And the First Prize Goes to ...

The Thing That Mattered Most won! Here's the press release:

"Scottish poems for children win national award

A collection of Scottish poems for children this week won a major national award.

The CLPE Poetry Award for 2007 was presented on Thursday to Julie Johnstone, editor of The Thing that Mattered Most: Scottish poems for children (Black and White Publishing/Scottish Poetry Library, 2006) ... This year’s judges were poet and BBC radio presenter Ian McMillan and last year’s winner, anthologist Fiona Waters. Waters commented:

‘This is such an imaginative and exciting collection of new poems, and you don’t need to Parliamo Glesca to understand them either for while this is an intensely Scottish selection, and justly proud to be so, the poems reach out far beyond the borders of that nation. Full of the sights and smells of the countryside, the hustle and bustle of the city and the tumultuous tumble of thoughts in the reader’s mind, this is a unique and compelling selection.’

Beautifully designed and illustrated by Iain McIntosh (best known for the covers of Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Lady Detective series), The Thing that Mattered Most includes poems in Scots, Gaelic and Shetlandic as well as English and features a preface by former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo.

Editor and award-winner Julie Johnstone, who is also the librarian at the Scottish Poetry Library, said:

‘From the start The Thing that Mattered Most has been about celebrating the rich variety of poets working in Scotland today. We hear a lot of gloomy news these days about poetry publishing – in particular about children’s poetry publishing. Scottish children had very little access to new poems by Scottish poets; this book is unique and fills a real gap. It was a joy to edit the collection and to play my part in bringing Scottish poets and children everywhere together in a fresh and exciting way.’

A copy of The Thing that Mattered Most was sent to every school in Scotland by Learning & Teaching Scotland, funded by the Scottish Executive, when it was published in August 2006.

The CLPE Award is administered by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education."

Whoopee! Joan.