AS IN THE LONG AGO

  You might think that, having read all 84 Carnegie Medal winning books, I would be able to tell you how to write a Carnegie Medal winning book. Sadly, I can't. But if winning the Carnegie is your aim in life then I can give you a few pointers, starting with a few things not to do: Don't write non-fiction books. Despite what it says on the Carnegie website you have virtually no chance of winning with facts. Don't write poetry (unless you're prepared to turn your poetry into a novel - see below!). No poetry collection has ever won the Carnegie. Don't write fiction for 5-8 year olds. This vitally important area of children's reading experience has been almost entirely neglected by the judging panels over the years. Any one of the books in Alan Garner's  Stone Book Quartet , for example, would have deserved to win, but they weren't even shortlisted. Jane Gardam committed both this error and the next one when she had two books highly commended in the same ye...

The 2023 Carnegie winner was  The Blue Book of Nebo  by Manon Steffan Ros. This novel was originally written in Welsh and then 'adapted from the Welsh' by its author. When it won the Carnegie I saw it described as the first 'novel in translation' to have won the award, but that's not really accurate because, when she came to create an English language version of her story, Manon Steffan Ros found herself compelled to change important parts of the book. In an interview with Gary Raymond for  Wales Art Review  she describes why she had to do this.  In the original, a mother and her son are isolated survivors in a post-apocalyptic world. Each of them records their thoughts on the blank pages of a book they find in an abandoned house, a book Dylan calls The Blue Book of Nebo. In the book Dylan, the son, records what he remembers of their life together since 'The End' and his mother, Rowenna, talks about the time before 'The End' and about her own experie...