THE BOOK
2024 CATEGORY WINNER – CHILDREN’S FICTION
THE TWELVE
BY LIZ HYDER
ILLUSTRATED BY TOM DE FRESTON
From the author of Bearmouth, a captivating teen fantasy that explores the power of love and friendship in the face of ecological turmoil, set against the mystical backdrop of the Pembrokeshire coast.
For ages 11+
Read our exclusive extract from “The Twelve” here.
LIZ HYDER
Liz Hyder has been making up stories ever since she can remember. She has a BA in drama from the University of Bristol and, in early 2018, won the Bridge Award/MoniackMhor’s Emerging Writer Award. Her first novel, Bearmouth, won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for Older Readers, the Branford Boase Award, and was The Times‘s Children’s Book of The Year.
Q&A with the author
What is your favourite place to write?
My favourite place to write is, rather boringly, at my desk. I like to have everything around me that I might need, various notebooks and notes, any planning documents, and a massive mug of coffee too – of course! I have lots of postcards and bits of art tacked to the walls around me up in the attic space I use as an office, and I find them comforting – other people’s creativity helps inspire me too. I always take a notebook wherever I go though so I do often scribble on trains and sitting on benches out and about but my main writing is at my desk and that’s fine with me! I’m very lucky to have a dedicated space for work and there’s a big window next to me that looks over the town and to distant hills. Red kites occasionally glide past, but at the moment we’ve got spectacular starling murmurations happening which is very distracting come dusk! Outside, on the other side of the wall from my desk are three swift boxes and in summer, if I’m being quiet, I can hear the thuds as they land in the nest box. Sometimes, I can even hear them singing to each other in there too, it’s a real joy.
What book would you most recommend to others?
Oh dear me, no! That’s too hard! I can’t pick just one! I love so many different books for different reasons and it depends what mood I’m in. Having said that, I really do love Boneland by Alan Garner though, I’ve read it about five times and I swear it shifts a bit every time I read it, it’s like grasping at smoke. It’s strange and wondrous, sparse and beautiful. I think it’s probably my favourite of his along with Treacle Walker. Bear Story by Eowyn Ivey which comes out in February is also extraordinary, a sort of retelling of Beauty and the Beast but oh so much more, it’s not like anything else I’ve ever read. For younger readers though, it’s such a feast of riches. There are so many fantastic children’s authors in the UK and Ireland, anything by Philip Reeve, Katherine Rundell, Catherine Johnson, Frances Hardinge, Sally Gardner, Patrice Lawrence, Piers Torday, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, MG Leonard, Tom Percival… I could go on and on! I’m always happy to recommend books to people but I think the pleasure of it is in recommending the right book for that person at that specific time, it’s why libraries and bookshops are so important, staffed by experts with a real passion for what they do.
Do you identify with any of the characters in the book?
Well, Kit is a bird nerd and Story is a space nerd and I’m very interested in both of those subjects (as you can tell from my answer above banging on about birds!) so yes, definitely! But I think as a writer and storyteller, you always have to find something to identify with in your characters, even the most horrible ones. Humans are complex and complicated beings and so it makes sense that we are so interested in stories about fellow complex and complicated creatures, however we end up writing about them, whether as humans or gods or mythical talking animals.
TOM DE FRESTON
Tom De Freston is an artist based in Oxford with his wife, Kiran Millwood Hargrave. His practice is dedicated to the construction of multimedia worlds, combining paintings, film and performance into immersive visceral narratives.
Photography © Marc Sethi
The judges said: “Beautiful characterisation, compelling storytelling, this is a book for now and all time – an immersive time-travel adventure that will keep readers hooked.”
2024 Children’s Fiction judges
