Michelle Pauli of The Guardian talks to two up-and-coming children's writers, Julia Golding and Matthew Skelton, at the Culture Vulture blog. And, when I say "talk to," this time I mean it literally. The interview is offered as a podcast.

Julia Golding won the Ottaker's Children's Book Prize for The Diamond of Drury Lane. Pauli writes, "it's a riproaring historical adventure set in Georgian times and introduces a feisty and independent girl-hero, Cat Royal."

Matthew Skelton has just released Endymion Spring in the U.K. (U.S. publication date is August 22), "though it was causing ripples even at the manuscript stage when it was subject to a fierce bidding war and optioned to Warner Bros." Endymion Spring is also historical fantasy, but "set in present-day Oxford and medieval Germany at the dawn of the age of printing."