Description
We are delighted to announce that Joseph Coelho has won the prestigious 2024 Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing with The Boy Lost in the Maze!
This remarkable achievement celebrates the exceptional storytelling and creativity that Coelho, the current Children’s Laureate, brings to life in his book.
Three storylines run simultaneously in this extraordinary novel. Theo is studying for his A-levels and trying to find his father. Theseus is the central character in an essay Theo is working upon and the Minotaur also wants to know his father. The story is labyrinthine with false paths and doubling backs. It concludes in a way that is at once beautiful and emotionally satisfying. A rites of passage novel told through poems about becoming a man and discovering what manhood is and can be.
From the UK Children’s Laureate comes a spellbinding YA novel in verse blending the ancient myth of Theseus and the Minotaur with the quest of a modern-day teen in search of his father.
Theo, a seventeen-year-old London schoolboy with a single mother, is desperate to track down the father who left them, whom he scarcely remembers. At school he discovers Greek mythology and the ancient story of Theseus, a fatherless son driven on a similar search. As Theo focuses on Theseus in a series of poems he composes, it becomes clear the two journeys echo each other in uncanny ways. Theseus must conquer his enemies—a psycho Cyclops, a tree-bending murderer, a monstrous pig—while Theo is tricked and double-crossed, confronting obstacles ranging from a search-agency scam artist to a depraved lawyer. Poet Joseph Coelho brilliantly interweaves the boys’ stories, following them through dangers, horrors, and false successes, revealing that Theo must be as resourceful and strong as his mythical hero. In a unique twist, readers are asked to take a role in picking which option the heroes should pursue when facing choices on their path to manhood. The two alternating stories, along with stories from the Minotaur’s perspective, fuse into one in a riveting climax, as the protagonists meet in the heart of the labyrinth.
