Aidan Chambers: Master Literary Choreographer

Aidan Chambers is currently one of the best and best-known writers of young adult literature in the world, as his recent awards will attest. For his novel Postcards from No Man’s Land, he won the 1999 Carnegie Medal-Britain’s most prestigious award for the most distinguished novel for children or young adults-and the 2002 Michael L. Printz Award for best young adult novel when it was published in the U.S. In 2002, Chambers became the first British recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, an international award given every other year in recognition of an author’s body of work (sometimes called the counterpart in children’s and young adult literature to the Nobel Prize), since the award’s inception in 1956. Because he has produced such a large body of diverse works, both critical and creative, because his works have been so widely acclaimed by both reviewers and award committees, and because he has become an integral part of the YA canon, often called the British Cormier because of his complexity and mature themes, it is all too appropriate that author Betty Greenway’s examination of Aidan Chambers become the 25th addition to the Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature series. This full-length study integrates the biography, creative writing, and criticism of one of the most important figures in young adult literature and incorporates these strands into a complete picture that will enhance the understanding of readers.