CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

The two most prestigious awards in the UK are the Carnegie Medal for outstanding writing and the Kate Greenaway Medal for distinguished illustration. The first stage of the 2010 process has begun with the lists of nominations for both awards announced overnight. From here it becomes:  shortlist (23 April 2010); winners (24 June 2010).

The lists are long, and keen readers will want to devour as much as they can get their hands on from the Carnegie list, Those who love illustration will savour the titles in the Greenaway list.

Eagle-eyed Judith Ridge alerted us to the nomination announcements via twitter, where she noted that the beautiful and poignant Harry and Hopper (a Margaret Wild / Freya Blackwood collaboration) was in the running for the Greenaway.

The shadowing site will be up and running soon, and worth keeping an eye on.

Image of Kate Greenaway used under Creative Commons licence.

The late Siobhan Dowd has won the 2009 Carnegie Medal for Bog Child. This is the first posthumous medal in the history of the UK’s most prestigious children’s literature award.

The book is “an absolutely astonishing piece of writing”, said the librarian Joy Court, chair of the judging panel (the Carnegie medal winner is selected by 13 librarians from around the UK). “To be able to write like that when she was going through what she was going through is just astonishing – the sheer beauty of the language, the descriptions of the environment; she has such an amazing sense of place.”

More from The Guardian here.

And put twenty minutes aside to view the acceptance speeches from Siobhan’s sister and an impassioned David Fickling.

As the Guardian has already noted, it’s boys’, boys’, boys’ stories all the way for the 2009 Carnegie Medal shortlist.

Not long ago there was considerable comment in blogland and twitterdom in this country about the lack of stories with strong female protaganists in the 2009 CBCA shortlist for older readers and disappointment at the Miles Franklin Award, where no woman was shortlisted for arguably Australia’s most prestigious literary prize.

So we are not alone. The British judges have selected the following titles to be in contention for the 2009 Carnegie :

• Cosmic – Frank Cottrell Boyce
• Black Rabbit Summer – Kevin Brooks
• Airman – Eoin Colfer
• Bog Child – Siobhan Dowd
• Ostrich Boys – Keith Gray
• The Knife of Never Letting Go – Patrick Ness
• Creature of the Night – Kate Thompson

Comments anyone?

Yes, we thought we’d done this because, when the list was announced last week, all the titles were so familiar. And that’s because they have (nearly) all been reviewed in Fiction Focus. Been there, done that we thought … but no. So here is the 2008 shortlist for the prestigious Carnegie Medal, won last year by Meg Rosoff for Just in Case.

2008 Carnegie Medal shortlisted books

• Kevin Crossley-Holland – Gatty’s Tale
• Linzi Glass – Ruby Red (not yet reviewed, but we loved The Year the Gypsies Came, her 2006 title)
• Elizabeth Laird – Crusade
• Tanya Landman – Apache
• Philip Reeve – Here Lies Arthur
• Meg Rosoff – What I Was
• Jenny Valentine – Finding Violet Park

Also announced were the Kate Greenaway Medal shortlisted titles, which are also reviewed in our Resource Bank. Go to the Primary Focus blog to read more about these.