Elle McNicoll
Elle McNicoll is a Scottish children's literature writer. She has been described as "undoubtedly an outstanding new talent in children's books will inspire readers young and old for generations to come".
Biography
McNicoll's debut novel, A Kind of Spark, follows the efforts of an autistic eleven-year-old girl, Addie, to establish a memorial to the witch trials in her Scottish hometown. McNicoll is autistic herself. The book was children's book of the week in The Times and The Sunday Times, and won both the Overall and Younger Fiction prizes at the 2021 Waterstones Children's Book Prize. It also won the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, voted for by children. McNicoll was nominated for the Branford Boase Award and the Carnegie Medal. Her debut was named Overall Book of the Year by Blackwell's, beating titles in the Adult Market. McNicoll was awarded an honour by the Schneider Family Book Award in 2022 for the US edition of A Kind of Spark. It was listed as number 75 in The 100 Greatest Children's Books of All Time by the BBC.Her second novel, Show Us Who You Are, was published in March, 2021, and was Children's Book of the Week in The Times. It was also the Children's Book of the Month, as chosen by Blackwell's. It was nominated for Best Children's Fiction in the 2021 Books Are My Bag Awards, and McNicoll was also nominated for Best Breakthrough Author.
Her third novel, Like a Charm, was published in February 2022 by Knights Of and was also Children's Book of the Week in The Times, as well as being reviewed as "another fiercely gripping, superbly original story" by The Guardian. In 2022 McNicoll also wrote a story as part of the crime anthology The Very Merry Murder Club edited by Serena Patel and Robin Stevens.
A Kind of Spark was optioned for a television series from CBBC, with McNicoll acting as co-head writer on the programme. It premiered on BBC iPlayer in the UK on 31 March 2023. In 2023, Macmillan won a five-publisher auction for the rights to two of McNicoll's young adult novels, Some Like it Cold and a novel to published in 2025.
McNicoll also wrote and recorded an essay for BBC Radio 3's The Essay. The subject was Nora Ephron, a heroine of McNicoll's.
Keedie, the prequel to A Kind of Spark, was published in 2024. In an episode of In the Reading Corner, McNicoll talked about her nuanced exploration of teenage bullying and the stereotyping of neurodivergent characters.