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The IET and Times/Chicken House Shortlists 2021

We are so very excited to announce the shortlists for the Times/Chicken House Award and the IET 150 Prize! Whittling down our longlists was a tough challenge and we’d like to say another huge congratulations to everyone who found their way to the final 24 out of nearly 1,000 submissions. We salute you!

Unfortunately, we had to choose our shortlists and we can honestly say the following eight titles are diverse, original and totally stand-out – they run the gamut of middle-grade to top YA and feature authors who submitted from Egypt, Australia and Belgium as well as the UK. Our shortlisted stories whisked us through a number of gorgeous settings, including an Egyptian time-travel school, a neo-noir urban-fantasy London, a Wicker Man-esque island and a quasi-Caribbean archipelago. We’ve been charmed by a host of incredible characters: an enigmatic crow, a friendly robot, a very determined Victorian inventress and an asexual teen who is cursed never to tell the truth. Congratulations to all the authors of these wonderful novels!

So (drumroll please …) our Times/Chicken House Award and IET 150 Prize shortlists!

TIMES/CHICKEN HOUSE AWARD

Fatima and the Invisible Necklace by Laila Rifaat 

The Flood Child by Emily Randall 

Obsidian Heart by Philippa Peall 

The Portland Place Mystery by Nicola Whyte 

The Vengeful Son by Amie Jordan 

IET 150 PRIZE

The Cipher Engines by Henry Coles

Jeremy Gill is Not the Chosen One by Jackie Jones 

The Remarkables by Ali Stegert

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Congratulations again to everyone on the shortlists! Now, these are off to our two separate panels of judges who will help us decide the winners, to be announced in October … watch this space!

Want to enter next year? Find out more about the Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition.