Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers
Chambers in 2012
Born(1934-12-27)27 December 1934
Chester-le-Street, County Durham, England
Died11 May 2025(2025-05-11) (aged 90)
Occupations
  • Author
  • editor
SpouseNancy Chambers
Writing career
Period1967–2020
Notable works
Notable awards
Websiteaidanchambers.co.uk

Aidan Chambers (27 December 1934 – 11 May 2025) was a British author of children's and young-adult novels. He won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for Postcards from No Man's Land (1999). For his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

Life and career

Born near Chester-le-Street, County Durham on 27 December 1934, Chambers was an only child, and a poor scholar; considered "slow" by his teachers, he did not learn to read fluently until the age of nine. After two years in the Royal Navy as part of his national service, Chambers trained as a teacher and taught for three years at Westcliff High School in Southend-on-Sea before joining an Anglican monastery in Stroud, Gloucestershire in 1960. His young-adult novel Now I Know (1987) is based partly on his experiences as a monk.

His first plays, including Johnny Salter (1966), The Car and The Chicken Run (1968), were published while he was a teacher at Archway School in Stroud.

Chambers left the monastery in 1967 and became a freelance writer a year later. His works include the "Dance sequence" of six novels (1978 to 2005): Breaktime, Dance on My Grave, Now I Know, The Toll Bridge, Postcards from No Man's Land and This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn. He and his wife, Nancy, founded Thimble Press and the magazine Signal to promote literature for children and young adults. They were awarded the Eleanor Farjeon Award for outstanding services to children's books in 1982. From 2003 until 2006, he was the president of the School Library Association.

Chambers died after a short illness on 11 May 2025, at the age of 90.

Awards and honours

Chambers won two major annual book awards for Postcards from No Man's Land, published by The Bodley Head in 1999, one being the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. The other was the Michael L. Printz Award for specifically young-adult literature, recognising the first US edition published three years later.

He also received several general awards and honours:

Books

Novels for young adults

Novels for children

  • Seal Secret (1980)
  • The Present Takers (1984)

Chambers also compiled and edited many other children's books, several concerning ghosts. He edited Ghosts Four under the pseudonym Malcolm Blacklin.

Short stories

  • The Kissing Game: Short Stories of Defiance and Flash Fictions (2011)

Criticism and education

  • The Reluctant Reader (1969)
  • Introducing Books to Children (1973, 1983)
  • Booktalk: Occasional Writing on Literature and Children (1985)
  • The Reading Environment (1991)
  • Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk (1993)
  • Reading Talk (2001)
  • Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk with The Reading Environment (2011)
  • The Age Between: Personal Reflections on Youth Fiction, Fincham Press (2020)

Notes

  1. ↑ The American Library Association awards program first distinguished young-adult books (Printz Award) from children's books (Newbery Medal) for 1999 publications. The newer, young-adult award alone is open to first US editions of "old" works by non-American authors.

References

  1. 1 2 (Carnegie Winner 1999). Archived 5 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners. CILIP. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
  2. 1 2 "2003 Printz Award". Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). American Library Association. (ALA).
     "The Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature". YALSA. ALA. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
  3. 1 2 (Hans Christian Andersen Awards 2002). International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).
      "Hans Christian Andersen Awards". IBBY. Retrieved 23 July 2013.
  4. ↑ "Aidan Chambers" (pp. 106–107, by Eva Glistrup).
    The Hans Christian Andersen Awards, 1956–2002. IBBY. Gyldendal. 2002. Hosted by Austrian Literature Online. Retrieved 23 July 2013.
  5. ↑ "Aidan Chambers – official web site". aidanchambers.co.uk. Retrieved 2 November 2020.
  6. ↑ Sattaur, Jennifer (2007). "Aidan Chambers: Master Literary Choreographer (review)". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. 32 (1): 78–80. doi:10.1353/chq.2007.0021. ISSN 1553-1201.
  7. ↑ Rappé, Maxine (12 May 2025). "Britse jeugdschrijver Aidan Chambers (90) overleden, Bart Moeyaert: "Hij was allesbepalend"". VRT (in Dutch). Retrieved 13 May 2025.
  8. ↑ de Veen, Thomas (12 May 2025). "Door jongeren serieus te nemen, kreeg Aidan Chambers ze enthousiast voor lezen". NRC (in Dutch). Retrieved 13 May 2025.
  9. ↑ "Aidan Chambers obituary: Pioneer of the young adult novel". The Times. 20 May 2025.
  10. ↑ Appleton, Jon (29 May 2025). "Aidan Chambers obituary". The Guardian.
  11. ↑ "Chambers, Aidan". Royal Society of Literature. 1 September 2023. Retrieved 7 July 2025.
  12. ↑ Chambers, Aidan (2010). "Finding the Form: Toward a Poetics of Youth Literature". The Lion and the Unicorn. 34 (3): 267–283. doi:10.1353/uni.2010.a404264. ISSN 1080-6563.
  13. ↑ London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-0-370-33197-3
  14. ↑ Chambers, Aidan (1993). Tell Me: Children, Reading & Talk (Report). Primary English Teaching Association, Laura Street, Newtown, New South Wales.
  15. ↑ Thimble Press. ISBN 978-0-903355-54-4

Further reading

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