It’s early Christmas morning but I have just read your letter and I wanted to mail you immediately!  I am thrilled to hear that my book, The Black Book of Secrets, has been shortlisted for the 2008 Leeds Book Awards.   It is such a compliment to know that my book is being read, and enjoyed, by children all over the country.  Joe Zabbidou stepped out of my imagination and has become like a real person to me.  In his own way he has changed my life. I hope everyone who reads about him feels his influence in some way too!  Remember – Vincit qui patitur.

With thanks and very best wishes,

F E Higgins     

Wow... I'm so excited that my book Sundae Girl has been shortlisted in the Leeds Book Awards for 2008. It's really flattering to be picked out, and I can see the competition is stiff - what a fantastic shortlist! It means a lot that the young people of Leeds have picked my book, so thanks for reading it... and nominating it! I hope you all have fun voting for your favourites... can't wait to find out who wins!
Cathy Cassidy x

It's so brilliant that "Urgum and the Seat of Flames" has been shortlisted for the Leeds Book Awards, especially because in the book Urgum himself is expecting to win the "Savage of the Year" award. The end result is decided by a very strange duel to the death - The Flaming Pants of Shumbitt. I just hope that me and the other authors don't have to run round Leeds Town Hall setting fire to each others pants like Urgum has to!

Kjartan Poskitt

"I'm delighted that Raven Queen has been shortlisted for this award - and thank you to all those who have supported this novel. The events of Lady Jane Grey's short life have always moved me, and it's good to know that other people will now remember her tragic, but meaningful, life."

Pauline Francis.

4. Tunnels
by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams

We are so very pleased and extremely flattered to have been picked to go on the shortlist for the 2008 Leeds Book Awards. It has been a long and arduous journey for us since that night long ago in September 2003 when we first had the idea for Tunnels. We didn’t have any great expectations then, other than we wanted a book “out there” with our names on it, and of which we could be really proud. If that was all we had achieved, we would have been more than happy, and the fact that Tunnels is now being read both in the UK and abroad just bowls us over. And being put up for your award is the icing on the cake. It’s just fantastic! Thank you!

Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams.

“I am thrilled that FVP has made the shortlist of the Leeds Book Award. I took the book to some schools in Leeds last year and met some fantastic people. It means so much that my first book has been received so well. ”