and the winner is...

The Graveyard Book!

Which is a result I'm very proud of (though I've heard from dissenters already...) - I think it's a wonderful book. I'm not going to write about the book itself at any length here as I've raved about it often enough - in the forthcoming new Teen Guide I chose this as one of the ones I recommended myself, actually - but in short, I do love it. Original, witty, charming, beautifully written, warm, wise, gripping, all those good things that go to making a book I believe will last a long, long time.

(Oh, and talking about the new Teen Guide, my final act as editor of the UTBG was to e-mail our publishers this afternoon with the news of the BTPrize winner so that this last last-minute piece of information could be dropped in, and then it goes to press! Done forever! Hooray!)

But back to the prize... It was a good party with all the shortlisted authors (apart from Neil Gaiman himself, who was represented by his illustrator Chris Riddell) and many other friends; Susan was there too and will report back in detail, but I couldn't wait to share the news!