EDEBÉ Children's Literature Award 2016: El aprendiz de brujo y Los Invisibles, by Jordi Sierra i Fabra
A sorcerer's apprentice mistakenly revives a child who was murdered and reunites him with his friends to do justice and reveal his murderer. His enemy is powerful but they, united, are The Invincibles.
An original story of a gang united against the villain, whose members are orphans and form a true family. They are the protagonists of this macabre, tender and exciting adventure. The strength of friendship will be able to make the impossible a reality.
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Mortimer Saw was much luckier than the rest of the children at the Monroe Orphanage and was accepted as an apprentice to the enigmatic Professor Haggath, an underground witch. Despite three years of assisting him with magic and spells, nothing had prepared Mortimer for what was to come. The potion he gave her serves to bring corpses back to life.
But... what can three drops do?
Mortimer will meet Horace, an orphan from the Monroe Orphanage who died ten years earlier while still a child, when a drunk man ran over him with his horse and refused to take him to the hospital. Back in the world of the living, thanks to Professor Haggath's three drops, Horace will point his cadaverous finger at Jonas Petigrew: the mayor.
Mortimer will go to meet Horace's friends and reunite the legendary band that they were, the Invisibles. Theirs is a race against time to deliver justice: they have three days before Horace dies again. Luckily, they also have a brilliant plan to make their executioner confess amid screams of horror.
Publication: March 2016
Fragment:
“Professor Haggath's voice echoed in his head:
—It is a very, very strong potion, unique, difficult, that can only work tonight. First of all, you must take it before twelve. Secondly, you must deliver the bottle intact. Don't open it. Don't let a drop spill! You've understood? Not even one! If just one of those drops fell somewhere else, it could trigger something… worrying, to put it mildly!, you understand?
What had he meant by “worrying fact”?
Not a single drop… and three had fallen.
It was already too late. The first thing was still to deliver the bottle.
Frightened, with his head upside down, he started running again.”
Jordi Sierra and Fabra
He was born in Barcelona in 1947. He began writing at the age of eight and at twelve he decided that his vocation was to be a novelist. However, seduced by music, he began his professional career as founder or director of some of the most influential magazines in Spain.
He has cultivated all genres and has written more than 400 books, with almost ten million copies sold.
He has won the most prestigious literary awards on both sides of the Atlantic, including the award Edebé Children's in 1994 and the Young adult in 2006. National award for Literature in 2007, he has also twice been a candidate for the Nobel Young adult, the Andersen award.
A tireless traveler, in 2004 he created the Fundació Jordi Sierra i Fabra in Barcelona (Spain) and the Fundación Taller de Letras Jordi Sierra i Fabra in Medellín (Colombia).
More information in www.sierraifabra.com.