CARNEGIE AND KATE GREENAWAY MEDAL

This year celebrations will take place for the Carnegie Medal's 70th and Kate Greenaway Medal's 50th anniversary. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) present the Carnegie Medal annually to a writer of an outstanding book for children. The first Carnegie Medal was awarded in 1936 to Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post.

The Kate Greenaway Medal was established by The Library Association and was first awarded for distinguished illustration in a book for children in 1955.  

'Every children's writer [in Britain] feels a particular interest in the Carnegie medal. If you haven't won it, it's the one you most want to; and if you have it's the one you're most proud of' Philip Pullman

To celebrate these anniversaries CILIP will be awarding a 'winner of winners' medal chosen from the full list of winners for both the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medal. The medal will be chosen by children's reading groups and librarians from across the UK. www.encompassculture.com reading groups will also be able to get involved through our series of online chats with Carnegie and Greenaway winning and short-listed authors, a long-list discussion board and weblogs by young people reading the long-list of winners.

CILIP have also added lots of resources based around the winning books over the years (all are available on the website www.ckg.org.uk). These include:

• A living archive with information about all 120 books that have won – you can post reviews, tag books and add images.
• ‘Interpreting the collections’ packs, which discuss the books in relation to different interests with suggestions of how librarians, parents and teachers might use them:
  - Home and Abroad by Susan Tranter (the encompassculture online reader in residence);
  - Carnegie Boys by Michele Gill – looks at the books in relation to current understanding of, and concerns about, boyhood;
  - Illustration over the past 50 years by visual literacy specialist Liz George;
  - Outsiderness, Difference and Diversity by Laura Atkins.
• Reader development and visual literacy resources – four practical resource packs for librarians and teachers to use with reading groups in the libarary or classroom by Damien Kelleher and Liz George.

If you would like your group to be part of the celebration activities contact Kim Haskins via literatureuk@britishcouncil.org. Our activities on www.encompassculture.com will be conjuction with the official Carngie and Greenaway shadowing website.

The 2005 Carnegie Medal winner was Mal Peet for Tamar. Mal Peet took part in an online author chats this autumn; if you want your reading group to take part in one our author chats contact literatureuk@britishcouncil.org.

The 2005 winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal was Emily Gravett for Wolves.

To learn more about the Carnegie and Greenaway Medal click on the offical website http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/index.html.