大卫·埃尔蒙德在2010国际安徒生奖颁奖典礼上的获奖致辞

Acceptance speech by David Almond

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 What a great honour it is to receive this Award named for one of the world’s greatest writers. Thank you so much. I will always be grateful to all involved.

Thank you to IBBY, and to those who put me forward as the UK nominee. Thanks to the award Jury, who worked with such diligence and selfless dedication. Thank you to my publishers – first of all to the tiny magazines and presses such as Iron Press from the North East that published my first stories many years ago and now to Hodder Children’s Books and to Walker Books. Writers need publishers, of course, but they particularly need publishers like these who encourage them to become better and braver writers. And thank you to the many overseas publishers who have taken my work - most of it set in a remote corner of northeastern England, and written with the distinctive speech rhythms of that place – and who have given it life for readers around the world

Thanks to my agent Catherine Clarke who works with such grace and commitment on my behalf, and to the agent who preceded her, Maggie Noach, who believed in me and stayed with me even though for several years I earned her just about nothing at all. Thank you to my partner, Sara Jane, and to our daughter Freya, who manage to put up with someone whose brain is constantly being invaded by new stories and who meanders down to a shed among the trees each morning to spend his days wandering through imaginary landscapes and listening to imaginary voices.

And thanks of course – most of all – to my young readers.

I never planned to be a children’s writer. I thought, I’m a sensible grown up so I’ll write sensible grown up books for sensible grown ups. And then I was walking along the street one day and a new story, Skellig, started to tell itself in my mind. When I started to write it down I knew straight away that it was one of the most special things I’d ever done, that it was somehow the culmination of everything I’d written before and I realised with amazement that it was a book for the young. This brought a great sense of liberation that has stayed with me ever since. I gave  a talk in a theatre recently and at the end I was asked: “Do writers begin by writing for children and then when they grow up they start to write for adults?” I had to answer that for me the process was the reverse of that. I only began to grow up properly as a writer when I began to write for the young.

We hear this so often: kids don’t read any more. They’re the plugged-in generation, brains dulled by ipods, computer screens. Is that true? No. I want to drag the prophets of doom to meet the young readers that I meet all around the world – children who love books, stories, poems, plays. Children who ask the most perceptive questions about character and narrative, about the way words work, about the writing process, children with exploring minds and flexible imaginations.

I often go into schools and ask children to name their favourite writers. The hands go up, a whole range of writers are named. I also ask, Who likes writing? And again hands go up – no, not quite so blatantly and publicly. But so often in the quiet moments a child will come to me to tell about the stories and poems they write, about the entire books they’ve completed. There they are. I meet them – we all meet them – today’s readers, tomorrow’s writers, the ones who will keep our culture alive