Shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award 2017 | Winner in the Young Fiction category and the overall Winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2017
‘Here be dragons’ it says on old maps, but Isabella finds creatures even more terrifying in the unchartered lands of Joya, the island that is her home. Joya is a place of limited horizons and hidden stories: the governor has closed its ports and banned travel by sea; half the island is out of bounds to the population. When her friend the governor’s daughter gets lost in those Forgotten Territories, Isa accompanies the search party as a cartographer and, unknowing, follows the path of a girl whose brave defence of Joya has long since turned into myth. Map-making and story-telling are linked, says the author, and we all carry the map of our lives on our skin. This is a magical adventure, beautifully told and full of striking ideas on themes of loyalty, courage and redemption.
Forbidden to leave her island, Isabella dreams of the faraway lands her cartographer father once mapped. When her friend disappears, she volunteers to guide the search. The world beyond the walls is a monster-filled wasteland - and beneath the dry rivers and smoking mountains, a fire demon is stirring from its sleep. Soon, following her map, her heart and an ancient myth, Isabella discovers the true end of her journey: to save the island itself.
The Branford Boase Award Judges' Comments - ‘Wonderfully readable’; ‘quick without being shallow, some beautiful writing’; ‘fresh and different’.
Millwood Hargrave told The Bookseller: "The only thing that has been better the past year has been being a reader; to be shortlisted alongside such beautiful books was an honour. Winning at this stage feels unreal, but I'm looking forward to it sinking in and to what the coming year will bring. Thanks to Waterstones."
Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an award-winning, bestselling novelist. Her debut story for children The Girl of Ink & Stars won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, and the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year. Her work has been short- and long-listed for numerous major prizes including the Costa Award and the CILIP Carnegie Award, and her novel Julia and the Shark, illustrated by Tom de Freston, was named Waterstones Children's Gift of the Year, and Leila and the Blue Fox won the Wainwright Prize.
She's a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and lives in Oxford with her husband, daughter and cats, in a house between a river and a forest.
