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Congratulations are due for Saskatoon's Arthur Slade. On November 9, The Hunchback Assignments won the 2010 TD Canada Children's Literature Award, the children's literature equivalent of winning the Giller Prize.

Arthur Slade's steampunk thriller was selected from a stellar field of Canadian Children's Literature including Janet McNaughton's Dragon Seer, Sharon Jennings's Home Free, William Gilkerson's A Thousand Years of Pirates and Nancy Hartry's Watching Jimmy.

Arthur will be reading from the second book in his Hunchback Assignments Series, The Dark Deeps, at Saskatoon's Young Adult Author Extravaganza on November 25.

'Tis the season for awards announcements! Today we have two:

Saskatchewan native Arthur Slade has won the $25,000 TD Canadian Children's Literature award for The Hunchback Assignments.

"As an exciting spy thriller for young audiences, Arthur Slade's The Hunchback Assignments embodies the creativity and dedication to children's literature we hope to encourage with the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award," says Frank McKenna, Deputy Chair, TD Bank Financial Group and TD's Literacy Champion. "It's well known that developing a love for reading at an early age can help create a lasting relationship with books. The Hunchback Assignments is that electrifying, page-turning story we need to keep our young readers engaged." (source)

Also, Polly Horvath has won the $20,000 Vicky Metcalf award, which honours a body of work. As the Writers' Trust website says,

Polly Horvath has a lively, daring imagination that expresses itself in children's novels that balance the lyrical with the mordant, the poignant with the darkly absurd. Her earliest works tend towards the light and comic; her middle works towards the black-humoured, gothic and brave; her most recent are softer and tinged with wonder. In truth, though, all her novels have all these qualities in different measure, and in all she confronts the inexplicable vagaries of human nature with an inimitable, stylish blend of satire, wit and compassion.

Congratulations to both authors!

The finalists for the 2010 Governor General Awards have been announced! Here are the children's titles; for a full listing, see the Canada Council for the Arts website.

Children's Literature - Text

• Me, Myself and Ike by K.L. Denman (Orca Book Publishers)
• Tyranny by Leslie Fairfield (Tundra Books)
• Free as a Bird by Gina McMurch-Barber (Dundurn Press)
• Fishtailing by Wendy Phillips (Coteau Books)
• Scars by Cheryl Rainfield (WestSide Books)

Children's Literature - Illustration

• Uirapurú: based on a Brazilian legend; illustrated by Kristi Bridgeman, text by P.K. Page (Oolichan Books)
• Owls See Clearly at Night: a Michif alphabet /Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer: l'alfabet di Michif by Julie Flett (Simply Read Books)
• I Know Here; illustrated by Matt James, text by Laurel Croza (Groundwood Books)
• Cat's Night Out; illustrated by Jon Klassen, text by Caroline Stutson (Simon & Schuster)
• The Quiet Book; illustrated by Renata Liwska, text by Deborah Underwood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

As paraphrased from the Canadian Children's Book Centre website:

The Canadian Children's Book Centre has announced the finalists for the 2010 TD Canadian Children's Literature Award, Prix TD de littérature canadienne pour l'enfance et la jeunesse, Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children's Non-Fiction and Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People.

The winners of the English-language awards will be announced on November 9, 2010, and the winners of the Prix TD de literature canadienne pour l'enfance et la jeunesse will be announced November 2, 2010. Overall, $110,000 in prize monies will be awarded.

We at McNally Robinson Grant Park would like to congratulate Winnipeg author Colleen Sydor, whose Timmerman Was Here is a finalist for the $20,000 Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award. See the website for a full list of all of the finalists.