Prize Winners
Time of Trial by Hester Burton (O.U.P., 15s.) has been awarded the Library Association's Carnegie Medal for 1963: this medal is given each year to an outstanding book for children. Time of Trial is an historical novel for older girls set in the opening years of the nineteenth century. Margaret Pageter, seven- teen-year-old daughter of a venerable London bookseller gaoled for printing a revolutionary pamphlet, and Robert Kerridge, a medical student from an aristocratic Suffolk family, are true children of their time, buffeted by the prevailing winds but carving out a future for themselves in the teeth of the storm. Through her two central characters Mrs. Bur- ton deftly mirrors London, where new ideas are forcing their way upwards through layers of entrenched privilege, and a Suffolk town- ship as yet untroubled by the philosophies of Tom Paine.
The Kate Greenaway Medal, for an out- standing work of illustration, goes to Mr. John Burningham, who illustrates his own story, Borka : the Adventures of a Goose with no Feathers (Cape, 12s. 6d.). The virtue of this book is that it is in character entirely goose : a little sad, a little curious, a little wry and ponderous and plodding and aggressive. Mr. Burningham's bold autumnal colours and patient storytelling in picture and text make him a worthy winner with this, his first picture book.
E. M.
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