ESC- Award Winning Books : 2000-

Winner 2000
Twelve-year-old Sade's journalist father is a vocal critic of the corrupt government in Nigeria. When Sade's mother is murdered, her family sees in bloody detail the violent risks that come with exposing the truth.
Her father arranges for Sade and her younger brother to be smuggled to their uncle in London for safety. On the streets of London, the plans fall apart and they are abandoned, passed from foster home to foster home. They try to contact their uncle but he is missing. Then they learn that their father has escaped to London to find them -- but he will be sent back to Nigeria, unless Sade can find a way to tell the world what happened to her family.

Winner 1999
In a richly-layered novel, spanning 50 years, Aidan Chambers evokes the atmosphere of war while interweaving Jacob's exploration of new relationships in contemporary Amsterdam.

Winner 1998
Ten-year-old Michael was looking forward to moving into a new house. But now his baby sister is ill, his parents are frantic, and Doctor Death has come to call. Michael feels helpless. Then he steps into the crumbling garage. . . . What is this thing beneath the spiderwebs and dead flies? A human being, or a strange kind of beast never before seen? The only person Michael can confide in is his new friend, Mina. Together they carry the creature out into the light, and Michael’s world changes forever. . . .

Winner 1997
Fifteen-year-old Jess's grandfather has just had a major heart attack, but he insists he finish his painting, River Boy. At first, Jess cannot understand why this painting is so important to her grandfather, especially since there doesn't seem to be any boy in it at all. But while swimming in the river herself, Jess begins to feel the presence of a strange boy. Could this be the same one her ailing grandfather struggles to paint? And if so, why has he returned?

Winner 1996

Winner 1995
Philip Pullman has created a fantasy world, where demons swoop and scuttle along the streets of London and Oxford, where the mysterious Dust swirls invisibly through the air, and where only one child knows secrets the adults would kill for.

Winner 1994
Solomon is very angry—at the teachers and his father who have failed him, at the mother who has left him, and also at himself. He can't bear to be at school or at home. His refuge is one corner of the church graveyard, where nothing flourishes except a single rowan tree. Then one day, workmen uproot the tree and, as it dies, a terrible force comes to life. Solomon hears whispers and first-grader Amy Miller dreams of a strange lady with an alluring song. Solomon finds out the graveyard was both the site of a witch hunt and the burial place for small pox victims. Did the witch leave a curse for the miller's descendants? Solomon must uncover the mysteries of the past and save Amy. Can he find the strength to fight the ancient and evil power that has been unleashed?

Winner 1993

Winner 1992
Let it be flour babies. Let chaos reign. When the annual school science fair comes round, Mr Cartwright's class don't get to work on the Soap Factory, the Maggot Farm or the Exploding Custard Tins. To their intense disgust they get the Flour Babies - sweet little six-pound bags of flour that must be cared for at all times.

Winner 1991
Helen and Chris are in their last year at school when Helen discovers that she is pregnant. Faced suddenly with the frightening possibilities of parenthood, they each try in their own way to understand their own parents. For Helen and Chris, the hardest thing to face is the unknown landscape of their future, together or apart.

Winner 1990
Cassy lives with her granny, until the night that she hears strange footsteps coming into their flat. The next morning, she is packed off to her mum's - a squat in London that her beautiful, simple mother shares with a couple of actors. Cassy does her best to throw herself into her mother's life, even agreeing to take part in their travelling show called 'Wolf'. But she can't ever get rid of the feeling that something is following her, and something bad is going to happen. Her fear grows as time passes, until Cassy knows she must face up to her past: who her father is, why he left and where he has gone. What she doesn't know is that some questions are better left unanswered...

Winner 1989
Kitty Killin is not only a good storyteller, but also the World's Greatest Expert when it comes to mothers having new and unwanted boyfriends. Particularly when there's a danger they might turn into new and unwanted stepfathers...

Winner 1988
When M.C.C. Berkshire comes into Ailsa and her mother's antiques shop, he turns their lives upside down. He moves in, sleeps on the old bed in the shop (for sale), and corners every potential customer with a specially made-up story about an item in the shop. At the end of each tale the customers are so entranced that they buy the item! Suddenly the shop is a success, with M.C.C. telling a pack of lies to suit every taste. There's a whodunnit, a spoof on Dracula, a Victorian fantasy, and nine other funny and fascinating stories.
Soon Ailsa and her mother start wondering whether they should encourage M.C.C.'s lies, and without realizing it, Ailsa begins to fall in love with the magical stranger. But who is this amazing character? At the end of the book, we suddenly find out...or do we?

Winner 1986
It is a story about leaving home and an adolescent's conflicts on the way to independence, showing how closely each individual is woven into the wide range of people who make up a family.

Winner 1982
After a shy and rather withdrawn eight-year-old begins receiving frightening supernatural images and messages, he learns about a family legacy which could be considered a curse or a rare gift.

Winner 1981
While visiting his mother and new stepfather whom he hates, an English teenager is terrorized by three scarecrows embodying people who met violent death and who silently threaten the entire family.

Winner 1980
A retelling of 32 Old Testament narratives.

Winner 1977
The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler is considered one of the children's classics of the twentieth century. The central character Tyke is best friends with Danny Price and wherever they go, trouble isn't far behind. Their exploits during their last term at Cricklepit drive the Head to despair and provide a few surprises for the reader - including one which encourages us to question our deepest assumptions about gender and behaviour.

Winner 1975
With Nazi planes raining bombs on England night after night, every boy in Garmouth has a collection of shrapnel and other war souvenirs. But nothing comes close to the working machine gun Chas McGill pulls out of a downed bomber. While the police search frantically for the missing gun, Chas and his friends build a secret fortress to fight the Germans themselves.

Winner 1973
The ghost of a seventeenth-century sorcerer emerges as a poltergeist and attempts to make young James his apprentice.

Winner 1972
Set in England’s Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage, and survival follows a band of very special rabbits on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

Winner 1969
Christina finally finds love in the second book of the Flambards series. But, the happiest time of her life is marred by Will's pasionate ambition to design, make and fly airplanes--a very dangerous business in 1913.

Winner 1967
Something is scratching around in the attic above Alison's room. Yet the only thing up there is a stack of grimy old plates. Alison and her stepbrother, Roger, discover that the flowery patterns on the plates, when traced onto paper, can be fitted together to create owls--owls that disappear when no one is watching. With each vanished owl, strange events begin to happen . As the kids uncover the mystery of the owl service, they become trapped within a local legend, playing out roles in a tragic love story that has repeated itself for generations . . . and has always ended in disaster.