Carnegie and Greenaway Awards announced

Hot on the heels of my last post on the Scottish Children's Book Awards Shortlist come the Carnegie and Greenaway winners!

The winner of the Carnegie Award is Sally Gardner for Maggot Moon (Hot Key). Sally, who is dyslexic, used her acceptance speech to speak up for children for whom reading and writing does not come easily, and the librarians and teachers that help them. She also criticised Michael Gove's new curriculum.

The winner of the Kate Greenaway Award (for illustration) is Levi Pinfold for Black Dog (Templar). Writer and illustrator Levi also used his win to celebrate libraries and librarians across the country.




Both winning books are tales of triumph over terror. In Gardner's Maggot Moon, the unlikely young hero Standish who, like his creator, is dyslexic, stands up to a sinister dictatorship whilst friends and family around him 'disappear'. Pinfold's Black Dog sees a little girl called Small Hope facing fear head-on in the form of a monstrous giant black dog.

Congratulations to all concerned!

Carnegie / Greenaway - how were our predictions?

A few months ago, Gordana's guest post described a nomination event she attended for the Carnegie / Greenaway Awards. The shortlists have just been announced, so how did she do? Really well for The Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration - of the five books she singled out for mention, three made it on to the list: Again! by Emily Gravett, I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen and Black Dog by Levi Pinfold. She was less successful with the Carnegie Medal for writing, predicting only The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan.

Whoever wins the Carnegie will be a first-timer, and if it's Roddy Doyle (nominated for A Greyhound of a Girl) he will be only the second author (Penelope Lively being the other) to win both the Carnegie for a children's book and the Booker, for an adult novel. There is also history-making potential in the Greenaway with both Gravett and Helen Oxenbury (King Jack and the Dragon) in line for an unprecedented third win.

For more information, see CILIP's press release, the article in Books for Keeps and The Bookbag's Carnegie reviews.

Carnegie shortlist

  

Greenaway shortlist

 

A celebration of reading: choosing books for Carnegie and Greenaway



In this guest post, Gordana Nesterovic describes an event to choose nominations for the prestigious Carnegie and Greenaway awards, and concludes that the methods used would be transferrable to other situations, such as the classroom or a children's book club.

I attended this free event in the Mitchell Library last week along with about 14 other participants. It was organised by CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) in order to decide on the Scottish nominees for CILIP's Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards for 2013. The event had a party theme, so the first part of it was set up as a game – there were 20 props for guessing book titles, all previous award winners. Some of them were really hard to guess, but some, like I will not ever never eat a tomato or Each peach, pear, plum were easy, and all of them provided a great sense of achievement once completed.

We were then put into three groups, each with a pile of books to look at and discuss. We started with the books suggested for the Greenaway award for illustration and were given guidelines on what we should base our judgements on: for example not to look at the story, but to look at the illustration, how it works with typography and how expressive it all is. This was great fun to do, but also a way to learn about some new books as well as looking at them from a different perspective than when one is actually reading for oneself or to a child: one did not need to have read the book. It was really interesting to see how quickly people become passionate about books that they had just seen for the first time. Groups moved around the piles of books and once they had seen them all, each group had to choose two that they wanted to nominate and then present their case. Everyone then had one vote to give to their favourite book, and in the end I want my hat back by Jon Klassen (for its simple but very expressive and effective illustrations) and Black dog by Levi Pinfold (for the lovely colours and very atmospheric pictures, also for how well the pictures were arranged around words) came out on top. Again by Emily Gravett was a very strong contender as well as Jack and the baked beanstalk by Colin Stimpson. The old classic Around the world in eighty days, illustrated by Robert Ingpen, caught my attention because it was the only book nominated for illustration that was not a picture book. The quality of illustration was outstanding and really captured the time of the story with the style of the drawings and colours used. Even though we did not choose to nominate it for the award, I was sure this would make a fantastic Christmas present for a book lover of any age.

The second part of judging was for the Carnegie award – the best storyline and how well it was told. I wish I had known the shortlisted books longer in advance but, all the same, enjoyed hearing about them and was certainly inspired to go and look for them. The decision was made much more unanimously with two books emerging way ahead of all other nominations: Far rockaway by Charlie Fletcher and  The weight of water by Sarah Crossan. Charlie Fletcher’s book was reported by all who read it (and most people did) to be a gripping story impossible to put down. The story features a very strong female character and would appeal to all, but especially to girls. Crossan's book is written in verse and was liked by people who would not normally like that style. It is a story, again, with strong female characters which explores relationships on many different levels. Morris Gleitzman's After was also highly commended. It is the fourth in a series but is a great story on its own as well. Several people mentioned the storyline in Crimson Shard by Theresa Flavin about unexpected turn of events during an ordinary visit to a London museum, which reminded me of Hollow Earth, a book that I recently reviewed here.

I think this model of judging is transferable and could be recreated and interpreted in different settings and in a variety of situations. I kept imagining children’s book club meetings or using it as a model for discussing books in the classroom, or choosing and deciding on the ‘book of the month’, for example. Teachers might like to use it in conjunction with CILIP's Shadowing scheme to get their students involved in the awards. I also feel this could also be a good team building exercise as such a lot happens in a very short time. I left the Mitchell Library beaming and inspired, having had a great time. I enjoyed looking at the new books and felt that I had also learnt a lot. I was pleased to know that Strathclyde University Library, where I work, already held several of the shortlisted books, and since the event, its catalogue shows many more as 'on order'.

Carnegie / Greenaway double for A Monster Calls

When I wrote here in March that the Carnegie / Greenaway shortlist had been announced, I pointed out two historic possibilities. First, the Carnegie, for the writer of an outstanding children's book, could be won by the same author two years in a row. Patrick Ness won last year for Monsters of men and was nominated again for A monster calls. Winning in consecutive years has only happened once before since the award started in 1936 - Peter Dickinson won for Tulku in 1979 and City of Gold in 1980.  Second, the same book could also win both awards because the illustrator, Jim Kay, was on the shortlist for the Greenaway which rewards distinguished illustration in a book for children. This has never happened before. Well, the winners have just been announced today, and they are......Patrick Ness and Jim Kay! Here's more information.

The book was written from an idea of Siobhan Dowd's - she died before she could write it herself. A trust has been set up in her name to bring books and reading to disadvantaged young people in the UK.


CILIP, which runs the awards, has press releases on its site.


Walker Books, the publisher, describes the book here. They are justly proud of the awards, and have a nice picture of the winners on this tweet.


Walker also has a trailer for the book on YouTube

The Guardian, as ever, has a lot of useful information:

The story of Patrick Ness's win. 
An article by Patrick and Jim on how they made the book.
A picture gallery.

Patrick said in his acceptance speech that "At its core, it's a book about love & the bravery it requires". I've read the book and agree wholeheartedly. I found it very emotional but I can't add anything to the review on the blog Did you ever stop to think & forget to start again? I think you should all read it for yourselves!

PS 18/6/12 - been lots more articles since I wrote the above: 

BBC Carnegie Medal: Patrick Ness book A Monster Calls scoops double honours.

Guardian (again) Patrick Ness slams library cuts (an edited version of his acceptance speech). It's absolutely brilliant. Read it! And Teenagers deserve better, a piece by Patrick Ness in defence of the teenager who is sometimes spoken of negatively.

Independent  A Monster Calls: Carnegie winner Patrick Ness deals with the subject of death.

Literacy, families and learning A Monster Calls wins  Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Medals: a review.


Telegraph A Monster Calls: Patrick Ness and Jim Kay talk about their Carnegie and Greenaway wins.

Carnegie / Greenaway shortlists

The shortlists for these two awards have just been announced, and I'm pleased to say we have nearly all the books already, and will soon have the rest in stock. The Carnegie is for the writer of an outstanding children's book and this year's shortlist raises the prospect that the same author could win two years in a row. Patrick Ness won last year for Monsters of men and is nominated again for A monster calls. This has only happened once before since the award started in 1936 - Peter Dickinson won for Tulku in 1979 and City of Gold in 1980. Even more intriguing, A monster calls could win both medals because the illustrator, Jim Kay, is on the shortlist for the Greenaway which rewards distinguished illustration in a book for children. I've been right through the lists of previous winners and this has never happened before, so the book could make history if it wins twice.


There's also a shadowing site where you can read and post reviews, watch videos of the nominated authors etc, and one of this year's judges has blogged about the experience for Booktrust. Susan Elkin has blogged in the Independent, which is fine if you can fogive the spelling mistake in the heading, and Books for Keeps also has a piece online. No doubt there will be many more articles in the run-up to the awards being announced on 14th June.

PS 2 hours after posting this - already more from the Guardian. Greenaway in pictures and an article on Carnegie.


The slideshows below are of the shortlists - the Carnegie is the top one.

Carnegie / Greenaway awards and Pottermore

Thursday, 23rd June was a big day in the children's book world. It had long been set as the award date for the Carnegie and Greenaway medals, but a few days beforehand it began to look as if these would be upstaged when cryptic messages began to emanante from JK Rowling. What could they mean?

First, the Carnegie / Greenaway awards. These are presented annually by CILIP, the professional body for library and information workers. The Carnegie Medal is for the writer of an outstanding book for children and the Kate Greenaway Medal is for distinguished illustration in a book for children. This year's winners were Patrick Ness, for Monsters of men, and Grahame Baker-Smith for FArTHER (sic). Read more about them in CILIP's press release.

I've blogged about Patrick Ness several times before, including reviewing the Chaos walking books which I loved. I'm also happy to report that his acceptance speech included a fierce defence of libraries - read about it here in the Guardian. There is also an interview with him in today's Independent. You can borrow his books from us but, unfortunately, that's not yet true of Baker-Smith's book, which seems to have flown under my radar. However, I've ordered it now and, in the meantime, here is a slide-show of his work, again from the Guardian.

So what was Pottermore all about? "Pottermore is a free website that builds an exciting online experience around the reading of the Harry Potter books" - but you still have to go back on 31st July to find out more. Here's JK Rowling announcing it on YouTube and here again is the dependable Guardian. Clever marketing or unnecessary hype? You decide.

Finally, there was another piece of news yesterday which probably got a bit swamped by everything else that was going on. Penguin announced the winners of their cover design awards - the children's entries were illustrating James and the giant peach - you can see the winning and short-listed designs here.

Carnegie / Greenaway shortlists announced

The shortlists for the CILIP* Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals, widely acknowledged to be the UK’s most prestigious children’s book awards, have just come out. The Carnegie is for outstanding writing and the Greenaway is for outstanding illustration. To my shame, we only have two of the Greenaway books in the Library (Anthony Browne's Me and you and Bob Graham's April Underhill, tooth fairy) so I'll have to do something about that. We either have, or have ordered, all the Carnegie books. I've already blogged about one - see my post on Monsters of men by Patrick Ness, the culmination of a trilogy which I loved. Books for Keeps also has a piece on the shortlists if you want to read more.

You might remember in a recent post I mentioned Michael Gove's idea that all children should read 50 books a year. He's been talking again about school children (in England) not being encouraged to read because they don't read 19th century classics. Annie Mauger, CEO of CILIP, has decided to present him with some modern classics-in-the-making and is pictured here, with Patrick Ness, on her way to present the shortlisted books to Mr Gove's department. I hope he finds them a good read.

*Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals

Carnegie / Greenaway winners

And the winners are:

Carnegie:
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Greenaway:
Harry & Hopper Illustrated by Freya Blackwood

Read more about them and see video from today's ceremony on the award's website - and read the Guardian article and BBC page.

2 Greenaway Reviews

We will be reviewing all the Carnegie and Greenaway titles over the next few weeks. To start with, Cherry Riddell reviews two of the Greenaway titles. Cherry volunteers in this library one day a week and is also a serving teacher, so her views are particularly useful for teaching students.

The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded for outstanding and original illustrations in children’s literature. The titles below are both in stock at Jordanhill Campus Library.

Riddell, Chris. (text by Neil Gaiman). (2008). The Graveyard Book. Bloomsbury.

Nobody Owens – nicknamed Bod – is a perfectly normal boy except for one thing – he lives in a graveyard and is looked after by ghosts. Danger and adventure lurk everywhere for Bod in the ghoulish graveyard and in one place in particular: The Land of the Living, where Bod’s parents were killed by the frightening and mysterious Jack. Twists and creepy turns make for an exciting and spine tingling adventure story for children age 9 and up.
Chris Riddell’s ghoulishly detailed illustrations of the main characters such as Jack, Eliza and Bod bring this story to life in a vivid way. The illustrations are drawn in black and white which is fitting to the macabre tone of the story.
Children will have fun finding out if the description of the character in their imagination matches that of the ones found in the book. Perhaps in class children could draw their own illustrations and compare them to Chris Riddell’s, thus encouraging pupils imagination and prediction skills.

Schwarz, Viviane. (2008). There Are Cats In This Book. Walker.

There are cats in this book – Tiny, Moonpie and Andre – who love nothing better than to chase wool, hide in boxes and chase fish. They are waiting to play with the reader through lift up flaps and hidden pictures. Aimed at young children, P1-2 level, this lovely book attracts attention straight away just by picking it up, due to the cleverly hidden cats on the title page.
Simply but expressively illustrated, this book will capture a young child’s attention and delight by its clever use of not so obvious flaps and hidden pictures. Children will have great fun with this book, reading on their own or with the whole class.

Carnegie & Greenaway Awards

Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell have been shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie and Greenaway medals respectively - for the same book! Neil wrote and Chris illustrated The Graveyard Book - a double nomination that hasn't happened since 1980 when Peter Dickinson and Michael Foreman were both nominated for City of gold (Peter Dickinson went on to win the Carnegie).

The Carnegie shortlist (for writing) also boast two previous winners, Philip Reeve and Terry Pratchett, and all eight titles feature survival in the face of challenging issues such as natural disaster, racism or terrorism - and not a vampire in sight.

The Greenaway shortlist (for illustration) features seven first timers, as well as Chris Riddell who has won twice before, and has a varied cast of dogs, cats, forest fauna, rabbits in top hats, graveyard ghosts, imaginary headgear, a bizarre crowning glory and a band of kids determined to get their own back on a horrible teacher.

Scottish Book Trust has recently toured with David Roberts and Chris Riddell and the links lead to video highlights of the tours (and they have many other useful videos too). Their audio page also features material on Chris Riddell and Neil Gaiman. For more recent stuff on Neil, see this trailer for Instructions, a new picture book, via CMIS Primary Focus, and follow his positive views on libraries (great guy!) via the Book Case blog and a podcast from Minnesota Public Radio

The Carnegie shortlist on Amazon:



The Greenaway shortlist on Amazon:



And of course we either have, or will have very soon, all these titles to borrow from the library. The winners will be announced on 24th June.

Carnegie / Greenaway

CILIP's Carnegie and Greenaway Awards for 2009 have been announced. Siobhan Dowd has won the Carnegie Award for Bog child (David Fickling, 2008) and Catherine Rayner has won the Greenaway Award for Harris finds his feet (Little Tiger, 2008). Follow the link to the site for information about the authors and their books and video of the ceremony.

Carnegie and Greenaway Medals

CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) awards the Carnegie Medal for an outstanding book for children and young people, and the Kate Greenaway Medal for an outstanding book in terms of illustration. Every year, thousands of schools shadow the medals and use the shadowing website to post reviews and share their views. Last year, a special site was added to celebrate 70 years of the medals with a living archive of information about all the past winners. This year's winners have just been announced: they are Philip Reeve and Emily Gravett.

Reeve won the Carnegie for his novel Here lies Arthur, a dark retelling of the Arthurian legend which portrays the king as more of a gangster than a hero, and Merlin (or Myrddin) as a hard nosed Alastair Campbell type who tries to build him up into a leader who can unite the British against the Saxons. The Telegraph published an article about the award last week. Reeve has already won three other major prizes, the Nestle Children's Gold Award (2002) and the Blue Peter Book of the Year (2003) for his first book, Mortal engines , and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 2006 for A darkling plain. He has also entered the debate on age-ranging, which I have covered a couple of times. According to the Bookseller, he supports putting age guidance on books, which he feels will give him some say over where his titles are stocked in bookshops. Click here for those in stock at Jordanhill Library.

Gravett's award winning title is Little Mouse's big book of fears. The Guardian covered her on both June 27th and June 28th. One of the points of interest is that she used rat pee to discolour the pages of this book about a phobic mouse who eventually, after much nervous nibbling, feels better when he realises that even humans can be cowardy custards too. This is Gravett's fourth title - she also won the Greenaway medal for her debut picture book, Wolves. Again, check here for our holdings.

Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals

The Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards are administered by CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). The Carnegie Medal is awarded by children's librarians for an outstanding book for children and young people. The Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded by children's librarians for an outstanding book in terms of illustration for children and young people. The shortlists for books published in 2007 have just been released, and the winners will be announced on 26th June. Also available is a shadowing site where groups, such as school classes, can join up to to read the shortlisted books, assess them by the same criteria used by the librarian judges, and share their views with other reading groups, e.g. by posting reviews on the website. Finally, the Living Archive celebrates and provides information about all past winners, including last year's favourite winners of all time as voted for by the public: Shirley Hughes' Dogger (Greenaway) and Philip Pullman's Northern Lights (Carnegie).