Warwickshire News Mine

The event, to take place at The Avon Valley School and Performing Arts College in Rugby, will involve more than 200 students from 17 secondary schools.

Cult young people’s author and Carnegie medal finalist Patrick Ness will meet the shadow judges to discuss his first foray into writing for teenagers. Patrick wrote “The Knife of Never Letting Go”, his first book for young adults, last year which subsequently won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize.

Ten students from Avon Valley have been reading books from the Carnegie shortlist and have been meeting regularly before school to discuss their thoughts on the books. 

One Avon Valley student, Hayley Smith said: “ I really like reading and thought that it would be good to read different styles of novels.”

The unifying theme for the Carnegie shortlisted books this year is the complicated business of growing up.  Ness’ book focuses on Todd, only days away from becoming a man, and the book opens with the somewhat disorientating sentence, “The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.”

Hayley agreed that “…it was a difficult book to start with but by the middle it was addictive!”

Warwickshire Library Service coordinates the Carnegie shadowing scheme in which young people read the books on the shortlist of the UK’s oldest and most prestigious award for children’s writing and decide which title they think is the best.

Celia Merriman, Manager Services to Schools for Warwickshire County Council, said: "We have been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of young readers from across our secondary schools and it’s a great pleasure to give them the opportunity to come face to face with a leading author.

“With the support of librarians and teachers, more and more children are taking part in the scheme to read the best of young people’s fiction, debate their favourite books and decide on their own winner”

Now in its seventy second year, the CILIP Carnegie Medal is the prize writers describe as ‘the one they want to win’. Although there is no cash reward, its prestige is rooted in the unique judging process which pools the professional expertise of librarians from across the country, who nominate titles for the long list.

Employing a breadth of styles from the comic novel to fantasy fiction, historical adventure to contemporary gritty realism, the seven shortlisted authors have also chosen widely diverging periods and settings for their novels.

The pupils taking part in the judging event will have read the seven short listed books for the Carnegie Medal:

BOYCE, FRANK COTTRELL COSMIC
BROOKS, KEVIN BLACK RABBIT SUMMER
COLFER, EOIN AIRMAN
DOWD, SIOBHAN BOG CHILD
GRAY, KEITH OSTRICH BOYS
NESS, PATRICK THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO
THOMPSON, KATE CREATURE OF THE NIGHT

The Official Carnegie Award will be announced at a ceremony at BAFTA in central London on Thursday 25 June. The Warwickshire Award will be announced on the same day at a special event at Kineton High School, A Specialist Sports College on the same day.

Link to WCC