Intimidated. Really. Erik L’Homme doesn’t act smart in front of the jury of ten children, aged eight to ten, who have just awarded him the 2024 Ouest-France Dimoitou Prize. The author of the bestseller The Book of Stars (released in 2001 and sold 800,000 copies!) says « honoré » thanking them for their votes. And it’s not a joke: “I haven’t had many prizes, and this one, moreover, is awarded by the readers, the children, not the professionals”.
“As a child, I wanted to be a prince…”
After a few minutes around the meal shared yesterday between the winner and the jury – as for an “adult” literary prize – the writer forgets his world and returns to that of his readers, who are not mistaken. “There are things in your book that make you think of Harry Potter »underlines Clément, 9 years old, from Pacé in Ille-et-Vilaine. “It’s true, yes. I rarely start from nothing to imagine. And then I transform, I blur the lines”replies the author who nevertheless prefers to invoke his memories of Club of Five. To which one of the children responds that it is indeed “old”, as a reference.
And when they ask him what he wanted to do, at their age, we leave the interview with the “grown-ups”: “I wanted to be a prince… But I quickly realized that it was complicated: my father was not a king, but a mathematics professor. » Not 6e, “I decided to be a writer when I did my first essay. For the first time in my life, I had the best grade in the class…”
The Grenoblois will finally publish his first book at the age of 34. During the preceding decade, he traveled the world. Teaching medieval history, studied at university, is not really his thing. With his brother, they spent ten months twice in the mountain ranges of Pakistan, with their ethnologist friend Jordi Magraner, who gathered testimonies from locals claiming to have seen the mythical “wild men”. Not to mention other trips, in search of missing treasures, always with his brother. And to live between two journeys, “I was pruning yew trees in Belgium”, smiles the person concerned.
It was at the end of the 1990s that a chance reading brought him into contact with Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vignod, writer and editor at Gallimard Jeunesse. He encourages the young traveler to put down his bag to write. His first novel will be Book of Starsand will decide what happens next.
Magic throughout the pages
The great journey, work in competition for this prize, evokes painful subjects, whether big or small: the death of a parent, school bullying… “When I wrote it, it just came naturally. It was only after it was finished, and even published, that I realized afterwards that I had walked on a tightrope in choosing these themes. Especially parental bereavement. I think if I had had it in my head all the time, I wouldn’t have been able to write. »
The children then question him about the harassment: “It’s something I experienced when I was in 6th grade. I had skipped a grade, I was the smallest… But that’s the advantage of being a writer: I can now have my revenge…” We feel vocations quivering in the audience.
Around the jury table, the age differences melted. “I don’t really like dead people”admits Annaelle, a 10-year-old from Morbihan, while evoking the other theme of this work. “It’s not the dead, the bad guys, it’s the guardians. And then the living have nothing to do with the deadreplies the writer. In my books, there is nothing horrible, but there is almost always magic. » Then he takes the table, without leaving the room, into the adventures of his other books: aboard spaceships in space or into an unreal world where a river of metal only carries ships of stone. Imagination and poetry took hand.
Having become a father nine months ago, Erik L’Homme has many years ahead of him with stories to tell. “I am a storyteller, I try to continue to enchant the world, despite everything…”
The Ouest-France dimoitou Prize
Created by Sunday West-Francethe Ouest-France dimoitou Prize has been awarded, since 2009, to a children’s novel for 8-10 year olds published during the year. It is one of the very rare literary prizes awarded by young readers. The jury is in fact made up of ten children, aged 8 to 10 years old, who met on Saturday October 5, 2024, at the Faire Lire! show, the reading festival of the City of Le Mans (Sarthe), to choose together the winning novel, among the five children’s novels in the running for the prize (1). Last year it was Pauline’s path by Julie Bonnie (Albin Michel Jeunesse), who won over the young jurors.
The 5 novels in the selection for the Prix Ouest-France dimoitou
The great journey Erik The Man. Éditions Gallimard Jeunesse, 204 pages. €9.90.
A chainsaw love Colin Thibert. Editions Thierry Magnier, 87 pages. €11.90.
Léon 1916 Tristan Pichard. Éditions Octopus Fictions, 190 pages. €11.95.
The legend of Sigrid Julie Steis. Éditions Talents Hauts, 160 pages. €14.90.
A crumb and glitter Anne Rehbinder. South Youth Acts, 81 pages. €12.50.
Partners of the Ouest France dimoitou prize
La Maif, the Doucet bookstore in Le Mans, Get reading! The Reading Festival and the City of Le Mans are partners of the Ouest-France Dimoitou Prize.
