Bog Child facts for kids
Front cover of first edition
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| Author | Siobhan Dowd |
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| Cover artist | Kamil Vojnar |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's historical novel, mystery |
| Publisher | David Fickling (UK, US) |
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Publication date
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9 September 2008 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
| Pages | 321 pp (first edition) |
| ISBN | 978-0-385-61431-3 |
| OCLC | 759682319 |
| LC Class | PZ7.D7538 Bog 2008 |
Bog Child is a historical novel by Siobhan Dowd published by David Fickling (UK) and Random House Children's Books (US) on September 9, 2008, more than a year after her death. Set in the 1980s amid the backdrop of the Troubles of Northern Ireland, it features an 18-year-old boy who must study for exams but experiences "his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for the provisional IRA, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog." In flashback and dream there are elements of the murdered girl's prehistoric or protohistoric life and death.
Dowd and Bog Child were named winners of the annual Carnegie Medal, recognising the year's best children's book published in the U.K.
Inspiration
Dowd says that her inspiration for the book was the 1981 Irish hunger strike. She says that BBC's Timewatch was an "inspirational programme on recent discoveries of bog people in Ireland". She also mentions "the classic The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved by P. V. Glob" in the same context.
