
Unicorns! Unicorns! (1997)
Hope on a Rope (1998)
Noah and Nelly (1998)
Never Let Go (1998)
Aesop's Fables (1998)
The Story of the Nativity (1998)
The Beauty and the Beast (1999)
Grandma Chickenlegs (1999)
How the Reindeer Got Their Antlers (2000)
My Grandmother's Clock (2002)
Bright Penny (2002)
aka One Bright Penny
Fig's Giant (2005)
Wenceslas (2005)
Father and Son (2006)
The Nativity Story (2007)
Twelve Dancing Princesses (2011)
Pittipat's Saucer of Moon (2012)
The Nutcracker (2012)
Go! Go! Chichico! (2013)
The White Elephant (2017)
The Little Mermaid (2019)
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Non fiction
My First Earth Book (1989)
My First Space Book (1989)
I have a very clever older brother called Neil. When I was young, everything he did, I wanted to do. So when, at 14, he had a book published, that became a great ambition of mine. I was also very shy and timid. (I still am.) The one place I dared to have adventures was in my imagination, writing stories. Dad was a fireman, Mum was a teacher. We did not have television at home until I was 9, so you can imagine how exciting it was when we got one.
As I grew up, I went on writing - always and everywhere - never really expecting to get published. I did a lot of jobs - secretary, teacher, journalist, sub-editor. But I wrote as I travelled to and fro to work: it was my hobby. Now I stay home all day and write. It's great, but it still seems odd to earn a living by having so much fun.
Sometimes I go into nearby schools to talk about being a writer and play story-making games, and, of course, to find out what the really important people - the readers - are thinking.
I have written more than hundred and seventy books, mostly for children, some for adults; also a play for radio about trawlers sinking and sixty plus plays; (I love drama). Maybe you'd like to act some of them. Nowadays, I have a grown-up actress daughter, Ailsa, to read my stories, a husband, John, to check my stories and (until very recently) a Golden Retriever, Daisy, to eat my stories. Sadly Daisy is no longer with us- so I shall have to put her in a book so I can keep on spending time with her!
To see all my books at a glance, you can visit Fantastic Fiction or Lovereading 4 Kids
It's 30 years now since I first got published, and 50 since I found out how writing let me step outside my little, everyday world and go wherever I chose - way back in Time, to far distant shores, towards my own, home-made happy ending. Not that all my books are an easy ride. I write adventure, first and foremost, because that's what I enjoyed reading as a child. But since I have published over 150 books now, there are all manner of books in among that number - gorgeously illustated picture books, easy readers, prize winners, teenage books and five adult novels.
The White Darkness won the Printz Award in the USA, which, for as Englishwoman, was the most amazing, startling thrill.
Then there was Peter Pan in Scarlet - official sequel to J M Barrie's Peter Pan, written on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hopsital for Sick Children. I won the chance to write that in a worldwide competition, and because Peter Pan is loved everywhere, my book sold worldwide too. I can't say I expected that when, as a child, I dreamed of being like my older brother and getting a book published one day.
These days I have a husband (who's good at continuity and spelling) and a daughter who is an excellent editor. But she's at the Royal Academy of Dramtic Art now, studying to become an actor. So, naturally, I have turned my hand to writing plays. (So many actors, so few plays!)
My Mum told me, "Never boil your cabbages twice, dear," which was her way of saying, "Don't repeat yourself." So I have tried never to write the same book twice. You'll find all my novels quite different from one another. I have also done lots of retellings of myth, legend, folk and fairy tales, and adapted indigestible classics such as El Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Shakespeare and the Pilgrim's Progress.
Something for everyone, you see, my dear young, not-so-young, eccentric, middle-of-the-road, poetical, sad, cheerful, timid or reckless reader.
All they have in common is that they all contain words. If you are allergic to words, you'd best not open the covers.
Quickfire interview: Geraldine McCaughrean
The Carnegie and Guardian children's fiction prize-winning author takes on the children's books quickfire interview and reveals why new books are like soap bubbles
Geraldine McCaughrean
Tue 22 Oct 2013 09.00 BSTFirst published on Tue 22 Oct 2013 09.00 BST
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Geraldine McCaughrean
Geraldine McCaughrean: 'I'm writing lots of plays while I wait for the ingredients of a new book to marinade inside my head'. Photo: PR
Why should we read your current book?
You must please yourself, of course. But it will take you to the heart of Australia; tell you a story full of stories. It will take you back in history to a time when lives were a different shape; take you to the edge of catastrophe. And just for a while you will be Comity or Fred, but maybe a little bit cleverer, because you would never let things get so disastrously out-of-hand…
Who were your childhood heroes?
Tonto, Champion the Wonder Horse and my brother Neil (who was more versatile than the other two). He wrote stories, painted pictures, made working models, played guitar, learned languages, spliced recording tapes, invented games and sawed my red clown in half to find out how it worked. Even working together, Champion the Wonder Horse and Tonto couldn't have managed half of that.
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What was your favourite book when you were younger?
How much younger? Wimpy the Wump when I was 5, Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth at 11, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy when I was 14.
Did you read a lot as a child and do you still read children's books now?
I read hugely as a child, but I slowed up when the print got smaller. I am a very slow reader. I don't know why. Maybe it is like some people chewing their food for ages and some wolfing it down.
What was the last book you had recommended to you and what book would you recommend to us?
The Kingdom of Silk series by Glenda Millard isn't new: the seven books came out in Australia ten years ago, but it's only just arrived here, beginning with The Naming of Tishkin Silk. If Berlie Doherty recommends it, that's good enough for me. I was glad of the tip-off.
So many, so many. Try Song Hunter By Sally Prue. All her books are so different and so atmospheric.
What advice would you give to your 10-year-old self?
Never apologise for not being someone else. You're bound to find something you're good at, even if it's only writing stories.
What would you be if you hadn't been a writer?
Heartbroken.
If you could travel in time, where would you go first?
I'd go back to 1911 and Antarctica, my sled piled high with food and fuel, and pulled by 40 huskies, and I'd rescue Captain Scott and his men from the Polar plateau.
What is the weirdest thing a fan has ever said and/or given to you?
When people write fan-fic sequels to one of your books, it gives you a very strange feeling. It is very flattering, but strange, as if the characters have come to life again without you knowing. (Fan fic's a great way of flexing your writing muscles.)
What is your next book going to be about?
Ooo I never talk about it. That's like taking out a soap bubble to show someone: there's a big risk it will go POP in my face and disappear. At the moment I'm writing lots of plays while I wait for the ingredients of a new book to marinade inside my head. If I don't do that, it won't taste of anything when it's cooked.
Geraldine McCaughrean
Children Fiction Non-Fiction
Born:London
Publishers:Orchard Books Oxford University Press
Agents:David Higham Associates Ltd
Biography
Geraldine McCaughrean was born in 1951 and brought up in North London.
She studied at Christ Church College of Education, Canterbury and worked in a London publishing house for 10 years before becoming a full-time writer in 1988. She has written over 150 books, 50 short plays for schools, and a radio play. She has also written under the pseudonyms of Geraldine Jones and Felix Culper.
Her adult novels include Fires’ Astonishment (1990), The Maypole (1990), Vainglory (1991), Lovesong (1996), and The Ideal Wife (1997), but she is best-known for her children’s books. She writes for children of all ages, from first readers, picture books, and younger children’s books, to children’s novels, which include A Little Lower than the Angels (1987), Gold Dust (1993) and Not the End of the World (2004), each of which have won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, making her the only writer to have won this award three times.
McCaughrean has also written several collections of stories, including bible stories and fairy tales. She specialises in the retelling of classic tales such as The Canterbury Tales (1984), The Odyssey (1993), Moby Dick (1996) and El Cid (1989) and of myths and legends from around the world. These books include The Orchard Book of Greek Myths (1992) and The Orchard Book of Roman Myths (1999).
White Darkness (2005) was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Children's Book Award. In 2005, she was chosen to write the official sequel to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. Peter Pan in Scarlet was published in 2006. The Death Defying Pepper Roux (2009) was shortlisted for a Carnegie Medal in 2011. Geraldine McCaughrean thus became the first author to have six titles shortlisted for this award since her first in 1988. Her 2013 novel The Middle of Nowhere was also shortlisted for the prize, and McCaugrean won the award a second time with Where the World Ends (2017).
Her play - Last Call - and a short story - Peanut Butter and Cello - have also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her book, Not the End of the World (2004), has been adapted for the stage.
Geraldine McCaughrean lives in Berkshire. In 2006 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Canterbury Christ Church University. In 2010 she was made a Fellow of The English Association, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Critical perspective Bibliography Awards Author statement
Critical perspective
Since 2005, when Geraldine McCaughrean (pronounced 'Ma - cork - run') was chosen to write the authorized sequel to J.M. Barrie’s classic novel, her name has been associated with Peter Pan (her sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet, was published to critical acclaim in 2006). She is, however, a long-established and award-winning author who has written well over 100 books since the early 1980s, most of which are children’s books, ranging from picture books to novels for older children.
McCaughrean does not write ‘typical’ contemporary books - her novels often have historical settings or take place in different cultures (The White Darkness, 2005, is set mainly in Antarctica). She therefore encourages her readers to expand their horizons and explore far beyond their familiar environment. Moreover, her use of language - rich, eloquent and full of vivid metaphors - requires the child-reader to work quite hard, while offering a rewarding, thought-provoking experience to those who make the effort. McCaughrean is particularly interested in Biblical, mythical and legendary stories, and is the author of many re-tellings of these traditional tales, from Greek myths to Noah’s Ark to Shakespeare and Chaucer. As such, she takes stories which would otherwise be obscure and uninviting to young readers, and makes them enjoyable, accessible and sometimes humorous. She also uses these classic stories to explore fundamental and timeless issues of human experience.
McCaughrean’s first publication for children was One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (1982), followed by The Canterbury Tales (1984). At this point her editor suggested a novel, and the result was A Little Lower Than The Angels (1987), which won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award. McCaughrean went on to win two more Whitbread Awards, for Gold Dust (1993) and Not the End of the World (2004). She is the first writer to have received this award three times. A Little Lower than the Angels, unusually for a children’s book, is set in the Middle Ages. It tells the story of a little boy, Gabriel, a cruelly-treated apprentice who escapes his oppressive life by running away with a troupe of travelling players, led by the playmaster Garvey. He becomes the angel in Garvey’s play, but still finds himself at the mercy of exploitative adults: Garvey uses Gabriel to perform fake miracles, and the little boy begins to wonder if he really is the angel Gabriel. McCaughrean sensitively depicts the contrast between the adults’ unscrupulousness and Gabriel’s innocence and heart-felt faith in God, qualities which enable others to abuse him, yet, at the same time, protect him from the corrupt environment which surrounds him. The ending - in which Gabriel asks the inhabitants of a monastery to help him write down Garvey’s plays so that others might enjoy them - is uplifting, without being ‘twee’ or sentimental.
Since the late 1980s, McCaughrean has been a prolific writer, averaging several books per year. Equally incredible is her diversity: her titles include El Cid (1989); My First Space Book (1989); Gold Dust (1993); Stories from Shakespeare (1994); Wizziwig and the Crazy Cooker (1995); Moby Dick (1996) and many more. McCaughrean continually returns to Biblical and classic tales: her third Whitbread award was for Not the End of the World (2004), a highly original re-telling of the story of Noah’s Ark. Not the End of the World is quite a dark tale, exploring in acute and sometimes horrifying detail the realities of the experience. We witness the heart-rending pleas of the people who are left behind to drown, and the pain of Noah’s daughter-in-law who has been parted from her family; the killing of a new baby granddaughter by one of the animals; the physical horrors of hunger, stench and a leaking Ark. The narrative is even interspersed with the point-of-view of some of the animals.
Most particularly, McCaughrean emphasizes and identifies with the female experience. Each of Noah’s three sons has a wife, while in McCaughrean’s version, Noah also has a daughter, fourteen year-old Timna. Timna is the central narrator, enabling McCaughrean not only to present the female point-of-view, but to provide readers with an ‘inside’ and human perspective on these well-known figures whose story is usually told in detached, mythical terms. Through Timna, the narrative focuses particularly on patriarchal oppression, as Noah and his eldest son are shown to rule the family through fear and rigid religious doctrine. As Diane Samuels points out: ‘Its grand design seems to be to question patriarchal values and fundamentalist attitudes by revealing the underbelly of human experience, located especially in the women’ (The Guardian, 18 December 2004).
In the same year, McCaughrean also wrote Smile! (2004), which won a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. This novel, like Not the End of the World, explores a lifestyle and cultural attitudes very different from those with which readers will be familiar. However, rather than a historical setting, Smile! takes place in today’s world, but in an unfamiliar environment. The protagonist, Flash, is stranded in an isolated, primitive village after a plane crash, possessing only a Polaroid camera with 10 remaining pictures. As he learns to communicate with the villagers, and shows them what the camera does, he asks them to choose the subjects for his last 10 photographs. Flash realizes the power of photography to preserve a moment, while simultaneously beginning to understand that the mindset of these people is vastly different to his own, yet no less valid. For example, he is repulsed by the village’s most ‘beautiful’ woman, only to find that the villagers have the same reaction to a photo of his own ‘beautiful’ wife. McCaughrean’s humour therefore encourages readers to examine the subjectivity of their own Western attitudes and perceptions, and to appreciate cultures other than their own.
McCaughrean’s greatest challenge, however, was Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006). She discusses her feelings about the much-hyped Peter Pan sequel in her article in The Guardian, ‘Boy Wonder’ (30 September 2006). She was all too aware of the delicacy of her task, for Barrie’s novel (which started out as a play) is not only an all-time classic, but is one of various early 20th-century children’s books which helped to create an emotionally powerful view of childhood:
'Thanks to Arthur Ransome, Enid Blyton and J.M. Barrie, a kind of archetypal idyllic childhood has evolved in the minds of parents ... Neverland is the place every parent wishes their child to go - somewhere they can explore the outer reaches of their imaginations, dare the dares, feel the fear, conquer the foe - and then come in for tea or a sticking plaster. Parents are so horribly contradictory.' (McCaughrean in The Guardian, cited above)
McCaughrean undertook meticulous preparation, both with regard to researching Barrie and his life, and becoming thoroughly familiar with the style and content of the original novel: ‘Not ... the Disney version or the pantomime or the last movie, but... the 1911 book ... I tried to soak up something of Barrie’s style and sense of humour and quirky asides to the adult reader’ (ibid). She also retains the ambiguity of the character of Peter Pan, for, despite the Disney versions, the original Peter had a certain imp-like arrogance and callousness.
Yet McCaughrean was also careful not to try too hard to duplicate Barrie’s work, and added her own mark to Peter Pan in Scarlet. The end result, which she describes as ‘the matching bookend - same world, but somewhat reversed’ (ibid), has been an astounding success, both critically and commercially, and is a testimony to McCaughrean’s multi-faceted talent:
'From the very first page, only the most stony-hearted, dyed-in-the-wool Peter Pan fan could fail to be charmed by Geraldine McCaughrean’s lightness of touch, sureness of writing and sparkling imagination ... What McCaughrean has done is nothing short of miraculous. It’s enough to make you believe in fairies.' (‘Return to Neverland’, Philip Ardagh, 7 October 2006)
Elizabeth O’Reilly, 2007
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Bibliography
2017Where the World Ends
2013The Middle of Nowhere
2013The Positively Last Performance
2011King Arthur and A World of Other Stories
2011Monacello - The Little Monk
2010Pull Out All The Stops
2009The Death Defying Pepper Roux
2008Peter Pan in Scarlet
2007Tamburlaine's Elephants
2007Father and Son
2007The Nativity Story
2006Noisy Neighbours
2005Fig's Giant
2005Think Again!
2003Dog Days
2000The Great Chase
2000Britannia On Stage, 25 Plays from British History
2000Zeus Conquers the Titans
2000Phaeton and the Sun Chariot
2000Hermes Tricks the Gods
2000Burning the Books
2000City of Dreams
2000A Shot in the Dark
2000Romulus and Remus
1998The Story of the Nativity
1997The Wooden Horse
1997Daedalus and Icarus
1997Persephone and the Pomegranate Seeds
1997Theseus and the Minotaur
1997The Adventures of Odysseus
1991The Snow Country Princess
1991The Princess and the Moon
1990Hoppity Hare's Adventures (Brambledown Tales)
1989Yellow Duckling's Story (Brambledown Tales)
1989Piggy Goes to Market (Brambledown Tales)
1989Henry Hedgehog's Hat (Brambledown Tales)
1989Tiny Chick's Tale (Brambledown Tales)
1989The Rabbits' New Home (Brambledown Tales)
1989The Little Brown Mouse (Brambledown Tales)
1989Blackberry Bunny (Brambledown Tales)
1989The Mighty Deep
1989The Infinite Beyond
1989The Story of Noah and the Ark
1989The Story of Christmas
1986Seaside Adventure
1986In The Town
1986Having Fun
1986On The Move
1986Who's That Knocking on My Door
1986Tell the Time
1986Orville and Cuddles
1980Sabre Tooth
1980Raise the Titanic
1979Adventure in New York
Awards
2018Carnegie Medal
2015Carnegie Medal (shortlist)
2011Carnegie Medal (shortlist)
2008Michael L Printz Award (US)
2007British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year
2006Carnegie Medal
2005Braunston (Leicester) Children's Book Award
2005North East Book Award
2005Portsmouth Book Award (Shorter Novel Category)
2005Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award (US)
2005School Library Journal Best Book (US)
2005USBBY/CBC Outstanding International Book (US)
2005West Sussex Children's Book of the Year Award
2005Whitbread Children's Book Award
2004American Library Association Notable Book for Children Award
2004Christian Children's Book Award
2004Deutscher Jungendliteratur Preis (Germany)
2004Nautilus Book Award Children's Grand Prize (US)
2004Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Bronze Award)
2004Portsmouth Book Award (Shorter Novel Category)
2004Publishers Weekly Best Book Award (US)
2004School Library Journal Best Book (US)
2004Westchester Libraries Anne Izard Storytellers Choice Award (US)
2004Whitbread Children's Book Award
2003American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults Award
2003Nottingham Experian Big 3 Book Award
2003Stockton Children's Book of the Year
2002Blue Peter Book Award: Best Book to Read Aloud
2002Blue Peter Book Award: Best Book with Facts
2002Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Bronze Award)
2001Angus Book Award
2001Blue Peter Book Award: Best Book to Keep Forever
2001Carnegie Medal
2001Carnegie Medal
2001Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Bronze Award)
2000Blue Peter Book of the Year Award
2000English 4-11 Award for the Best Children's Picture Books
2000Independent Publisher Book Award (Children's Picture Book) (USA)
1999English 4-11 Award for the Best Children's Picture Books
1999Newsweek Best Picture Book for Children (USA)
1998American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults Award (US)
1998Carnegie Medal
1998Kate Greenaway Medal
1998Parenting Reading Magic Award (US)
1998UK Reading Association Children's Book Award
1997Whitbread Children's Book Award
1996Nestlé Smarties Book Prize (Bronze Award)
1995Kurt Maschler Award (Germany)
1994Nestle Smarties Book Prize
1994Whitbread Children's Book Award
1993Parenting Reading Magic Award (US)
1991Katholischer Kinder-und Jugendbuchpreis (Germany)
1988Carnegie Medal
1988Guardian Children's Fiction Prize
1987Whitbread Children's Book Award
Author statement
I write for much the same reasons as I did when I was a child of eight, forever scribbling stories in an exercise book for no-one's benefit but my own: I like to go somewhere else and become someone else. Most of my central characters lack confidence but overcome their timidity or low self-esteem to win through in the end, so I suppose there is a kind of wish-fulfilment at work. The one thing that makes writing a better pastime than reading is that you can make things turn out the way you want in the end! I like working in children's books, because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel. I still keep thinking someone will penetrate my guilty secret - that I have been masquerading as a writer all these years while all I was really doing was enjoying myself, pursuing my passion.
Geraldine McCaughrean
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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.
Contents
1 Career
2 Awards
3 Selected bibliography
4 Notes
5 References
6 External links
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.[a]
1987 Whitbread Children's Book Award for A Little Lower Than the Angels
1988 Carnegie Medal for A Pack of Lies[5]
1989 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for A Pack of Lies[6]
1994 Whitbread Children's Book Award for Gold Dust
2000 Blue Peter Book of the Year, the inaugural Blue Peter Book Award, for The Pilgrim's Progress retold
2001 Blue Peter "Best Book to Keep Forever" for The Kite Rider
2004 Whitbread Children's Book Award for Not the End of the World
2008 Michael L. Printz Award, from US librarians for the year's best in young-adult literature, The White Darkness[7]
2018 Carnegie Medal for Where the World Ends[8]
2018 Independent Bookshop Week Book Award for Where the World Ends[9]
Stop the Train (Oxford, 2001) was "Highly Commended" for the Carnegie Medal.[10][b] 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)
McCaughrean, Geraldine
Where the World Ends
Usborne, 2017, pp320, 9.99 [pounds sterling]
978 1 4749 2114 5
In the summer of 1727 a group of men and boys, there to harvest birds and eggs, were stranded on Warrior Stac, a pinnacle of rock that pitches out of the Atlantic, 'as black and fearful as one horn of the Devil himself'. No one returns to collect them. Why? Surely nothing but the end of the world can explain why they have been abandoned to endure storms, starvation and terror. And how can they survive, imprisoned on every side by the ocean?
Geraldine McCaughrean has taken these bare facts and imagined the story of those terrible months and the characters of those who endured them. It is a mesmerising story of survival full of unexpected twists; completely original and beautifully written.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The School Library Association
http://www.sla.org.uk/school-librarian.php
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
McDonald, Elizabeth. "McCaughrean, Geraldine: Where the World Ends." School Librarian, vol. 65, no. 3, Autumn 2017, p. 169+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A506957375/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=99b43708. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.
Where the World Ends
By Geraldine McCaughrean
A harrowing story of survival based on an actual 18th-century event is brought to life by British author Geral-dine McCaughrean, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for The White Darkness. As in that book, which was set in Antarctica, Where the World Ends (Flatiron, $18.99, 9781250225498) takes place in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape: the St. Kilda archipelago, a cluster of islands northwest of Scotland.
The novel follows nine boys and three men who are taken, by boat, from their village and dropped off on Warrior Stac, "a rock whale pitching its whole bulk into the sky, covered in barnacles, aiming to swallow the moon," where they will hunt birds for several weeks before being picked up and returned to the village.
Quill has been fowling on the stac before. Although he usually enjoys the challenge of hunting, this year, as the boat leaves, he strains to catch a glimpse of Murdina, the girl with whom he has fallen in love. Hunting birds on the cliffs is treacherous. Quill and his friends are tested from the very beginning, but then the unthinkable happens: The boat does not return for them. Weeks go by, then months. One boy has a vision that their loved ones have all gone up to heaven, while they have been overlooked, left behind on the rock.
The seasons change, the birds leave their cliff nests, and each day is fraught with peril as the members of the party struggle to stay alive and sane. There are surprises and tragedies, and while all the characters are tested (the adults fail miserably), it is Quill's trials that will keep readers riveted. Although no one in this book escapes sorrow and heartbreak, the story ends with a glimmer of hope.
McCaughrean's storytelling is as dramatic and harsh as the island landscape. She includes a helpful glossary, a historical note and sketches of the marvelous seabirds that appear in the book. Already a classic in the U.K., where it won the prestigious Carnegie Medal, Where the World Ends is a stunning literary achievement.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
Hopkinson, Deborah. "Where the World Ends." BookPage, Dec. 2019, p. 35. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A606751269/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9e3e260c. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.
McCaughrean, Geraldine WHERE THE WORLD ENDS Flatiron Books (Young Adult Fiction) $18.99 12, 3 ISBN: 978-1-250-22549-8
In this Carnegie-winning novel, McCaughrean (The Middle of Nowhere, 2013, etc.) turns a small piece of history into an epic, nearly mythic, tale.
St. Kilda's archipelago, far off the northwest corner of Scotland, is the most remote set of islands in Great Britain. In 1727, a boat set off from the sole occupied island, Hirta, dropping a small group of men and boys at Warrior Stac, a giant rock, for a fowling expedition. Told from the point of view of Quilliam, one of the older boys, (precise ages are never given; the boys seem to range in age from around 10 to about 16), the trip begins as a grand adventure: scaling cliffs via fingertip holds, making candles out of dead storm petrels, and cutting the stomachs out of gannets to use as bottles for oil. But then, inexplicably, the village boat does not return for them. As the weeks stretch to months and the birds begin to leave the rock, the party fears the end of the world. Cane, one of the men, sets himself up as a divine authority, praying for repentance, while Quill attempts to soothe the younger boys through story--and himself through memories of a young woman he loves. McCaughrean takes the bones of a real event, wraps it in immersive, imaginative detail and thoroughly real emotion, and creates an unforgettable tale of human survival.
A masterpiece. (map, afterword, birds of St. Kilda, glossary) (Historical fiction. 12-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
"McCaughrean, Geraldine: WHERE THE WORLD ENDS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2019. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A596269664/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=565325e5. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.
McCaughrean, Geraldine
The Middle of Nowhere
Usborne, 2013, pp304, 9.99 [pounds sterling]
978 1 40952 200 3
Geraldine McCaughrean's new novel takes us to the remote Australian outback in the mid-nineteenth century where Comity's father runs a telegraph station. Her mother has been killed by a snake and a piano is delivered by camels and 'Ghans' while Comity's grief-stricken father withdraws from everyday life. This leaves the whole set up at the mercy of the foul interloper Quartz Hogg. Even the names are a delight in this fast-paced, quirky, original and unpredictable novel.
Especially enjoyable is the astonishingly wise aboriginal yard boy, Fred, who speaks entertaining, biblically-based, English aurally learned from Comity's late mother and the stories she read aloud. There's also a whole cast of good and bad guys, including some delicious, spiky characters. And at the centre of all this feisty, imaginative, yarn-spinning Comity somehow picks her way through the dreadful problems life hurls at her, not least her ghastly family in the city.
It's a novel which semi-humorously explores interracial friendship and disharmony between people of different origins as well as gently asking a few questions about colonialism and extolling the value of storytelling as a means of coping with almost anything. Warmly recommended.
Susan Elkin
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 The School Library Association
http://www.sla.org.uk/school-librarian.php
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 8th Edition APA 6th Edition Chicago 17th Edition
Elkin, Susan. "McCaughrean, Geraldine: The Middle of Nowhere." School Librarian, vol. 62, no. 1, Spring 2014, p. 41. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A367420268/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9b4ff754. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.
The Middle of Nowhere by Geraldine McCaughrean - review
'This book grips you from the minute you start reading it. The very first line drags you in'
Lottie Longshanks
Sun 26 Jan 2014 12.00 GMTFirst published on Sun 26 Jan 2014 12.00 GMT
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This is the best book that I have read for some time. It says in the introduction that she wrote the book after visiting Australia but anyone who reads it could easily believe that she has spent all her life there. It is set in a Telegraph station along the wire in the nineteenth century. The central character is Comity Pinny whose father, Herbert, is the manager of the station which sends Morse code messages along the wire. It is a very lonely life and when her mother dies suddenly Comity's father goes to pieces and she has to keep in touch with her grandmother and Aunt. She is unable to tell them the terrible news so she writes to them pretending that her mother is busy. Her only friend is the Aboriginal yard boy who also loved her mother and mixes up aboriginal legends with the Christian stories and hymns he learnt from her.
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But life becomes almost unbearable when an assistant arrives. He is cruel and racist, and wants to take over the station. Comity finds herself in grave danger. Can a group of unexpected friends help save the situation?
This book grips you from the minute you start reading it. The very first line drags you in: "The piano arrived too late to stop the sky falling in." There are wonderfully vivid descriptions and so many metaphors and similes that you'll want to store them away in your mind. Some of the speech is quite old-fashioned and you are able to build a lovely picture of Comity's mother even though she never appears in the book. I think adults and children will love this and I hope it wins lots of prizes because it certainly deserves to!