Lollies 2023: The Teen Shortlist Q&A

Posted on 25 April 2023

Hear from the creators of our quick-witted titles in the Teen Shortlist for the Laugh Out Loud Awards 2023!

We sat down with Julia Tuffs (JT), author of Hexed, Simon James Green ( SJG ), author of You’re The One That I Want, and William Sutcliffe (WS), author of The Summer We Turned Green, to ask them all about their shortlisted works, and why funny books are so important.

Congratulations on being shortlisted for the Laugh Out Loud Awards 2023! How does it feel to have your work recognised by the judges?

JT: It feels amazing!! I’ve always looked at what books have made the Laugh Out Loud awards and bought a lot of them for my sons, so to have Hexed shortlisted in the first teen category is a total dream come true!

SJG : It feels amazing! In previous years, the Lollies have only been for younger fiction, so the fat they now include YA books is, honestly, the best news ever! And then to actually have been shortlisted this year is wonderful! The Lollies are all about reading for pleasure, and that’s something that’s really important to me, because books should be fun, right?!

WS: I’m delighted!

Why do you think funny books are important?

JT: Finding the funny in something is really important not just in books, but in life too. I think approaching hard topics or tough issues with a sense of humour can be a really effective way of tackling and highlighting them. Plus, the world can be a very dark and depressing place and comedy provides an escape from that.

SJG : The world can be a stressful, gloomy place sometimes. Laughter takes us away to somewhere happier, helps us relax and reminds us that life should be fun. I also think it’s easier to tackle to subjects some people find hard to talk about through the accessible lens of comedy – shared laughter can be powerful thing.

WS: People sometimes make the mistake of thinking that reading is work. Funny books are there to remind us all that reading is something people do for fun. Funny books keep you company in the best way. You’re never alone if you have a book on the go.

Can you tell us more about your shortlisted book?

JT: Hexed tells the story of Jessie Jones, who gets moved to the Isle of Wight where she develops strange and uncontrollable witchy powers. The book is about her learning to embrace those powers, finding her people and ultimately using her powers to take down the toxic culture she encounters at her school.

SJG : In You’re the One That I Want you’ll meet 16 year-old Freddie, who decides to change his life by saying ‘yes’ to every opportunity. As a result, he soon becomes involved in the school production of Grease, where he’s quickly surrounded by back-stabbing theatre kids, and falls in love with hot new boy Zach, who’s playing Danny. At tensions mount within the cast, Freddie soon realises that the path to true love isn’t easy, and sometimes you have to get things very wrong in order to work out who, and what, you really want.

WS: This novel was inspired by my children, and specifically by the way they were in turn inspired by Greta Thunberg’s school strike movement. It’s about how, for the young, the battle for climate justice isn’t an abstract or intellectual one. They feel in their hearts, passionately, that this is their own future they’re fighting for. But this isn’t an angry or depressing dystopian novel. This is about climate activism. It’s the story of a teenage girl who runs away from home and moves into a climate protest camp, and how this impacts on the lives of her younger brother and her parents. It’s a funny and serious look at personal and global responsibilities. It’s about how doing the right thing for the planet can seem like selfishness to your family. And at the heart of it is a moving friendship between a suburban 13-year-old boy yearning for excitement, and the commune-dwelling daughter of a lifelong protester who is yearning for domesticity. At first, it seems unlikely that these two could ever become friends. The real surprise is how they find themselves at the heart of a headline-grabbing climate protest, in the eye of the media storm, with millions around the world hanging on their every word.

Why should children vote for you?

JT: Children should vote for me because my book features witches and the Isle of Wight and period powers and a female cat called Dave. And because I worked really hard to write it and have only ever won an award for the Worst Knees, (2005).

SJG : I mean, I think I’m seriously funny, and this is a funny book prize, so that’s a good reason, right?! But also a vote for me is a vote for awkward kids everywhere – because we are brilliant – and it’s a vote for LGBTQ+ folk too, because there’s lots of LGBTQ+ rep in the book, and it’s a vote for the power of performing arts (I loved drama at school!) and theatre kids everywhere who might be ruthless but ultimately pull a show together against all the odds! Also… doughnuts. If you like doughnuts, you need to vote for this book.

WS: They should vote for whichever book on the shortlist they enjoyed the most, particularly if it also made them reflect on something significant. I hope that happens to be mine.

What would you say to anyone hoping to one day write or illustrate their own book?

JT: Keep going!! Read a lot and write a lot and make sure you keep enjoying the process, but most of all, keep going!

SJG : Just do it! Write! The best way of improving your writing is to do it – write a poem, a diary entry, a short story, a film script, an online article – write whatever you like, just write! (I also recommend reading a lot too, because that can be a great source of ideas and it’s good to see how other people do it!)

WS: I’d advise people not to talk to their friends about the amazing thing they are one day going to produce when they finally get round to it, but to go off and privately write or draw whatever is in their head. Then, when you’ve done it, is the time go, “Da daaa! Look what I wrote!”

Don’t forget to read the shortlisted books and vote for your favourites!

Cast your vote

Buy the shortlist