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.

This is the award for first-time children’s and YA novelists, and if you consider that previous recipients include Jenny Downham, Siobhan Dowd, Mal Peet, Francis Hardinge, Meg Rosoff, Kevin Brooks and Marcus Sedgwick, you’d have to agree that the judges know how to pick them!

The  winner for the tenth anniversary year has just been announced, so watch out for Bridget Collins, who is sure to be on the up and up. The Traitor Game won’t be available here in paperback until November.

The award is named in honour of two women, novelist Henrietta Branford and editor Wendy Boase, who both died of cancer in 1999.

The Older Readers category of the 2009 Red House Award – a UK children’s choice award – has been won by Sophie McKenzie for Blood Ties.

Nominees and winners of the other categories here.

Patrick Ness does it again again, for The Knife of Never Letting Go in the Booktrust Teenage Prize. He’s having a good year.

But he is not one of the four authors shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Awards:

• Keith Gray – Ostrich Boys
• Saci Lloyd – The Carbon Diaries
• Michelle Magorian – Just Henry
• Jenny Valentine – Broken Soup

The winner will be announced on 6 January.

British author Alan Gibbons has initiated a Campaign for the Book, which is receiving considerable press coverage in the UK.  Details are on his blog, which has a who’s who of children’s writers as signatories.

In response to an Independent on Sunday books special feature, Can Intelligent Literature Survive in a Digital Age, Gibbons has penned a letter which is also on the blog.

The right book for the right reader at the right time – that is a given in the world of children’s literature. But what if the book cover says you are too young / too old to read it? This is a controversy just starting to hit its straps in the UK with publishers there intending to put age guidelines on the covers of children’s / YA books.

More than eighty authors, including Philip Pullman, are fighting back with a letter to be published in Bookseller magazine later this week. Not all authors are against the idea, however. Meg Rosoff says that it could be ‘extremely helpful for parents.’

Read the Guardian report here.

A Bentley-driving living skeleton named Skulduggery Pleasant is the unlikely protagonist of the latest book award winner from the UK.

The Red House Children’s Book Awards were announced at the Hay Festival this weekend, and Irish writer Derek Landy’s witty, gothic-horror title was declared overall winner. These children’s choice awards have been running an astonishing 28 years.

Skulduggery seems just as popular in Australia as in the rest of the English-reading world. The sequel, Playing with Fire, has recently become available.

Michael Rosen has announced a new award for children’s books in honour of one of the funniest writers of them all. The Children’s Laureate, who sees himself as the ‘ambassador for fun’ believes that funny books should be rewarded. Authors who use humour in their stories, poetry or fiction will be eligible for The Roald Dahl Prize.

Rosen says that humour is often overlooked in children’s book awards and it is time to be acknowledged. Young adult titles are in the running, with two categories: titles for littlies under six, and those for readers aged between seven and fourteen.

A shortlist will be announced on the third annual Roald Dahl Day on 13 September, with the winners receiving their prizes in November. The judging panel, chaired by Rosen, consists of Dahl’s grand-daughter Sophie, comedian Dara O’Briain and illustrator Chris Riddell.

You’ve got to like what they are doing with promoting children’s literature in the UK. Not only do they have a Children’s Laureate, a national centre for children’s books and have declared 2008 the National Year of Reading, there is now talk of a prestigious national award for children’s literature.

Already dubbed ‘the children’s Booker’, the award is intended to compensate for the demise of the Nestle Awards. It was announced earlier this year that these awards, some of Britain’s longest-running, would be discontinued and the focus placed on the book giving schemes Bookstart and Booked Up. Wendy Cooling gave us an overview of the success of the Bookstart programme at the recent CBCA conference.

In Australia we have the national CBCA Book of the Year Awards, and various Premier’s Awards in some of the states, but just imagine the prestige of a Miles Franklin Award for children’s literature. Oh, and a Children’s Laureate would be rather nice, too.

Some copycat ideas are worth pursuing.

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.