Annal:2006 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature

The Bartimaeus Trilogy

Jonathan Stroud

• 2006 Mythopoeic-Children winner
• Score: 10.56

Nathaniel is a young magician with only one thing on his mind: revenge.

As an apprentice to the great magician Underwood, Nathaniel is gradually being schooled in the traditional art of magic. All is well until he has a life-changing encounter with Simon Lovelace, a rising, star magician. When Simon brutally humiliates Nathaniel in front of everyone he knows, Nathaniel decides to speed up his magical education, teaching himself spells way beyond his years. Eventually, he masters one of the most difficult spells of all: summoning the all-powerful djinni, Bartimeus.

But summoning Bartimeus and controlling him are two very different things—and Nathaniel may be in way over his head.

Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie: Modern Faerie Realm series

Holly Black

• 2006 Mythopoeic-Children finalist
• Score: 6.56

When seventeen-year-old Valerie Russell runs away to New York City, she’s trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city’s labyrinthine subway system.

But there’s something eerily beguiling about Val’s new friends. Impulsive Lolli talks of monsters in the subway tunnels they call home and shoots up a shimmery amber-colored powder that makes the shadows around her dance. Severe Luis claims he can make deals with creatures that no one else can see. And then there’s Luis’s brother, timid and sensitive Dave, who makes the mistake of letting Val tag along as he makes a delivery to a woman who turns out to have goat hooves instead of feet.

When a bewildered Val allows Lolli to talk her into tracking down the hidden lair of the creature for whom Luis and Dave have been dealing, Val finds herself bound into service by a troll named Ravus. He is as hideous as he is honorable. And as Val grows to know him, she finds herself torn between her affection for an honorable monster and her fear of…

Wizards at War

Diane Duane

• 2006 Mythopoeic-Children finalist
• Score: 6.56

Nita and Kit return from their wizardly holiday, looking forward to getting back to their everyday routine. But there’s trouble brewing. A strange darkness of the mind and heart is about to befall the older wizards of the world, stealing away their power. Soon, the young wizards of Earth and many other planets find themselves forced to defend wizards and nonwizards alike against an invasion of a kind they’ve never imagined.

But mere defense won’t be enough to combat the evil afoot. With their alien teammates, Nita, Kit, and Dairine must race to search worlds known and unknown for the secret weapon the Powers That Be have promised them—before the minions of the sinister Lone Power find it first. And then, for the first time in millenia, the wizards must go to war….

By These Ten Bones

Clare B. Dunkle

• 2006 Mythopoeic-Children finalist
• Score: 6.56

There’s hidden places all over this land-old, old places. Places with a chain for them to chain up the wolf when it’s time.

A mysterious young man has come to a small Highland town. His talent for wood carving soon wins the admiration of the weaver’s daughter, Maddie. Fascinated by the silent carver, she sets out to gain his trust, only to find herself drawn into a terrifying secret that threatens everything she loves.

There is an evil presence in the carver’s life that cannot be controlled, and Maddie watches her town fall under a shadow. One by one, people begin to die. Caught in the middle, Maddie must decide what matters most to her-and what price she is willing to pay to keep it.