The many young critics who selected it to review were equally delighted by its warm-hearted, frothy wit, its ebullient fantasy and expansive cast of unusual and fascinating creatures. And, like the very best children's books, it is a real pleasure to read aloud because the voices are great and she throws adult readers very savoury and knowing titbits of irony." At the award ceremony earlier this month, Mal Peet, the previous year's winner, praised it for being "a bit like reading the Brothers Grimm through the lens of Monty Python. Her most recent book, The Ogre of Oglefort, was shortlisted for the 2010 Guardian children's prize. She was best known for Journey to the River Sea, which won a Smarties prize and was runner-up for the 2001 Guardian children's fiction prize, but she also won awards for other children's books including The Secret of Platform 13 (1994) and The Star of Kazan (2004), and the Romantic Novelists' Association award for her adult novel Magic Flutes (1982). Descriptively vivid, richly inventive and shot through with perfectly timed wit, they charmed adults and children alike. Eva Ibbotson, who has died peacefully at home aged 85, entranced her readers with stories which, though robust in substance, appeared to be effortlessly spun in the finest thread from an endless source of imagination.
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