Waterstones Children’s Book prize for Ketchup Clouds

A NOVEL about a teenage girl who befriends a death-row prisoner with a series of intimate letters has won a major children’s book prize.

Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher triumphed as the overall winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2013.

The story was inspired by Pitcher’s experiences of writing to an inmate sentenced to execution when she was a teenager. The story sees main character Zoe corresponding with the prisoner to get her own dark secret and guilt off her chest. Melissa Cox, buyer for new children’s titles at Waterstones, said of the winner:“Ketchup Clouds is a classic coming of age story.”