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

Digital storytelling

Today I saw an advert for the READIT Project Teacher survey exploring the use of ICT and digital storytelling to engage pupils in reading and writing. I thought I would give it a plug and include a few references to digital storytelling that I'd picked up recently. As described in the CMIS blogposts below, digital storytelling can enhance literacy and promote reading while at the same time developing IT skills and engaging with today's digital natives. There are a variety of multimedia tools available including graphics, audio and video animation which can be used to create podcasts, videos or multimedia ebooks. Here's what I've found to start you off:

A how-to-guide, Digital storytelling tools for educators, by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano which is available for free download.

Educational uses of digital storytelling page from University of Houston.

Blog posts on digital storytelling parts one and two from CMIS Evaluation Primary Focus. These also reference the above two sites. CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus has D is for digital storytelling.

Web 2.0 / 21st century tools - an excellent site which lists tools on many topics, including a large section on digital storytelling.

Shaun Tan wins Astrid Lindgren prize

The Australian author-illustrator Shaun Tan is the winner of this year's Astrid Lindgren prize – the richest children's literature prize in the world, with a purse of 5m kroner (£490,000). Tan has illustrated more than 20 books including The rabbits, The arrival, Eric and Tales from Outer Suburbia. At this year's Academy Awards, he won the Oscar for best animated short film for The Lost Thing, based on his book of the same title, so it's been an amazing year for him so far. This Guardian article tells you more about the award and has links to an interview with Tan and a picture gallery of his book Eric. We have several books by Tan in our catalogue. He describes them as "illustrated modern fables". For example, the wordless graphic novel The arrival is set in a mysterious city peopled by weird creatures but could be used to open discussion on all sorts of subjects such as loneliness or refugees.

Crossing Over - titles with crossover appeal for both adults and young people

The previous post on Philip Pullman's nomination for the international Man Booker prize mentioned the crossover appeal of some of his titles. He is one of the authors on a new booklist we've produced, Crossing Over. With popular children’s titles such as the Harry Potter series and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time being published in alternative adult covers, the lines between publishing for teens and adults have become blurred. We’ve collected together some of the best titles with crossover appeal. Adults can enjoy the brevity and focus on storytelling of fiction originally conceived as being for children or teenagers, while older children or teens may find some of the classic titles a good way to expand into adult literature. You can access the list by clicking on the link above, or there are copies in the Library to collect.

Philip Pullman on Man Booker International Prize shortlist

Thirteen writers have made it on to the judges' list of finalists under serious consideration for the fourth Man Booker International Prize, the £60,000 award which recognises one writer for his or her achievement in fiction. I think this is quite unusual for a children's author, though Pullman's His dark materials trilogy has crossed over to adults as well. Other names to note are Scottish author James Kelman and John le Carre. The latter apparently didn't want to be included as he prefers not to compete for prizes (to let less-well known writers have a chance).The full list is:

Wang Anyi (China)
Juan Goytisolo (Spain)
James Kelman (UK)
John le Carré (UK)
Amin Maalouf (Lebanon)
David Malouf (Australia)
Dacia Maraini (Italy)
Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada)
Philip Pullman (UK)
Marilynne Robinson (USA)
Philip Roth (USA)
Su Tong (China)
Anne Tyler (USA)

The Man Booker International Prize winner will be announced at the Sydney Writers' Festival on 18 May and the winner will be celebrated at an awards ceremony in London on 28 June 2011. Read more via the official site or the BBC.

What did I miss?

I was on holiday last week, when quite a lot seemed to happen in the world of children's literature. This is a catch up post to try to cover some of it. Perhaps the saddest news was the death of Diana Wynne Jones who was writing fantasy series long before Harry Potter was ever thought of. Here are the books of hers we stock - my absolute favourite is Fire and hemlock, though Howl's moving castle might be the most famous because it has been made into a film. An obituary has appeared in the Guardian.

Michael Gove, Education Secretary in the UK parliament, caused a bit of a stir by suggesting that children should read 50 books per year. This is certainly controversial given that many councils, particularly in England, are contemplating closing some of their libraries and school libraries are also under threat. So where do children get the books if they can't afford to buy them? As part of the debate, the Independent has also jumped in with its list of what those 50 books should be - a surefire way to put any child off reading in my opinion. See what you think.

Updating a beloved clasic is another way to cause controversy, and there are two developments here. Frank Cottrell Boyce is producing a sequel to Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - read about it via the Guardian and the BBC - and Jacqueline Wilson is to update Five children and it by E Nesbit. Again, the Guardian has the details. The Nosy Crow blog puts the arguments for and against updates. If you want to read, or re-read, the originals we have both titles in stock.

The Eagle - the new film based on Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth is out now and was reviewed favourably in Sunday's Observer and the Guardian even has an editorial about it, In praise of Rosemary Sutcliff. Again, you can borrow the book from us.

Finally, Booktrust has announced the winners of it's Best New Illustrators award. They are:

Joe Berger
Claudia Boldt
Katie Cleminson
Chris Haughton
Alice Melvin
Sara Ogilvie
Levi Pinfold
Salvatore Rubbino
Viviane Schwarz
Kevin Waldron

You can watch an audio-slideshow of their work being discussed by Anthony Browne, one of the judges and the current Children's Laureate. We don't have work by all the above - I've added a link to the catalogue for books illustrated by the ones we do.

Meet our Authors: forthcoming programme from Scottish Book Trust

Scottish Book Trust has announced its latest Meet our Authors programme as follows:

12/05/11: James Mayhew This session will focus on visual literacy. See our books by James here and, if you are interested in visual literacy, you might also be interested in our Teaching with Visual Images page.

16/06/11: Andy Stanton This session will focus on reluctant readers. Again, we have several books by Andy, best known for the Mr Gum series, and we also have a page on reluctant readers.

29/09/11: David Almond This session will focus on creative writing. We have lots of books by this prize winning author. His latest, My name is Mina is a prequel to Skellig, perhaps his most famous.

01/12/11: Kjartan Poskitt This session will focus on maths. Make maths fun with the author of  Murderous maths and other titles. 

Not sure if these are for you? Try Meet our Authors out by watching the hilarious event with Eoin Colfer on the SBT site. Watch this blog for more information nearer the time of each session and I also advise signing up with the SBT newsletter which highlights different parts of their work each month. In March, as well as talking about this programme, the newsletter had fun book stuff, World Book Night reviews and new song and rhyme videos.