Two authors have declared that young readers "don't need happy endings" after winning Britain's most prestigious children's book awards with dark works about a boy held hostage and a doomed fish.
Kevin Brooks, who struggled for a decade to get The Bunker Diary published because of its dark subject matter, was awarded the Cilip Carnegie Medal -- a prize previously won by authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
At this week's awards' ceremony, at the Unicorn Theatre in London, Jon Klassen became the first Canadian to win the Cilip Kate Greenaway Medal, for illustration, for This is Not My Hat.
Following the awards -- for books with "unusually dark finales", according to the judges -- both said that children "benefit" from books without happy endings.
Helen Thompson, chairwoman of the judging panel, said children and teenagers "live in the real world; a world where militia can kidnap an entire school full of girls and where bullying has reached endemic proportions on social media".