David Almond (born 15 May 1952) is a British author who has written several novels for children or young adults from 1998, each one to critical acclaim.
He is one of thirty children's writers, and one of three from the U.K., to win the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, "the world's most prestigious prize in children's literature". For the 70th anniversary of the British Carnegie Medal in Literature in 2007, his debut novel Skellig (1998) was named one of the top ten Medal-winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite. It ranked third in the public vote from that shortlist.
Famous quotes containing the words david and/or almond:
“The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairyland. The world seemed decked for some holiday or prouder pageantry ... like a green lane into a country maze, at the season when fruit-trees are in blossom.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I want to go back, out of the bad stories,
But there’s always the possibility that the next one . . .
No, it’s another almond tree, or a ring-swallowing frog . . .
Yet they are beautiful as we people them
With ourselves.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)