Frank Cottrell Boyce wins Guardian children's fiction prize

The writer who parachuted the Queen and James Bond into the Olympic opening ceremony has won the Guardian children's fiction prize.

Frank Cottrell Boyce, who worked with director Danny Boyle to come up with a vision of Britainthat included children jumping on NHS beds and an army of Mary Poppinses banishing literary baddies, was prompted to write the book by a less proud tradition – the forcible deportation of refugees.

He dedicated The Unforgotten Coat to the child who inspired the story: a Mongolian schoolgirl whose family were taken from their home in a midnight raid by the immigration authorities.

By winning the Guardian award, which is now in its 45th year and is the only prize of its kind judged by writers, Cottrell Boyce joins some of children's literature's most enduring names, including Alan Garner, Dick King-Smith and Diana Wynne Jones.

Cottrell Boyce's novel is an unusual winner in that it was not written for commercial publication. Instead, the author was commissioned to write it by a charity – the Liverpool-based Reader Organisation – and50,000 copies were given away for free this year. It beat books by authors including Roddy Doyle, the late Russell Hoban and Eva Ibbotson, to win the £1,500 award.

It is not the author and screenwriter's first major children's literature prize. In 2004 he won the Carnegie medal for his novel Millions, which was made into a film directed by Boyle and released the same year.

The Guardian's children's books editor, Julia Eccleshare, who was joined on the judging panel by authors Cressida Cowell, Tony Bradman and Kevin Crossley-Holland, said The Unforgotten Coat contained "a very profound message dressed up in a magical, original, humorous story".

The story follows two brothers from Mongolia who go to school in Bootle, Merseyside, but are forced to return to their homeland. It is told from the perspective of their new friend Julie, also in year six.

"It absolutely captures the feel of being a child of that age," said Eccleshare. "It's not a big blockbusting novel with obvious themes of dystopia and apocalypse – instead it's a heart-warming, imaginative, funny story with a very serious message at its heart."

The Unforgotten Coat was inspired by the true story of a Mongolian girl called Misheel who Cottrell Boyce met while doing a reading at a primary school.

When she was taken in the night by the immigration authorities to be deported, one of the things her classmates were most worried about was that Misheel had left her coat behind, as they knew how cold it was in Mongolia. It was an image, Cottrell Boyce said, that haunted him.

"It wasn't a commercial book at all – it came from a very different place," he said. "The Reader Organisation promotes reading to all kinds of different groups, from kids with difficulties to alcoholics, and they were looking for a book which would cross all the groups. They found it very difficult to find, so I wrote this as a gift."

Featuring original pictures by Liverpool photographers Carl Hunter and Clare Heney, The Unforgotten Coat "wasn't written to win prizes or sell loads of copies", said Cottrell Boyce.

"I love the Guardian prize, the fact it's given by other writers, and that it's gone to books I loved reading like The Owl Service. It's fantastic to win it anyway, but to win with something so exuberant, that was not trying to win any awards, is really great. This is a book that was written for fun, and for friendship."

Sue Kendall – the woman who invited Cottrell Boyce to speak at the school where he met Misheel – was at the ceremony. The author writes in an afterword to the novel that as he was putting the finishing touches to the book, he bumped into Kendall, "and she told me that Misheel had – for the first time ever – rung her that morning from Mongolia".

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