The Carnegie Medal is a British literacy award that annually recognises an outstanding new English-language book for children or young adults. It’s the UK’s oldest and most prestigious book award for children’s writing.

The Medal is named after the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who founded more than 2,800 libraries. It was established in 1936 by the British Library Association, to celebrate the centenary of Carnegie’s birth. Since 1955, the Kate Greenaway Medal has been a companion to the Carnegie Medal, and recognises illustration in books for children.

The winner is awarded a gold medal and £500 worth of books donated to the winner’s chosen library. In addition, since 2016 the winner has received a £5,000 cash prize from the Colin Mears bequest.

Shortlisted titles were published 18th March 2021 which also saw the launch of the CKG book award, an annual event here in our senior school library.

A group of excited Year 7 and 8 students were the first to discover which books had gone through for the award and will now form part of the shadowing team for the next 12 weeks.

Mrs Dewhurst, Head of Library, was once again delighted with the interest shown in the award and excited to be reading the 8 shortlisted titles over the next few weeks.

The short-listed Carnegie titles for 2021 are:

  • Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land (Hot Key Books)
  • Sophie Anderson, The Girl Who Speaks Bear, illustrated by Kathrin Honesta (Usborne)
  • Joseph Coelho, The Girl Who Became A Tree, illustrated by Kate Milner (Otter-Barry Books)
  • Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick, On Midnight Beach (Faber)
  • Manjeet Mann, Run, Rebel (Penguin)
  • Jason Reynolds, Look Both Ways (Knights Of)
  • Ruta Sepetys, The Fountains of Silence (Penguin)
  • Lauren Wolk, Echo Mountain (Penguin)

The short-listed Kate Greenaway titles for 2021 are:

  • Sharon King-Chai, Starbird (Two Hoots)
  • Sara Lundberg, The Bird Within Me, translated by B J Epstein (Book Island)
  • Kate Milner, It’s A No-Money Day (Barrington Stoke)
  • Poonam Mistry, How The Stars Came To Be (Tate Publishing)
  • Pete Oswald, Hike (Walker Books)
  • David Ouimet, I Go Quiet (Canongate)
  • Catherine Rayner, Arlo The Lion Who Couldn’t Sleep (Pan Macmillan)
  • Sydney Smith, Small In The City (Walker Books)

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