David Almond

David Almond (2008)

David Almond (born May 15, 1951 in Felling , Borough of Gateshead , England ) is a British writer. He was awarded the Carnegie Medal (1998), the Hans Christian Andersen Prize (2010) and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize (2015) and is considered one of the most important contemporary British authors of children's and youth literature. His best-known work is the novel Skellig (1998, German translation: Zeit des Mondes , 1999). His latest novel is A Song for Ella Gray .

life and work

overview

Born and raised in Felling and in neighboring Newcastle , David Almond studied at East Anglia University .

To date, David Almond has written more than 20 novels, short stories and picture books. He made his debut with the short story collection Sleepless Nights (1985). This was followed by the short story collection A Kind of Heaven (1987), the novels Skellig (1998), Kit's Wilderness (1999) and Heaven Eyes (2000), the short story collection Counting Stars (2000), the novel Secret Heart (2001), the short story collection Where Your Wings Were (2002), the novel The Fire-Eaters (2003), the picture book Kate, the Cat, and the Moon (2005), the novel Clay (2005), the novel Click! (2007), the illustrated novel My Dad's a Birdman (2007), the novels Jackdaw Summer (2008) and The Savage (2008), the short story Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads (2009), the novel My Name is Mina (2010) , the short story Slog's Dad (2010), the illustrated novel The Boy Who Climbed into the Moon (2010), the novel The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean (2011), the illustrated novel The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas (2012), the picture book Mouse Bird Snake Wolf (2013), the picture book Joe's Dog (2013), the short story collection Nesting (2013), the novel The Tightrope Walkers (2013) and the short story Bad Angelo (2013). With the novel Eurydice Gray (2014), another book by David Almond has already been announced, about which the author says:

"The Orpheus myth is one of civilization's great stories and has always been a major force in my life and in my work. Eurydice Gray feels like a book that I have been destined to write. "

- David Almond : www.thebookseller.com of September 10, 2013

David Almond's first play, Wild Girl, Wild Boy, is aimed at older, mature youngsters and was published in 2002, but has not yet been translated into German. In addition to the time of the moon, there is also a film adaptation of his book Lehmann oder die Temptation (2007) (2008, director: Andrew Gunn).

David Almond's works have a high philosophical content and are therefore valued by children, young people and adults alike. Time and again, they are about exploring your own self and complex topics such as life and death, fantasy and reality, past and future.

For his literary work, David Almond has received the Whitbread Children's Novel of the Year Award (1998, 2003), the Carnegie Medal (1998), three nominations for the German Youth Literature Prize (2006, 2010, 2012), the Catholic Children's and Youth Book Prize (2006) and the Hans Christian Andersen Prize (2010).

In 2015 he was a member of the jury for The Extraordinary Book of the Children and Youth Program of the Berlin International Literature Festival .

David Almond lives with his family in Northumberland , England.

Skellig / time of the moon

The novel Skellig ( Time of the Moon ), Almond's most important novel to this day, is the story of the twelve-year-old Michael, whose family moved into a house in need of renovation in the middle of an overgrown garden. Michael's sister was born far too early and therefore has to go to the hospital regularly. One day Michael discovers a strange creature who calls himself Skellig in the dilapidated garage on the property . To Michael's shocked question "What are you?", The being replies: "Something like you, something like an animal, something like a bird, something like an angel". Michael takes care of the creature, brings him food and drink and tells the neighbor girl Mina about Skellig.

David Almond has received numerous awards for the book - the Whitbread Children's Novel of the Year Award (1998), the Carnegie Medal (1998), an Honor Book at the Michael L. Printz Award (2000), and a Zilveren Griffel (2000 ). Time of the Moon has been translated into more than 30 languages. In the meantime there are also a radio piece (text: David Almond), a play (text: David Almond), an opera (text: David Almond, music: Tod Machover) and a film (2009, director: Annabel Jankel) for the book. More than a million copies have been sold by the time of the moon in the UK alone.

Books in German translation

Ten books by David Almond have been published in German translation: Zeit des Mondes (1999; English Skellig , 1998), Between yesterday and tomorrow (2000; English Kit's Wilderness , 1999), A corner from Paradies and Heaven (2001 and 2017; English Heaven Eyes , 2000), Die Sternensucher (2002; English Counting Stars , 2000), The Dream of the Tiger (2003; English Secret Heart , 2001), Feuerschlucker (2005; English The Fire-Eaters , 2003), Lehmann or Die Temptation ( 2007; English Clay , 2005), My Papa Can Fly (2009; English My Dad's a Birdman , 2007), click! Ten authors are writing a novel (2011; English Click!, 2010) and Mina (2011; English My Name is Mina , 2010). In 2014 , the Boy Who Swam With Piranhas (English The Boy Who Swam With Piranhas , 2012) was another book by Almond in German translation.

Press review

Importance as an author

"David Almond is one of the finest writers of children's novels today. Endlessly inventive, his books resonate with an honesty and truth transmitted through deceptively 'simple', beautifully crafted prose. "

- Philip Ardagh : The Guardian, Nov. 1, 2008

"David Almond [...] has brought us tales that resonate with truth about the big emotions - about life and death and love and loss. He also brought us language that sang - language with the rhythms of speech and the vocabulary of dialect, workaday words doing transcendental jobs, words with wings, words misspelt or made up, and settings that were ordinary and recognizable, but took us to places of the heart that we did not know we might reach. He is one of those who has broken down the fence between children's and adults' literature. "

- Nicolette Jones : Presentation by Nicolette Jones on the occasion of the presentation of the Eleanor Farjeon Award 2013

Skellig (1998) / Time of the Moon (1999)

“This is a book about magic and strange beings, about the relationship between the everyday and the mystical, about premature babies and William Blake and owls and angels. Its strength as a novel is in its subtlety, its sideways angles - the characters several times invoke the flight of Icarus, and in fact there are moments when the story calls to mind WH Auden 's poem about Bruegel's painting of the boy's fall. It is a book about the business of everyday life proceeding on a canvas suddenly widened to include mystery and tragedy, although not everyone has eyes to see. […] The beauty of Skellig is that David Almond, a British novelist who has written for adults but not for children, does not feel the need to explain, to tie up all loose ends, to teach one particular lesson. [...] What gives Skellig its wonderfully light flavor, even as it takes on life and death and magic and mysticism, is the cheerful interweaving of everyday detail. [...] Skellig is a fine book; it reads like an adventure story, studied with matter-of-fact details of family life and school, only slightly exotic in their occasional Britishisms. In fact, it belongs to the tradition of door-in-the-wall novels of magic, where other different worlds wait just beside a child's everyday - think CS Lewis , Lynne Reid Banks , even E. Nesbit . And in its simple but poetic language, its tender refusal to package its mysteries neatly or offer explanations for what happens in either world, it goes beyond adventure story or family-with-a-problem story to become a story about worlds enlarging and the hope of scattering death. "

- Perri Klass : The New York Times, June 6, 1999

“'Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it feels like magic,' admits English writer David Almond. In his first children's book, Zeit des Mondes , originally titled Skellig , this magic is carried over to the reader from the very first sentence. He is drawn into a story that is interwoven between everyday life and magic, between life and death, between happiness and horror. [...] Almond condenses the motif of flying in a literarily artistic way. In the figure of Skellig, the child's magical ideas of the angel and savior of the baby are reflected; At the same time, Skellig embodies the repulsive, alien, uncanny that is inherent in all double beings. In the face of such big issues, Almond's language remains rather short, unsentimental and seeks a protective distance from the feelings, hopes and dreams that sometimes threaten to overwhelm the narrator. 'I was with the baby. We lay in the blackbird's nest together. Its body was covered with feathers and it was soft and warm. ' On the last pages of the book we learn that wishing still helps because the baby survives and everything seems to come to a happy end. But the magic of the book lingers for a long time. "

- Jens Thiele : Süddeutsche Zeitung from July 20, 2006

Counting Stars (2000) / The Star Seekers (2002)

“Almond's Star Seekers are compared to Frank McCourt's My Mother 's Ashes . His language skills are no less than that of the Irish (and he's lucky with his translator). The episodes, which are only loosely related, have already appeared in various magazines and anthologies. To recommend it primarily as reading material for young people would be to narrow it down. Those who are open to the magical magic of the early years will love these Welsh star seekers. "

- Maria Frisé : FAZ of October 8, 2002

The Fire-Eaters (2003) / Feuerschlucker (2005)

“The fire eater tells of all of this . On the importance of family and friendship. Of moral courage. About fear and overcoming fear. From faith. About social differences, class consciousness and fear of contact between workers and intellectuals in the early 1960s. About the traumas of the war generation. It's a literary take with many shades and layers. Written in a very poetic, sometimes almost delaying language that takes the time to tell a lot about the atmosphere. The smells that shape Bobby's environment, salt water, seaweed, coal that is mined in the sea. Sounds, colors. In England, Almond was awarded the two most important national children's and young people's book awards, the Smarties Gold Award and the Whitbread Award. Deservedly: The Feuerschlucker is a book that you don't want to read just once because you keep discovering new details and nuances. Just like with good photos. "

- Karin Haller : Institute for Youth Literature from March 2005

“The Englishman David Almond links the near apocalypse with a web of dense images of people and landscapes. Very poetic, expressive, sometimes a little sentimental, and with a lot of warmth for the lives of people who draw coal from the sea. So the global political background of the novel results in much more than the foil for a puberty drama, it is the intersection where a lost village and the world meet one last time before Bobby leaves his home. "

- Siggi Seuss : The time of March 17, 2005

“Saying goodbye to childhood confronts the reflective first-person narrator with completely new emotional worlds that change his view of life, of his parents and friends. David Almond talks about it calmly, but full of tension in a poetically dense language, sensitively transmitted by Ulli and Herbert Günther, modulating, expressive, delaying. "

- Jury of the German Youth Literature Prize : www.djlo.jugendliteratur.org

Jackdaw Summer (2008)

" Jackdaw Summer is a wonderful piece of writing for children - unsettling yet poetic. Here we contemplate the beast within us all: so near the surface in children, and still there in adults. Nobody evokes childhood like Almond. "

- Philip Ardagh : The Guardian, Nov. 1, 2008

My name is Mina (2010) / Mina (2011)

“ Mina keeps it, this promise, with all the playful-nonsensical moments, the moments of great intimacy and childlike clairvoyance in this book. And David Almond, who last year received the Hans Christian Andersen Prize , probably the most important children's book prize in the world, shows, with all his fondness for childlike freedom and imagination, what price childish eccentricity can have. Right next to the grief for her father is the longing for like-minded people, the need to belong, Mina's time and again, serious attempt not to offend. When she followed the advice of the two officers and spends a day at a school for children with 'special needs', she realizes' that outsiders could fit together in many ways', more than that, she sees, to her relief,' that one day I will might belong to this strange world '. But she cannot stay. And so Mina is also a moving story of loneliness. "

- Fridtjof Küchemann : FAZ of April 8, 2011

"Colorful mixed styles, skillfully translated by Alexandra Ernst, the varied non-linear storytelling and a wide range of text types such as narrative reports, poems, narrations, puns or short stories create a panorama of the present and the past in which a child-like writer can think across the board. The novel Mina is the mosaic of a unique personality that has matured well beyond its real age and that encourages us to be an unmistakable individual. "

- Jury of the German Youth Literature Prize : www.djlp.jugendliteratur.org

bibliography

Texts

Original English language edition	German language first translation	Remarks
1985: Sleepless Nights , David Almond (text), Iron Press (North Shields)		Short story collection not published in German translation
1997: A Kind of Heaven , David Almond (text), Iron Press (North Shields), ISBN 978-0-906228-62-3		Short story collection not published in German translation
1998: Skellig , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-71600-7	1999: Zeit des Mondes , Martin Walser and Johanna Walser (translation from English), Ravensburger (Ravensburg), ISBN 978-3-473-34365-2	novel
1999: Kit's Wilderness , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-72716-4	2000: Between yesterday and tomorrow , Mechtild Testroet (translation from English), Ravensburger (Ravensburg), ISBN 978-3-473-34376-8	novel
2000: Heaven Eyes , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-74368-3	2001: Eine Ecke vom Paradies , Mechtild Testroet (translation from English), Ravensburger (Ravensburg), ISBN 978-3-473-34392-8 2017: Heaven , Alexandra Ernst (translation from English), KJB Fischer (Frankfurt am Main ), ISBN 978-3-7373-4094-6	novel
2000: Counting Stars , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-78479-2	2002: The Star Seekers , Cornelia Holfelder von der Tann (translation from English, Ravensburger (Ravensburg), ISBN 978-3-473-35236-4	Short story collection English-language edition contains the stories The Middle of the world , Counting the stars , Beating the bounds , The baby , The Angel of Chilside Road , The Time Machine , Barbara's photographs , Jonadab , The subtle body , Behind the billboards , Chickens , The Fusilier , My mother's photographs , Loosa dine , The Kitchen , Jack Law , Buffalo camel llama zebra ass und Where your wings were
2001: Secret Heart , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-76482-4	2003: The Tiger's Dream , Cornelia Holfelder von der Tann (translation from English), Ravensburger (Ravensburg), ISBN 978-3-473-34422-2	novel
2002: Where Your Wings Were , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-85528-7		Short story collection contains various stories from Die Sternensucher as well as a new story ( The Built-up Sole ) not published in German translation
2003: The Fire-Eaters , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-88349-5	2005: Feuerschlucker , Ulli Günther and Herbert Günther (translation from English), Hanser (Munich), paperback: dtv ) (Munich), ISBN 978-3-446-20601-4	novel
2005: Kate, the Cat, and the Moon , David Almond (text), Stephen Lambert (illustration), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-77387-1		Picture book not published in German translation
2005: Clay , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-1-84032-998-8	2007: Lehmann or Die Temptation , Ulli Günther and Herbert Günther (translation from English), Hanser (Munich), ISBN 978-3-446-20904-6	novel
2007: Click! , David Almond, Eoin Colfer , Roddy Doyle , Deborah Ellis , Nick Hornby , Margo Lanagan, Gregory Maguire , Ruth Ozeki, Linda Sue Park and Tim Wynne-Jones (text), Scholastic (London), ISBN 978-1-4071-0591 -8th	2009: Click! Ten authors are writing a novel , Birgitt Kollmann (translation from English), Hanser (Munich), new edition: dtv (Munich), ISBN 978-3-446-23308-9	novel
2007: My Dad's a Birdman , David Almond (text), Polly Dunbar (illustration), Walker (London), ISBN 978-1-4063-0486-2	2009: My papa can fly , Ulli Günther and Herbert Günther (translation from English), Hanser (Munich), paperback: dtv (Munich), ISBN 978-3-446-23304-1	Picture book
2008: Jackdaw Summer , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-88199-6		Novel published in the USA in 2009 under the title Raven Summer, not published in German translation
2008: The Savage , David Almond (text), Dave McKean (illustration), Walker (London), ISBN 978-1-4063-1985-9		The novel has not been published in a German translation
2009: Klaus Vogel and the Bad Lads , in: Free? - Stories Celebrating Human Rights , Walker (London), ISBN 978-1-4063-1830-2		Short story anthology Free? - Stories Celebrating Human Rights contains short stories by David Almond, Theresa Breslin , Sarah Mussi, Ursula Dubosarsky , Rita Williams-Garcia, Patricia McCormick , Roddy Doyle , Ibtisam Barakat, Malorie Blackman , Margaret Mahy , Meja Mwangi , Jamila Gavin, Eoin Colfer and Michael Morpurgo not published in German translation
2010: My Name is Mina , David Almond (text), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-0-340-99726-0	2011: Mina , Alexandra Ernst (translation from English), Ravensburger (Ravensburg), ISBN 978-3-473-36820-4	novel
2010: Slog's Dad , David Almond (text), Dave McKean (illustration), Walker (London), ISBN 978-1-4063-3139-4		Short story first published in 2006 in the anthology So, What Kept You? New Stories Inspired by Anton Chekhov and Raymond Carver published not published in German translation
2010: The Boy Who Climbed into the Moon , David Almond (text), Polly Dunbar (illustration), Walker (London), ISBN 978-1-4063-1457-1		Novel with illustrations not published in German translation
2011: The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean , David Almond (text), Penguin (London, adult edition), Puffin (London, children's edition), ISBN 978-0-670-91906-2 (adult edition) , ISBN 978-0-14-133205-5 (children's edition)		The novel has not been published in a German translation
2012: The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas , David Almond (text), Oliver Jeffers (illustration), Walker (London), ISBN 978-1-4063-2076-3	2014: The boy who swam with the piranhas , Alexandra Ernst (translation from English), Ravensburger (Ravensburg), ISBN 978-3-473-36872-3	Novel with illustrations
2013: Mouse Bird Snake Wolf , David Almond (text), Dave McKean (illustration), Walker (London), ISBN 978-1-4063-2289-7		Picture book not published in German translation
2013: Joe's Dog , David Almond (text), Ayesha L. Rubio (illustration), Collins (London), ISBN 978-0-00-749858-1		Picture book not published in German translation
2013: Nesting , David Almond (text), Iron Press (North Shields), ISBN 978-0-9565725-7-8		Short story collection not published in German translation
2013: Bad Angelo , David Almond (text), in: The Telegraph of September 27, 2013		Short Story Free online available not in a German translation appeared
2014: The Tightrope Walkers , David Almond (text), Penguin (London), ISBN 978-0-241-00323-7		The novel has not been published in a German translation
2014: A Song for Ella Gray , David Almond (lyrics), Karen Radford (illustration), Hodder (London), ISBN 978-1-4449-1954-7		The novel has not been published in a German translation

Plays

year	Bibliographical information
2002	Wild Girl, Wild Boy: A Play , Hodder (London), ISBN 0-340-85431-6
2003	Skellig - The Play , Hodder (London), ISBN 0-340-90555-7

Secondary literature

year	Bibliographical information
2006	Heike Ziemer and Gabriele Runge: David Almond - Zeit des Mondes - materials for teaching practice , Ravensburger (Ravensburg), ISBN 978-3-473-98055-0
2009	Sinja Terschlüsen: Narratological analysis of modern children's and youth literature using the example of the works of David Almond - Lehmann or The Temptation - and Guus Kuijer - A heavenly place , Grin , ISBN 978-3-640-38227-9
2012	Eric Sanders: The Essential Writer's Guide: Spotlight on David Almond, Including His Education, Analysis of His "Kit's Wilderness", "Skellig", Awards, Other Interests, and More , Webster, ISBN 978-1-286-79597-2
2012	Margarete Gebhardt: The topic of “homeschooling” in children's literature - review of the novel “Mina” by David Almond , Autumnus, ISBN 978-3-938531-68-6