A win for Alex McCall! Scottish Children's Book Awards 2015

The winners of the Scottish Children's Book Awards 2015, run by Scottish Book Trust and funded by Creative Scotland, were announced today. Two of the authors were on their third win - Ross Collins (3-7) and Cathy MacPhail (12-16) - but Alex McCall is a first-timer, and one of Scotland's youngest published authors. He won the 8-11 category with Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens.



Alex McCall. Photo credit: Rob McDougall

I've written about Alex before: first when the shortlists for the award were announced when I described how I'd met him (briefly), and second when I chose to send Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens to Japan for the International Book Giving Day Swap that I took part in. So I feel a sort of connection with him, and I'm very glad he won. So is Alex! He said:

“There’s something of a feeling of coming full circle here. This is my first book and it got published through the Kelpies Prize. But the only reason that I found out about the Kelpies Prize is through a previous winning author coming to my school, through the Scottish Book Trust’s Live Literature Fund. So while I’m delighted to win I also feel very lucky that Scottish Book Trust exists in the first place. Being able to go into school and meet the children that you are writing for is fantastic enough as it is. Knowing that those kids have voted for you makes it even better. In general participating in the Awards has been a really good experience. It is just hard to believe that I’ve been lucky enough to actually win.”

Congratulations to Alex and, of course, massive thanks and congratulations to Scottish Book Trust for these fabulous awards. Here's the beautiful trophy Alex won.

This is the beautiful @justsomeartkid-designed trophy our 2015 Scottish Children's Book Award winners will win... pic.twitter.com/rhRdeTFvJ4
— Scottish Book Trust (@scottishbktrust) March 4, 2015