2024 ARA HISTORICAL NOVEL PRIZE CYA LONGLISTS ANNOUNCED!
CYA LONGLIST
The longlisted titles for the 2024 ARA Historical Novel Prize – Children and Young Adult Category are:
Secret Sparrowby Jackie French (HarperCollins Publishers)
The Detective’s Guide to Paris by Nicki Greenberg (Affirm Press)
Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim (Allen & Unwin)
Spies in the Sky by Beverley McWilliams (Pantera Press)
Silver Linings by Katrina Nannestad (ABC Books: An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers)
The Fortune Maker by Catherine Norton (HarperCollins Publishers)
Only Two: The Loss of the Loch Ard by Jackie Randall (Self-published)
The judging panel for the CYA Category includes Anna Ciddor (Chair), Danielle Clode and Lystra Rose.
According to Chair, Anna Ciddor: The judges for the 2023 ARA Historical Novel Prize were once again thrilled by the enticing variety of writing styles, historic periods, locations and topics in the Children and Young Adult Category. The long-listed titles reveal this variety – from a fun romp through 1920s Paris to a gripping fantasy about fortune-telling set in 1913 London, to the harrowing, confronting hardships of rural China during Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. Two long-list authors were inspired by stories from the World Wars that needed to be told. One created a tale about pigeons who carried spy messages in World War 2 – told from the point of view of the pigeons, and one used a fictional account to expose the hidden and dangerous role of women radio operators on the front line in World War 1. Whether the historical elements form the integral plot, like the story based on the sinking of the Loch Ard on the Victorian coast in 1878, or provide an intriguing and colourful setting for the joys and tragedies of the characters’ everyday lives in 1950s Australia, all the long-listed titles impressed the judges by their enthralling writing styles and their skill in bringing the past to life in a very real, accessible and relatable way for young people of today – which is what a CYA historical novel should do.
