Former American teen rapper Angie Thomas' debut novel "The Hate U Give", about a girl's struggle for justice and inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, has been named winner of this year's the 5,000-pound Waterstones Children's Book Prize.
According to James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, "The Hate U Give" should have a readership far beyond a core audience of young adults.
"Ours is a children's prize, but there is no upper age limit to being stunned by beautiful writing of this visceral power," Daunt said.
Set in the backdrop of police violence in North America, the book revolves around Starr Carter, a teenager whose life is split between the affluent school she attends and the much poorer suburb that is her home.
Her best friend Khalil's fatal shooting by a police officer abruptly brings those two worlds together, compelling Starr to defend her friend's memory and force the media to understand the truth behind the tragedy.
In other categories, Jessica Townsend's tale "Nevermoor", of a courageous young girl who must overcome a terrible magical curse, won the prize for younger fiction, while Joe Todd-Stanton's "The Secret of Black Rock", where a strange, sea-born mystery reveals a moving message of care for the planet, was adjudged the best illustrated book.
Voted on by Waterstones booksellers, the annual prizes for children's writing and illustration are decided by readers, for readers.
Penguin Random House India said Angie's novel recently won the William C Morris YA Debut Award, was declared a Printz Honor Book (of the Michael L Printz Award, for excellence in literature written for young adults) as well as being selected as a Coretta Scott King Honor Book at the American Library Association (ALA) Youth Media Awards in the US.
"The Hate U Give" has also been shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2018 in the UK awarded annually to the writer of an outstanding book, written in English for children and young people.
"The Hate U Give" has been translated into more than 25 languages and is soon to be a motion picture, starring Amandla Stenberg.
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