The Unforgotten Coat Synopsis
This is a stunning magical story of a summer of friendship with darker undertones of the plight of refugees. Two refugee brothers from Mongolia are determined to fit in with their Liverpool schoolmates, but bring so much of Mongolia to Bootle that their new friend and guide, Julie, is hard-pressed to know truth from fantasy as she recollects a wonderful friendship that was abruptly ended when Chingis and his family were forced to return to Mongolia. Told with the humour, warmth and brilliance of detail which characterizes Frank Cottrell Boyce's writing, this magical and compelling story is enriched by stunning and atmospheric Polaroid photos.
It was also shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award.
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9781406341546 |
Publication date: |
4th October 2012 |
Author: |
Frank Cottrell-Boyce |
Publisher: |
Walker Books Ltd |
Format: |
Paperback |
Pagination: |
112 pages |
Suitable For: |
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Other Genres: |
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Recommendations: |
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About Frank Cottrell-Boyce
A World Book Day Author 2019
Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an accomplished, successful and award-winning author and screenwriter. His books have been shortlisted for a multitude of prizes, including the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Whitbread Children's Fiction Award (now the Costa Book Award) and the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and Millions, his debut children's novel, won the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2004.
Millions was was later turned into a film by Danny Boyle and it features in the Book Trust’s 100 Best Books List for 9-11 year olds.
Frank is also a successful writer of film scripts and was the official scriptwriter for the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, playing an important role devising the ceremony with Danny Boyle. He is also a judge for the BBC Radio 2 500 Words competition. You can read a great interview with Frank and one of his fellow judge, Francesca Simon here!
He has also created a fantastic trilogy, written with his trademark wit, warmth and sense of story, based upon Ian Fleming's novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, comprising Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon.
His novel The Unforgotten Coat won the 2012 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.
On winning the prize Frank Cottrell-Boyce said: “It would be amazing to win this award with any book I'd written but it is a special joy to win it with The Unforgotten Coat, which started life not as a published book at all, but as a gift. Walker gave away thousands of copies in Liverpool - on buses, at ferry terminals, through schools, prisons and hospitals - to help promote the mighty Reader Organisation. We even had the book launch on a train. The photographs in the book, were created by my friends and neighbours - Carl Hunter and Claire Heaney. The story was based on a real incident in a school in Bootle. So everything about it comes from very close to home - even though it's a story about Xanadu!
“Being shortlisted for the Guardian Prize gives you a particularly warm glow because it is awarded by a panel of your fellow authors. Past winners include my childhood heroes - Alan Garner, Leon Garfield, Joan Aiken - and contemporary heroes like Mark Haddon, Geraldine McCaughrean and Meg Rosoff.”
He lives with his family in Liverpool.
You can find out a bit more about him and his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang triology at uk.chittyfliesagain.com
More About Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Selected by a distinguished independent panel of experts including our editorial expert, Julia Eccleshare, for Diverse Voices - 50 of the best Children's Books celebrating cultural diversity in the UK.
"The judges read extensively and intensely in their search for the winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize this year, but decided unanimously that The Unforgotten Coat's great immediacy and humour really set it apart.
"With his brilliant depiction of two brothers from Mongolia trying to adapt to school in Liverpool while haunted by a fear from home, Frank Cottrell Boyce never preachers to the reader, and judges felt that he writes with such credibility and warmth that his readers will be left wiser when they have finished the story."
Titles shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize were
The Abominables by Eva Ibbotson
Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle
Soonchild by Russell Hoban
Bullet Boys by Ally Kennen
The Unforgotten Coat by Frank Cottrell Boyce