"This is science fiction at its most moving and exciting." The Guardian

A belated thank you

Posted by Christopher at 1:47pm

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Last week the nominations for the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Medals 2017 were announced and, thrillingly, The Many Worlds of Albie Bright is nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017. At the time of the announcement I was buried under an avalanche of deadlines, so didn’t have time to write this blog then, but to say that I was thrilled about this news would be a serious understatement as you’ll see if the video ever leaks of the Intergalactic dance moves I busted out when I heard about the nomination.

The CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards are described as ‘the gold standard in literature and illustration for children and young people’ and one of the key reasons for this is because they are chosen by the experts in children’s literature and illustration - librarians.

Every writer is a reader and the books that turned me into a writer were the ones I found on the shelves of my local library, as I explained in this blog post from five years ago where I talked about the inspirations that set me on the path to becoming an author.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know about authors; my brain was full to bursting with their names. I was the Incredible Book Eating Boy before Oliver Jeffers had even drawn him, devouring the shelves of my local library. J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, John Wyndham, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Cormier, Ursula Le Guin. With every book I took out, a new favourite author could be discovered and I’d then eagerly seek out everything that they had written.

At a time when even the idea of the library seems to under attack like never before, and librarians battle against cuts and closures, I’d like to thank every single librarian for the vital work that they do in inspiring new readers and writers, and the way they still make time to celebrate children’s literature with the CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Medals and help share the amazing worlds that can be found in its pages with young readers everywhere. As I tweeted when I first found out about the Carnegie nomination: