The Midwatch by Judith Rossell
2025 Shortlist- CYA Category
About Judith Rossell
Judith Rossell is the multi-award-winning author-illustrator of the bestselling Stella Montgomery series (Withering-by-Sea, Wormwood Mire and Wakestone Hall). Judith has written fifteen books and illustrated more than eighty. Her work has been published in the US and UK, and translated into more than twenty languages. She has been a Writer in Residence in Heidelberg, Germany, and run illustration workshops with children around the world. She teaches at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Australian Writers' Centre. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.
About The Midwatch
The biggest children's book of the year! The Midwatch is the long-awaited new middle-grade novel from internationally bestselling author–illustrator Judith Rossell, creator of the multi-award-winning novel Withering-by-Sea.
‘The city was stuffed full of wickedness, everyone knew that …’
Banished to the Midwatch Institute for Orphans, Runaways and Unwanted Girls, Maggie Fishbone is sure she’s in for a life of drudgery. But she quickly discovers there’s more to the Midwatch than meets the eye …
The city shimmers with jewels and secrets, and soon Maggie is thrust into an adventure that takes her deep underground, high above the clouds and face to face with danger itself.
Turn the page and prepare to be drawn into a lavishly illustrated world, brimming with mystery, unlikely heroines and an adventure as big as the sky.
Judith Rossell says: “I first started writing this story after visiting an exhibition of Jazz Age design in New York. I was inspired by the modern, optimistic style of the 1920s, and the exciting social changes, especially for women and girls. I am delighted and honoured that The Midwatch is on this year’s shortlist.”
From the judging panel:
“When Maggie Fishbone is packed off to the Midwatch Institute for Orphans, Runaways and Unwanted Girls, some readers will prepare for an adventure with social commentary reminiscent of JM Barrie's image of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan. Although this novel for older readers is set in Art Deco New York of the 1920s, it may at first seem more like fantasy than historical fiction. But the author, who is also the award-winning illustrator, has so thoroughly naturalised the cultural and literary tropes of the period that her research appears effortless, and the story flies across the pages from one adventure to another and from genre to genre. The Midwatch turns out to be an undercover training school for young sleuths and crimefighters. Like The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook, which mimics quaint colonial field guides for intrepid world travellers - but this time directed at girls - The Midwatch also includes instructions for using Morse Code, telling lies and escaping from quicksand. In a whimsical triumph Maggie and her colleagues pursue thrilling madcap adventures that both capture and transcend a specific place and time.”
