“If happiness is usually the size of a tennis ball, my feelings are the size of Australia!”
… this was Tony Robinson’s enthusiastic response to today’s news!
Tony Robinson has beaten off the competition to win himself his second Blue Peter Book Award for Best Book with Facts, with the WWII instalment in his Weird World of Wonders series.
Talented newcomer Katherine Rundell, aged 26, joins him as the winner of the Best Story for her critically acclaimed second novel Rooftoppers;
‘I am thrilled to get a Blue Peter badge at last! I spent most of my childhood loitering hopefully near rivers, waiting for someone to fall in and need rescuing so that I could get a badge – and now I don’t even have to get wet. Thank you!”
Rundell, who is the youngest female fellow ever to be elected at All Souls College in Oxford, already counts Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson among her fans and was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award in 2013.
Rooftoppers was inspired by her summers working in Paris as well as night-time explorations on the roof of All Souls and a side hobby in tightrope walking! All combined into a very intriguing novel.
Robinson is known for his role as Baldrick in historical comedy Blackadder, as well as presenting on Time Team, but he has also written over 20 books for children and adults, including The Worst Children’s Jobs in History, which sold over 60,000 copies and won a Blue Peter Book Award in 2007. There are six titles in the Weird World of Wonders series.
