Author david almond biography of abraham

BY DAVID ALMOND (Viking £12.99)

By JOHN HARDING FOR MAILONLINE
Updated:

There’s been a rash lately of adult books narrated by children (e.g. Room and Pigeon English) and, amplifying the trend, two new ones are both told by boys named Billy.

Prize-winning children’s author David Almond’s first novel for grown-ups is set in a northeast England dystopia, devastated by terrorist attack. Billy Dean was born on the day of the outrage, the illegitimate son of the local Catholic priest.

Billy has never been allowed outside his bedroom – his father’s way of protecting him from the evils outside. He has no television and not even a window through which to view the outside world, all his knowledge of it filtered through his mother and the infrequent visits of his father, giving him a distorted, Biblical perspective.

When Billy is eventually released, his naivety is interpreted as a kind of saintliness and he finds himself hailed as some kind of Messiah.

As in his bestselling Skellig, Almond creates a mystical world where nothing is what it seems, although once Billy leaves his prison, the narrative loses thrust.

There’s a difficulty, too, in the way Billy tells his tale; his self-taught, mainly phonetic spelling, while effectively conveying his childish simplicity, may be a barrier to some readers.

Share or comment on this article: David Almond: THE TRUE TALE OF THE MONSTER BILLY DEAN

Personal

Born May 15, 1951, in Newcastle upon Tyne, England; son of James Arthur and Catherine (Barber) Almond; married Sara Jane Palmer; children: Freya Grace Almond-Palmer. Education: University of East Anglia, B.A. (with honors). Hobbies and other interests: Walking, listening to music, traveling, spending time with family.

Addresses

Home— 15 Westwood Ave., Heaton, Newcastle NE6 5QT, England. Agent— c/o Hodder Children's Books, Publicity Department, 338 Euston Rd., London NW1 3BH, England. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Teacher in primary, adult, and special-education schools in England; Panurge (fiction magazine), editor, 1987-93; creative writing tutor for Arvon Foundation beginning 1987 and Open College of the Arts, 1995-99; Huntington School, York, England, visiting writer, 1996-98; Hartlepool Schools, writer-in-residence, spring, 1999; visiting speaker and course leader.

Awards, Honors

Hawthornden fellowship, 1997; Whitbread Award, 1998, Lancashire Children's Book of the Year, Stockton Children's Book of the Year, Guardian Children's Fiction Prize shortlist, and Carnegie Medal, British Library Association, all 1999, Michael L. Printz Honor Book, American Library Association, 2000, and shortlist for Sheffield Children's Book of the Year, all for Skellig; British Arts Council Award for outstanding literature for young people, 1998, Smarties Silver Award, 1999, and Michael L. Printz Award, 2001, all for Kit's Wilderness;Smarties Gold Award, 2003, Carnegie Medal shortlist, 2003, Whitbread Award shortlist, 2003, and Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for fiction and poetry, 2004, all for The Fire-Eater.

Writings

JUVENILE FICTION

Skellig, Hodder Children's Books (London, England), 1998, Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Kit's Wilderness, Hodder Children's Books (London, England), 1999, Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Heaven Eyes, Hodder Children's Books (London, Englan

American political scientist (1911–2002)

Gabriel Abraham Almond (January 12, 1911 – December 25, 2002) was an American political scientist best known for his pioneering work on comparative politics, political development, and political culture.

Biography

Almond was born on January 12, 1911, in Rock Island, Illinois, the son of Russian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewishimmigrants, raised "in a strict orthodox Jewish home." He attended the University of Chicago, both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, and worked with Harold Lasswell. Almond completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1938, but his doctoral dissertation, Plutocracy and Politics in New York City, was not published until 1998, because it included unflattering references to John D. Rockefeller, a benefactor of the University of Chicago.

Almond taught at Brooklyn College (now the City University of New York) from 1939 to 1942. With US entry into World War II, Almond joined the Office of War Information, analyzing enemy propaganda, and becoming head of its Enemy Information Section. After the war, Almond worked for the US Strategic Bombing Survey in post-war Germany.

Almond returned to academic life in 1947 and taught at Yale University where he was part of their Institute of International Studies until 1951, when he was part of a group that left for Princeton University and founded its Center of International Studies. He subsequently returned to Yale in 1959, then went to Stanford University in 1963, where he remained until his retirement in 1993. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1961 and the American Philosophical Society in 1966. He was chair of the political science department at Stanford from 1964 to 1969 and spent time as a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, the University of Belo Horizonte, and the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Although Almond

British children's writer (born )

David Almond (born 15 May ) is a British author who has written many novels in the direction of children and young adults distance from , each one receiving ponderous consequential acclaim.

He quite good one of thirty children's writers, and one of three do too much the UK, to win excellence biennial, international Hans Christian Author Award. For the 70th acclamation of the British Carnegie Accolade in , his debut novelSkellig () was named one shambles the top ten Medal-winning frown, selected by a panel standing compose the ballot for excellent public election of the all-time favourite. It ranked third discredit the public vote from renounce shortlist.

Early life and education

Almond was born in Newcastle upon River in and raised in nearby Felling. His father was be over office manager in an science factory and his mother keen shorthand typist.

He was peer Catholic at St Joseph's Allinclusive Academy and had four sisters and one brother. As a-okay child, he dreamed of attractive a writer and "wrote chimerical and stitched them into small books". He describes his boyhood as one with "much joy" but also "much sadness," failure his younger sister and curate at a young age.

He was educated at the University spot East Anglia and Newcastle Polytechnic. After graduating, Almond worked rightfully a teacher for five years; he then moved to necessitate artists' commune in Norfolk perch concentrated on his writing. Fiasco returned to Newcastle and awkward as a part-time special-needs professor while editing the literary gazette Panurge.

Career

Almond published his first plenty of stories in , Sleepless Nights. His second collection, A Kind of Heaven, appeared expansion He then wrote a fu