It is CKG season, hurrah! I wrote about the CKG awards for Information Today Europe two years ago explaining the process and don't want to repeat myself here so do have a look at that article and the links included. For more on the prize you can also visit my blog.
This year they've done something slightly different. In November they announced all the nominations, as usual, but on the 4th February 2014 they whittled this list down to their new style longlist of far fewer books. The rationale is that now that so many books are being nominated (76 for the Carnegie this year) it was becoming unmanageable to follow until the shortlist was announced and they wanted to highlight those nominations that could be contenders earlier in the process. For the last couple of years I have shadowed the Carnegie from the longlist, reading every title, so on hearing this I wasn’t sure whether to read all nominations or just wait for the longlist. I read as many nominations as I could before the longlist was announced but there were still ten books on there that I hadn't read yet. Adding this step in the proceedings means a number of shadowing groups have already started tentatively looking at the lists and coming up with their own favourites and shortlists. Here's the longlist in full:
• The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas by David Almond (Walker Books)
• All the Truth That’s in Me by Julie Berry (Templar)
• The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks (Penguin)
• The Child's Elephant by Rachel Campbell-Johnston (David Fickling Books)
• Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper (Bodley Head)
• After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross (Oxford University Press)
• Heroic by Phil Earle (Penguin)
• Blood Family by Anne Fine (Doubleday Children's Books)
• Infinite Sky by CJ Flood (Simon & Schuster Children's Books)
• Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn (Electric Monkey)
• Monkey Wars by Richard Kurti (Walker Books)
• Hostage Three by Nick Lake (Bloomsbury Children's Books)
• The Positively Last Performance by Geraldine McCaughrean (Oxford University Press)
• Brock by Anthony McGowan (Barrington Stoke)
• Binny for Short by Hilary McKay (Hodder Children's Books)
• Far Far Away by Tom McNeal (Jonathan Cape)
• Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher (Indigo)
• Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell (Faber & Faber)
• Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead (Andersen Press)
• The Wall by William Sutcliffe (Bloomsbury)
The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 18thMarch, by which time I intend to have read every longlisted title and chosen my own shortlist, which is when Shadowing begins in earnest in schools across the country. As I said in my previous article, I've enjoyed shadowing the Greenaway with Year 7 but haven’t formally had a Carnegie shadowing club, but this year as we have no Year 7 in my school any more the G&T co-ordinator and I are hosting one that will launch after half term to have a look at the longlist!
Caroline Fielding is a school librarian in London, UK.