Sarah Ardizzone’s translation from French of Toby Alone by Timothée de Fombelle, has won the 2009 Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation.
Ardizzone, who previously won the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation in 2005 for Eye of the Wolf by Daniel Pennac, was presented with the award and a cheque for £2000, by best-selling author Anthony Horowitz.
On accepting the award Sarah Ardizzone commented:
‘I am flabbergasted and delighted to be receiving the Marsh Award 2009. I truly hope the prestige associated with this prize will help bring Timothée de Fombelle's extraordinary miniature world set in a tree, with its contemporary eco-flavour, as well as its timeless themes of friendship, epic adventures and unconventional families, to as wide a readership as possible.
‘To my mind this is the greatest gift of the Marsh Award: shining the spotlight on world class literature for children, so that not only the deliciously shrunk perspective of Toby Alone but also the sheer diversity of the 2009 shortlisted books, translated from a wider range of languages than ever before, might travel into the hands and classrooms and libraries of young people across the UK.’
