Shadows of the Silver Screen has been shortlisted for the Lambeth Phoenix Book Award 2014 - Nosy Crow Skip to content
Posted by Tom, January 23, 2014

Shadows of the Silver Screen has been shortlisted for the Lambeth Phoenix Book Award 2014

Today’s guest post is by Christopher Edge, author of the newly-published The Black Crow Conspiracy.

Amidst the excitement of the publication of The Black Crow Conspiracy, the third and final book in the series that began with Twelve Minutes to Midnight, I was thrilled to learn last week that Shadows of the Silver Screen, the second book in the series, has been shortlisted for the 2014 Lambeth Phoenix Book Award. I was particularly pleased about this as Twelve Minutes to Midnight was up for the same award back in 2013, appearing on the shortlist then alongside books by such wonderful authors as Michael Morpurgo and Jonathan Meres.

Nobody writes a novel in order to be shortlisted for a prize – not even Hilary Mantel – but since Twelve Minutes to Midnight was published back in 2012, one of the most exciting things for me as an author has been seeing it appear on the shortlists of regional book awards across the country. After months spent writing alone in a shed at the bottom of my garden, to suddenly find out that young readers from Northern Ireland to Warwickshire, Redbridge to Southampton, not to mention Hillingdon, Dudley and Oldham too, were reading the adventures of Penelope and her friends at The Penny Dreadful was completely amazing and rather thrilling to me. When Twelve Minutes to Midnight won its category at the Stockport Schools Book Award, it was fantastic to have the chance to meet the children who had voted for the award – to see the wonderful and creative work that their reading had inspired and hear their excitement about the books they had read. For me, these awards are about celebrating young readers – encouraging children to discover new authors, pick up books that they might not usually try, and, most importantly, to read for pleasure.

I’m really looking forward to attending the award ceremony in Lambeth on the 1st of May and finding out what the readers there have made of Shadows of the Silver Screen. And if you’re a young reader in Lambeth, don’t forget to vote!

The Phoenix Book Award promotes reading for pleasure among Year 6 and Key Stage 3 pupils in the London Borough of Lambeth – you can find out more here. You can read the first chapter of the shortlisted Shadows of the Silver Screen below, and buy the book online here. The final book in the trilogy, The Black Crow Conspiracy, is also out now.

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