David Almond: A retrospective
In September, at the IBBY World Congress in Spain, David Almond will become the twenty-ninth writer for children and young people to receive the Hans Christian Andersen Award. He joins an illustrious international group. Some in this exclusive club – like Virginia Hamilton, Martin Waddell, Patricia Wrightson, Margaret Mahy, Maria Gripe and Tove Jansson – will be familiar to readers of children’s books in English. Other Hans Andersen winners, because of the lack of interest in publishing books in translation in this country and the United States, are little known to us. Almond is only the third British writer to be given the award, following Eleanor Farjeon, the first winner in 1956, and Aidan Chambers in 2002. Illustrators Quentin Blake (2002) and Anthony Browne (2000) have been recipients of the illustrator’s Award. BfK invited Clive Barnes to assess David Almond’s contribution to children’s literature.
D
avid Almond is, of course, no stranger to awards. His first novel, Skellig, scooped both the Whitbread (now the Costa) Children’s Book Award and the
Carnegie Medal; and his subsequent work has been shortlisted for and honoured with major awards in this country, the United States, and in Europe. But the IBBY award is not just one more to add to the list, it puts him in a particular group of twentieth-century writers, and it points to some of his distinctive qualities as a writer for young people.
The whole body of a writer’s work
The Hans Andersen is one of the few awards which are given for the whole body of a writer’s work: for work that has not only made, in the words of the Award’s criteria, ‘a lasting contribution to children’s literature’; but that has ‘taken that literature forward’. In a remarkably short time – it is, after all, only 12 years since the publication of Skellig – Almond has established himself as a writer with a distinctive voice whose work both entertains and challenges children.
The most obvious aspect of Almond’s distinctiveness as a writer, and one that is mentioned by the judges on IBBY’s international jury, is the particular mixture of realism and fantasy in his books. This was apparent in his first book for children. Skellig, discovered by Michael in the chaotic jumble of a dilapidated garage, is a broken, dirty and homeless creature who gobbles insects and the cold leftovers of Chinese takeaway dinners and yet, beneath his
shabby suit, has wings on his back. He may be a man, a bird or an angel. Without telling anyone about Skellig, Michael and Mina protect and nurture him, drawing power from him, just as he does from them: a power that sets Skellig free to soar; opens Mina and Michael’s eyes to the extraordinary world they live in and their own singularity; and somehow embraces Michael, his family and his ailing baby sister with healing love.
The familiar critical term that the judges use to describe Almond’s vision is ‘magical realism’, linking him to writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for whom Almond has expressed admiration. But the term barely conveys the power of a vision which has the spiritual intensity of William Blake, another of Almond’s acknowledged inspirations, and is almost medieval in its acceptance of the miraculous and its significance. For himself, Almond tends to stress the realism of his work. His novels never stray outside the area where he grew up, the Northeast of England. Nearly all are set within a few miles of his childhood home, and all celebrate a particular regional and working class identity, including its distinctive language and way of looking at life. However, in his books, everyday situations draw their characters and readers towards amazing experiences and revelations. Often there are mysterious happenings or creatures, like Skellig himself; or like Clay, the golem like figure in the novel of the same name (2005), who has been created as an agent of vengeance and destruction by the deeply
disturbed Stephen. In the novels, just as in medieval stories or plays, these manifestations are received with wonder and doubt, but not ultimately with disbelief. They grow from the characters’ anxieties, needs and aspirations, and ask questions of
their discoverers or creators. At the end of May this year, Almond’s new version of the medieval mystery play, Noah and the Fludd, had its premiere at Durham. There could be no modern writer with better credentials for the job.
An international ideal of common humanity
Almond’s distinctive voice was not the only source of his appeal to the IBBY judges. The award is made by an international jury and there is no other award that has the same international dimension. To be considered, a writer doesn’t need to be translated into many different languages or to sell well abroad, although Almond’s books are and do. Some of the other winners have not been published outside their native country or language. What is essential is that a writer must address aspects of an international ideal of common humanity and cultural particularity. IBBY’s present president, Patsy Aidana, a Canadian publisher, puts it most
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